634 
<Ibt RURAL NEW-YORKER 
March 27, 1920 
Ready to Use! 
Spraying fruit trees, truck, garden or 
field crops is absolutely necessary if the 
bugs or fungus diseases are not to eat 
up your profit or ruin your crop. 
In your spraying material you want ef¬ 
fectiveness without waste—of time or 
materials. You must have uniform 
spraying to kill insects without injuring 
the crop. 
HEXPO is always ready to use. It re¬ 
quires no preliminary rubbing or reducing 
to paste form. Blow it on dry or drop 
the proper amount in water and spray. 
HEXPO 
DRV POWDERED 
INSECTICIDE & FUNGICIDE 
HEXPO is a finely divided, fluffy powder that 
never hardens or deteriorates. It mixes readily 
with water and easily stays in suspension in the 
sprayer, thus insuring even spraying over the 
whole field. 
It is a scientifically correct combination of Bor¬ 
deaux and Arsenate of Lead. It therefore kills 
bugs and worms and controls blight or fungus. 
HEXPO is economical, too! It goes three 
times as far as inconvenient pastes. None to 
waste or harden into rock. 
Ask your dealer for HEXPO in pound, 5-lb. 
and 10-lb. cartons or in 25, 50, 100 and 
200-lb. drums. 
If your dealer is out of HEXPO , writejus for 
literature and prices. 
H. J. Smith & Co. 
Utica, N. Y. 
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V 
Pastoral Parson and His Country Folks 
(Continued from page 632) 
sort of steal time for those tinkering, 
puttering jobs, as we used to sort of steal 
it 1 to fix the ripper or make a set of skis 
from barrel staves. Of these jobs, none 
suits the Parson better nor pays better for 
the time spent than fixing up the har¬ 
nesses. 
I low It Is Done. —Iu the first place 
take the harness apart. You cannot do 
any kind of a job unless you do. Then 
give it a good wash in warm vater,' using 
plenty of soap. When it is dry, it is 
ready for oiling. It is best to buy a 
whole gallon of harness oil. if you can, as 
you get so much more for your money, 
and it will keep till used. There will be 
some red places in the harness where it 
has gotten wet and the black has come 
off. This is especially true of the hold¬ 
back straps, where they wear against the 
traces. Have one saucer with some har¬ 
ness oil and some painter’s lampblack 
mixed together. With a dauber rub the 
red parts with this and you may be sure 
they will turn black and stay black for 
a iong time. A regular harness man 
would probably drop dead at hearing of 
this treatment, but it does the business 
just the same. You can apply the har¬ 
ness oil with a soft cloth, working it in 
till the leather is soft and pliable. 
Mending the Breaks. —It is nothing 
but fun to mend up harnesses, and any¬ 
one can do it and save a lot. Tugs are 
apt to break, and they are hard to mend 
on heavy harnesses. Copper rivets are 
apt to be too short here. In the “5-and- 
30” iu town there has lately appeared 
some little machine bolts about an inch 
long, and the wire no bigger than the 
rivet wire. These are the handiest 
things about a harness. Make a hole for 
this with a regular bit and a bitstock. 
Put on a washer and you have got it 
where you want it. If you haven’t a bolt 
cutter, file the bolt on two sides near the 
nut and then break it off, or you can cut 
it off with a cold chisel. Then head it 
down just a bit so the nut will not work 
off. AVhen using rivets and burrs, be 
sure and buy yourself a rivet setter. It 
will cost but little and is certainly handy. 
Sewing the Harness. —But where 
you can you will want to do some sewing. 
Sewing for the most part is so much 
better and looks so much better. The 
great bother here used to be in making 
what is called a “waxed end.’ But now 
you can buy a heavy waxed thread, very 
strong, at the hardware stores. This has 
been a real boon. Go to the harness store 
and buy two or three harness needles— 
the largest-eyed needles they carry. Then 
with a harness awl you an all right to go 
ahead. If you have nothing better to 
hold the leather, put. it in the iron vise 
on the work bench. Have two needles 
threaded, tucking both of them through 
each hole you make—one from each side. 
You will be surprised to see what a good 
job you can do. If you cannot buy the 
little bolts mentioned above, you can get 
stove bolts and use those. 
On Hand. —Those assortments of bolts 
and washers you can buy are certainly 
handy on a farm. The Parson would 
never be without them. When it comes 
to bolts, he always uses machine bolts if 
possible. Then when you want to "take 
it out you can take hold of both ends. 
How mad these carriage bolts make you 
—always turning round when you want 
to get them out. Always know where 
the cold chisel is, so that you can cut off 
their miserable heads on short notice, and 
be sure and put machine bolts in their 
place. These brace irons that come from 
discarded telephone poles make find mend¬ 
ing irons. A blacksmith will let you drill 
holes in them while he is shoeing your 
horse. 
Get Started. —And now don’t get an¬ 
gry with the Parson if he gives a bit of 
timely advice to the back-to-the-landers. 
Why do you so often wait and wait be¬ 
fore’ drawing out the manure. Get it out 
now. If there is some frost in it, pick 
it up with a pickax. But get it out on 
the land. If the land is flat, spread it 
right on, if not, put it in big piles—not 
in little heaps. The manure ought to 
be all out before the snow is off the 
ground. Don’t forever lay poor crops to 
the Almighty and His weather when the 
whole trouble lay iu your not getting 
started in the Spring. 
Sunday Schooi, Activities. — The 
boys you see in the picture have just 
come up from around the furnace in the 
cellar, where they had their Sunday 
school class. The “barrel” of ginger 
snaps were a part of the restoratives 
used. Last Sunday we had a stereopti- 
con down in the basement. He had used 
it the night before in the church for quite 
a large gathering. But boys love to run 
and examine machinery and handle it. 
They brought the lantern down into the 
cellar, set it up and put in the pictui’es 
and did the talking themselves. Such a 
good time as we had! It is simply won¬ 
derful how they can remember things that 
they have seen in pictures. What a 
shame the church is so behind in using 
moving pictures. They ought to have 
been the first to have taken up the movies 
instead of the last. We have been having 
the parables, each illustrated with eight 
or 10 slides. Then we had such a good 
time going over the story of Joseph. 
Saturday night we have the story of 
Esther and Ruth. The boys and the 
Parson will go over these again in the 
cellar the next day, while the big kettle 
of cocoa is sizzling in the furnace. We 
have long forks now to toast the bread 
on the coals. We expect the County 
Club leader to visit us shortly as we 
stand around drinking our cocoa and tell 
us about poultry club work. All the boys 
keep hens but one, and he is going to 
get some. 
Tools on the Farm. —The Parson 
hears of so many men that have such 
trouble with their boys using their tools 
and often spoiling them. It does take a 
long time for a child to learn to put 
things back where they belong, and also 
to use them as they should. If a man is 
very fussy about his tools and has nice 
ones, it would pay to have some cheaper 
ones for the boys to use. Somthnes you 
can pick up tools at an auction that would 
be just the things for the boys to make 
rippers and jumpers an! skis with. I 
should certainly hate to have to keep tools 
locked away from the boys. The Parson 
never did yet. One of our parishioners 
works in a bit factory, so the Parson 
takes the bits all down to him about once 
in so often and In; tiles them up so they 
cut like new. He gives us little files that 
have been used for this purpose, and with 
them we can touch up the bits so that it 
makes a wonderful difference. The Par¬ 
son cannot file a saw, but he ought to 
know how. Think of the time he spent 
studying Hebrew, which never did him 
one atom of good—and cannot file a saw! 
He can touch up the circular wood saw 
and the crosscut saw, but there his train¬ 
ing ceases. 
String Time. —Spring time is certainly 
here, for the Parson has to have pay day 
every night. George gets 5c a dozen for 
the hens’ eggs he bring in. Clossie gets 
5e apiece for each goose egg, and Sit gets 
5c for every two duck eggs. I heard 
George convincing her that 5c an egg was 
too much. She got her first egg today. 
Clossie has come in to say that Old Jerry 
just grabbed him by the leg and “hurt 
something fierce,” whereupon the Parson 
has ordered that all sleds, jumpers, rip¬ 
pers, fliers, skis, snowshoes and odd bar¬ 
rel staves shall be put upon the scaffold 
tomorrow after school—for Spring has 
surely come. 
An Appeal for a School 
Many farmers are leaving the farms or 
lessening their areas of production for 
lack of labor. Less food is promised for 
the coming year. At this juncture 250 
pair of willing hands down in the black 
belt of Alabama are waiting for a chance 
to produce. They have a 25-acre farm 
and six school buildings. Their chief as¬ 
set is a noble and devoted head of the 
school, who limits his income to $000 a 
year for his family, though he could earn 
much more elsewhere, in order that he 
may teach this community good citizen¬ 
ship and farming. Yet the State con¬ 
tributes only about 33c per capita a year 
for the whole school. 
Naturally, most of the $5,000 a year 
needed for running expenses must come 
from more prosperous communities. We 
have had many drives for great institu¬ 
tions. I am starting a little drive for 
this modest school. I ask for the price 
of a good fur coat or second-hand Ford 
to transmute into farm implements, which 
are sorely needed. We want $25 for 
seed, about $S7 for a farm wagon and 
$320 for implements—plows, corn sheller, 
fertilizer distributor, spring-tooth harrow, 
axes, rakes, etc. I once wrote an appeal 
for this school, entitled “Wanted—a 
Roof.” I got the money to put a roof 
on one of these school buildings. Will 
not some one who can visualize the need 
and who can spare a Liberty bond help 
turn this waiting energy into carrots, 
corn and cotton, and aid this energetic 
little school, which, during the war. like 
devastated Europe, has had to wait to 
get restocked and make repairs? Let us 
give it a lift and have the fun of doing 
our patriotic bit toward lessening social 
unrest and building up American citizen¬ 
ship. Contributions may be sent directly 
to Mr. Emmanuel Brown, Street School, 
Richmond, Ala., or to me for transmis¬ 
sion. ( MRS.) LUCIA AMES MEAD. 
Boston. Mass. 
Care of Breeding Canaries 
Could you give me some information 
about rearing canary birds? T find after 
mating the nest is overrun with lice. I 
put insect powder on before putting nest 
in cage. Can I give half the young ones 
to the male, leaving the others with the 
female, as it is not possible to leave them 
together, and five young seems a lot for 
the female to feed alone? J. E. 
What kind of nests do you use? The 
rush or willow nests that dealers sell 
are apt to harbor vermin. Earthenware 
nest pans are best, because they can 
easily he cleansed at the end of each sea¬ 
son. The covering or lining used can 
then be thrown away. The best treat¬ 
ment for lice is to blow insect powder 
into the bird’s feathers two or three times 
at intervals of a week, to be sure that 
any young hatching in the meantime will 
be killed. . , 
I have never heard of putting part or 
the young with the male. I should think 
it would depend a good deal on how good 
a father your male bird was. You could 
try it, if you thought wise, and watch 
him closely. Or you could put the young 
birds into a small nursery cage beside 
the large breeding cage and let the male 
and female feed the young birds between 
the wires. Of course young birds cannot 
l>o put with birds older and stronger than 
they are, and young males will scrap 
constantly if left together toolong. Write 
to the Department of Agriculture toi 
Farmers’ Bulletin No. 770 on canaries. 
EDNA S. KNATT. 
