1856 
‘The RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
December 20, 1919 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
Perhaps it will he well for me to try to 
answer a few more of those questions this 
week, so here goes: 
Are your boys doing much trapping this 
Winter? 
Not as much as usual. They are too 
busy at school and at home, but they run 
a few traps. The other night I got home 
to find the hoy dancing about in great 
glee. There was a big, well-marked skunk 
in his trap, down under a rocky ledge half 
a mile away. After supper he went down 
with Philip to kill and get the skunk. He 
invited me to go and help, but I declined 
with thanks. Mother made him put on 
his oldest clothes, and it was well she did 
so. - 
How did he come out? 
At, the small end of the horn. He got 
up too close to the skunk, and before he 
knew it he thought a machine gun had 
been turned on him. Out in the frosty 
night he did not realize how badly he was 
wounded, so he marched right in where 
we all sat around the fire! Mother ran 
him outdoors with great speed, and he 
stood outside and told about it through 
the window! As he looked in through the 
glass conflicting emotions were fighting 
for possession of that eager little face— 
the shame of being wounded in such a 
cause and the anticipated price of that 
fur! All I could think of was the play I 
once saw based on Tennyson’s poem, 
“Dora.” Farmer Allen has turned his son 
and the young wife out of his home. Out 
in the cold and storm they look through 
the window at the hard old man. No, I 
did not play the part of Farmer Allen in 
this skunk drama. I laughed until Mother 
looked at me sternly over her glasses, and 
then came as near to bursting into a roar 
of laughter as dignified ladies can. The 
boy left his old clothes outdoors, took a 
bath and went to bed—but memory con¬ 
tinued to appeal to us through the nose 
for a couple of days. In order to enter 
the house with as little odor as possible he 
climbed up a ladder into a vacant room 
and threw his old clothes out the window. 
What farm work arc you doing nqir? 
Why, our new car came earlier than 
we expected, and we had no good place to 
house it. So we have been building a shed 
(to be polite I presume I should say a 
garage). We are making the floor and 
foundations of this as solid as stone and 
concrete can do it. It has meant much 
digging and hauling, but now is nearly 
done—and a good job. I find that a car, 
bought as ours was, long after most of the 
neighbors were supplied, is regarded much 
as a baby coming to people in rather late 
middle life. It absorbs the entire family 
attention. 
Are the apples all sold? 
No, we have perhaps .$200 worth still 
on hand, hut they will all go out before 
Christmas; in fact, are all engaged now. 
It has never paid us to hold our fruit in 
common storage. We do better to get it 
off the farm into the hands or stomachs of 
consumers as soon after picking as po6- 
sible. 
In your story of the blind and deaf man 
in the dark room you say that a pistol 
fired on the outside gave the signal. How 
could the deaf man hear that? 
As I stated, I was not there, and only 
know what was told me. The entire house 
was darkened. There were no lights out¬ 
side the room. In all these old rambling 
mansions the floors sag and warp and 
there are cracks around the doors through 
which light can come. The idea was that 
the sound of the pistol notified the blind 
man, while the flash of light through the 
cracks gave the signal to the deaf man. 
What do you have for Sunday supper? 
A good many women ask this question. 
They think Sunday afternoon should be 
a time of rest for the cooking stove, and I 
agree with them. Our folks like to get up 
a good dinner for late Sunday noon. We 
can all be together then, and we enjoy a 
good meal. For “supper” we have bread 
and milk and cheese, crackers and fruit. 
Now and then my daughter cooks some 
sort of a mixture of milk, eggs and cheese, 
baked in the oven, but as a rule the little 
girls can get up the Sunday supper, and 
they are very proud of their skill. 
So you believe in plain living? 
T do. I presume we all have an am¬ 
bition to do more or less high thinking. 
While I have had little experience, my ob¬ 
servation is that high living leads to pret¬ 
ty low thinking. With our big family, 
plain and simple food has become a neces¬ 
sity. I think necessity has bred the habit 
so strongly in me that if I had my choice 
of baked beans or terrapin, fish balls or 
pate de foie gras. I would without hesi¬ 
tation call for the beans and fish balls. 
But do the children feel that way? 
Evidently not. I suspect that if my 
wife and daughter had the evidence to 
prove that their husband and father was 
a millionaire they would prefer daintier 
protein than they can find in pot cheese 
and similar homely food. Most of the 
children prefer shredded wheat and milk 
to any other food. They all seem to have 
some strain of blood in them which craves 
a little more showy performance at living 
than Mother and I have felt able to sup¬ 
ply. Very likely that is a good thing— 
tied up, as it is, with the family under¬ 
standing that living habits are never to 
get. ahead of income and social life. 
What do you mean by that? 
As I look around I see people living be¬ 
yond their income and straining their 
credit until it cracks in order to keep up 
with the procession. Other people do cer¬ 
tain things, therefore these weak-minded 
folks think they must do the same, when 
plain economy and common sense ought, to 
show them that they cannot keep up. Our 
family has been brought up to admit 
frankly that we are to have just so much 
cloth, and that our garments are to be 
cut from it. 
Do you burn wood or coal? 
Both. I presume we burn about. 20 
cords of wood each year. Two fireplaces 
are kept going through the Winter, and 
considerable wood is used in the kitchen 
stove. The heater requires coal. 
Tf the coal strike shuts off the coal sup¬ 
ply, tell at will you do? 
The best we can. On many farms using 
coal as fuel has become a habit, so that 
there is hardly a wood grate left. We 
have quite a quantity of old apple wood. 
That can be cut into short chunks and 
used under the heater. A plate of steel 
with holes punched through it could he 
put in over the coal grate to hold the 
wood from falling through. It would 
require steady work by some one to keep 
the fire up, but it can be done. 
7 am an old bachelor. 1 hare often 
thought I would like to hare a family, 
especially tiro or three good boys. As I 
look about , however, and see how disap¬ 
pointed most of my friends are in their 
sons, I begin to think I am belter off with¬ 
out the worry and heartache which so 
many parents endure. What do you think 
is the matter with the modern boy? 
Very largely a case of careless or in¬ 
efficient father, and in some few instances 
the same sort of a mother. The modern 
boy is not essentially different in his nat¬ 
ural habits and tendencies from the mil¬ 
lions and millions of boys who have lived 
since “the grand old gardener and his 
wife” set up housekeeping. The modern 
boy is not so bad, but the modern environ¬ 
ment is ruining him. It is the ambition 
of every boy to have parents who are to 
him the finest characters on earth. You 
need never be afraid for any boy who 
can say in his heart, “I could not possibly 
have had finer or more satisfactory pa¬ 
rents.” The modern father is too busy 
trying to make money or a living or to 
gain power, to enable him to understand 
his boy, or become a part of the boy’s life. 
It seems to me that. it. involves a great 
personal sacrifice for any man or woman 
to try to raise a child. You have got to 
give up the best part of your life if you 
ever expect to see the best part of you 
appear in the children. Unhappily the 
boy comes to learn that his father has his 
full share of mean, selfish or even nasty 
habits, and following the line of least re¬ 
sistance the boy is inclined to imitate the 
vices rather than the virtues. I, per-| 
sonally, cannot see how the average boy,i 
without the full confidence and compan¬ 
ionship of his father, can ever get a first- 
class start in the city. One great advan¬ 
tage of country living is that you have 
your boy right with you. and can make 
far more of the home than ever can be 
done in town. Some of the old homely 
virtues seem to have gone out. with the 
coming of the car and the moving picture 
show. Too many fathers seem to think 
they can buy for their children the happi¬ 
ness and character which we old-timers 
know can only come through personal 
sacrifice and work. “Blest be the tie that 
binds” does not refer to any family tied 
together by money, pride and social ambi¬ 
tion. 
Do you find that pigs pay you? 
Yes, up to a certain point. We sold 
about $400 worth of pigs and pork this 
year. There was most profit in selling 
little pigs for someone else to fatten. We 
have a certain amount of waste, such as 
corn nubbins or inferior sweet corn, un¬ 
salable cabbage and apples, and garden 
wastes. Now if we keep enough pigs so 
that this waste stuff, with pasture, will 
supply about half the feed, we can make 
a profit. If we keep too many pigs we 
must buy too much grain and spend too 
much for “overhead” and buildings, and 
there is usually a loss. That, I think, is 
about the story. Sometimes a farmer will 
keep one sow and make some money be¬ 
cause she lived largely on wastes. Then 
he figures that five sows will make five 
times as much. He plunges in—and 
never gets out. Of course, if a man has 
the capital to fit up for 20 sows he may 
make a profit, but most of us will do bet¬ 
ter to figure the business on the amount 
of waste we can be sure of. 
7 know of a woman who threatens to 
strike because she is overworked, and her 
family demands too elaborate cooking and 
food. Do you ever hear of such a thing? 
I have. Years ago there was a farmer 
very much “set” in his habits. He de¬ 
manded two pieces of mince pie every 
morning for breakfast, with doughnuts, 
sausage, buckwheat cakes, and no one 
knows what else. The family supported him 
—all but the sick and overworked mother, 
who had to do all this cooking. Oh, he 
was an eater, and all the time he was 
taking medicine and complaining about a 
great “misery in his stomach.” The wife 
was tired and sick, but he kept her at 
cooking great quantities of rich food. The 
oldest daughter went off to study nursing 
and became engaged to a young doctor. 
Now this girl came home and saw mother 
and father both breaking down because 
of this foolish cooking of mince pies and 
other rich food. Father would not listen 
to her, but she had the old man’s will¬ 
power—only his was cast iron, while hers 
was made into steel by thought and edu¬ 
cation. So she induced poor, tired mother 
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