946 
May 15, 1920 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
The calendar plainly states that this is 
the first of May, but many of us will de¬ 
mand further evidence before we will ac¬ 
cept the verdict. The papers stated last 
night that the “Reds” were planning to 
attack various prominent citizens, and 
they have certainly put Mr. May Day out 
of the running. It is cold and wet, with 
a fierce wind blowing from the north, and 
little puddles of water standing in the 
low places. We have planted some three 
n res of early sweet corn, but that is 
a’’, save a few cabbage plants in the gar- 
d i The land is too wet and soggy to 
w< The hill orchard was plowed some 
dr..> ago, but it is now too w r et even for 
harrowing. A few cherry buds are in 
flower, but the peaches and crab apples 
have not opened. It is well for them 
to be suspicious in times like these. On 
the whole, it is no day for going May¬ 
ing,” and very few farmers feel disposed 
to dance around any Maypole when they 
canno* even set bean poles! 
* * * * * 
Unable to work the soil, our men are 
hauling stone for the concrete floor m 
the garage. "We had about half this floor 
done last Fall, when Winter suddenly 
shut us off. Now it must be a wet-day 
job The floor is dug out about 18 inches 
deep, and this is filled nearly to the top 
with field stones. There is one stony 
field at the. foot of the farm, and the men 
drive through with a wagon, picking up 
a load. These stones are packed in. then 
a layer of coal ashes and cinders is put 
on and rammed down hard, with a layei 
of concrete to cover all. That makes a 
solid and well-drained job, and the loads 
of stone come rolling in from the field. 
We shall have at least one institution 
which may be said to be founded on a 
rock The women have taken May Day 
as a suitable time for cleaning house, and 
tliev have the children employed—all but 
two. One of the girls is just recovering 
from the mumps, and she can only look 
out of the window and watch the crowd. 
Little Rose is in bed with a boil of a size 
utterly out of proportion to her small 
bodv. The one. she sports would do jus¬ 
tice to a 200-pound man. and surely make 
him “boil over” in spirit. But this pa¬ 
tient little patient, when the pain gets 
bad. only sings, “Pack up your troubles 
in your ‘old kit bag.” The finest orator 
of any May Day celebration will never 
equal'the patriotic advice in that song, 
and as I hoe away at my own disagree¬ 
able job I remember that we shall cut 
our first asparagus tomorrow, and that 
this high wind is just what we need to 
scatter the pollen so as to insure the 
cherry crop. ^ * * * 
It is true that I have taken the mean¬ 
est. job on the farm. I am trying to 
clean up that block of Marshall straw¬ 
berries out back of the house. J hose 
were planted last Spring, two feet apart 
each way, with Early Bantam corn in 
every other row. We kept them clean 
up to the middle of August, and then 
came apple and corn picking with a i ush. 
The weeds and grass got in, but did not 
seem dangerous. At any rate, every 
ounce of energy was needed to get the 
apples off. Then when we built the 
garage there seemed only one place foi 
ft—right in the heart of that, strawberry 
patch. Then came the hard Winter, and 
in January a little pond formed over these 
plants. It froze solid and remained there 
for six weeks or more. I hardly expected 
to find a plant left alive, yet those Mar¬ 
shalls were put in to stay, and about 75 
per cent of them came out from under the 
ice with a smile. The runners which we 
expected to use for planting are about 
cleaned up. but the parent plants came 
through. But as soon as the earth 
warmed up a little a perfect army of 
weeds and grass appeared. I know not 
where they all came from, but (he patch 
is a mass of quack grass, dock, dandelion, 
pepper grass and all the other pests of 
Spring. Now I know from sad experi¬ 
ence what will happen if this mass is left 
alone. Bv the middle of June the quack 
and the dock will be knee high or higher, 
and there will be only a few soft, light- 
colored berries, with the flavor washed all 
out of them. There is only one thing to 
do—that is. to fight the enemy and clean 
him out. I am the only volunteer for the 
job, and here I am. 
* * * * * 
I have a long-handled hoe. built for 
just such a job as this. One side of it 
is about two inches wide, while the other 
side is more the shape of a big jack knife. 
An ordinary hoe would rip out too many 
of the little plants. This narrow blade 
enables me to work up close to a plant 
without disturbing it. Much of the quack 
has worked up close around the plants, 
and must be taken out carefully. I drive 
this narrow blade deep into the ground 
and rip the big clumps of quack out by 
the roots. When we come to the dock I 
can turn the hoe around and slice off the 
root below the crown. Scattered along 
the row I have a number of old apple 
hampers. The weeds are thrown into 
them as fast as they are pulled. Later 
these hampers will be put on the wagon 
and hauled to the hill and dumped around 
apple trees for mulching. We have di¬ 
vided the hill orchard into two parts. 
One has been plowed and will be culti¬ 
vated several times up to July. The other 
part will not. be plowed, but left to grow 
to grass and weeds. These will be cut 
and piled around the trees, and all weeds, 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
waste or manure that we can find will 
be hauled in and scattered under the 
branches. I regard quack grass, dock and 
the rest of these pests as aliens in the 
berry patch, and there is only one thing 
to do—deport them at once. So to re¬ 
peat what we have said before, the sucker 
in the strawberry field may succor the or¬ 
chard. But are you not afraid of starting 
these weeds in the orchard? No, for they 
will do no harm there. When plowed un¬ 
der the weeds furnish organic matter as 
well as the cultivated plants do, and they 
surely make good mulch material. Of 
course, I realize that you may call weeds 
the bacteria of disorder, but organize dis¬ 
order and put if at work and you have an 
army of energetic helpers. 
* * sjc ❖ * 
But there is no fun about this job, and 
I must confess that the children dodge it. 
They suddenly acquired new interest in a 
neighbor when it was reported that he 
had become rich ; but when I tell them 
that dried quack grass roots are worth 
$300 a ton their interest is not increased. 
I think they have enough of mathematics 
to realize how long it would take to ac¬ 
cumulate a ton ! So they prefer beating 
carpets, cleaning up rubbish, or doing odd 
jobs for the women folks. I think as I 
dig my narrow hoe into the quack grass 
roots that in this little incident we have 
a “toy performance” of a much larger 
industrial change which is troubling agri¬ 
culture. These children working near the 
house will get an occasional doughnut or 
slice of bread, and the women are often 
willing to talk. Or, if the work is behind 
the barn, you may have a baseball in your 
pocket. In this berry patch there can be 
no doughnuts or baseballs or gossip. 
Work here is one dull round of digging 
out these beastly weeds and piling them 
in baskets. There is no immediate show¬ 
ing as a result of it. Two weeks hence 
it. will probably be necessary to do most 
of it all over again, for I can see millions 
of baby redweeds starting in. All you 
can really promise is that if you stay with 
it and the frost does not. kill the bloom 
and the weevils let them alone, you will 
get a crop in June. My children seem to 
regard that very much as many workmen 
and young people are looking at farm la¬ 
bor. There is more life, more “society,” 
more leisure hours and more cash in a 
town job. It is about like my children 
preferring to work around the house 
rather than to get out here and pull weeds 
at this monotonous job. And very natur¬ 
ally we ask, who is to do our farm work 
in the future? Who is to toil and grulb 
at the weeds out of faith that strawberries 
will appear in June? When I was a boy 
I did this kind of work, whether I wanted 
to or not. The “driving impulse” was 
the end of a stick! Perhaps that fixed 
the habit so that I like to do it now. But 
who that you know of can bring up chil¬ 
dren in these days as we were “raised” 
GO years ago? 
* * * * * 
But here comes a group of helpers who 
will never lose their habits of farm in- 
dustrv. First comes the gander, and be¬ 
hind him a dozen Red hens. This gander 
is what we may call a grass widower, 
and he proceeds to prove it by tearing 
up a bunch of quack grass. His wife, 
the gray goose, is sitting on a nestful of 
eggs in the barn. She laid 21 eggs and kept 
in good humor until one morning the chil¬ 
dren found her in the barn hissing like 
the steam escaping from a broken pipe. 
The gander was wise enough to keep 
away, evidently remembering the proverb 
of the scolding woman and the wide house. 
And now the goose is slowly turning 13 of 
those eggs into goslings, while a big Red 
lien has the other eight. People seem to 
want exact figures on poultry-keeping. 
Here is my contribution : Last year I paid 
$30 for this pair of geese. They are fine 
specimens of the breed. The goose laid 
three eggs. Two goslinsrs were hatched 
and both were finally killed by a weasel. 
Now we have 21 prospective goslings, and 
that is all the income. I cannot give cost 
of keeping, as the geese pick up most of 
their living in Summer, and we have never 
fed them separately. Nothing like having 
the exact facts. I know. but. we still stay 
by the geese. That gander today will kill 
more grass than one of my children would 
if you left both gander and girl alone. 
Anil those Red hens! They are beauties. 
You remember how two weeks ago I lec¬ 
tured my pullets at the egg-laying contest 
because they flaunted about in their gay 
clothing instead of laying eggs? Well, 
sir, the very next report we had showed 
that those beauties took my lecture to 
heart and laid 88 eggs for the week— 
second among the Reds! I wish my 
young folks would take “remarks” in that 
way. Still, I have always felt that those 
pullets had the blood in them, and that 
the blood would bring the eggs in time. 
There are only 17 of my 20 left. One 
just faded away—the others died on the 
field of honor; that is, they were found 
dead in the nest. We are not expected to 
substitute this year, so my pen must 
finish with 17 birds. But the gander and 
the Reds are efficient weeders! 
***** 
If there were any sun I could tell what 
time it is. Must be close to dinnertime. 
There is mother with her head out of 
the window. I tell her that if she will 
come out and pull a dozen weeds I will 
donate my entire labor so that when the 
big berries are admired in June she may 
say, “We kept these clean !” That is no 
inducement, evidently. But she does have 
her say. 
“You are very foolish to wear that 
thick sweater on a day like this! Don’t 
you know that if you really work you 
NEP0N5ET ROOFS 
Good Old Paroid 
**Good old Paroid”—That’s what farmers call the best roll 
roofing ever made. 
For more than 20 years Neponset Paroid has protected 
cattle, poultry, stock, tools, equipment, crops, and homes 
from the attacks of rain and sleet, sun and snow—at the low¬ 
est service cost per square foot per year. 
One farmer writes, “Neponset Paroid is the greatest roofing 
investment I ever made. Ten years ago 1 decided that to 
keep my prize stock warm and healthy I needed on the roof 
and siding of my barn the best roofing that money could buy. 
I bought good old Paroid. It’s still good old Paroid—it 
hasn’t cost me a penny for repairs and it still looks good for 
another ten years.” 
Three Colors—Red, Green, Gray 
Paroid slate-surfaced come9 in 
two colors—natural slate-red and 
slate-green. It is the most beau¬ 
tiful slate-surfaced roll roofing 
made. Just what you need for 
your house or barn—right over 
old wooden shingles. Paroid gray 
comes in two weights. Build and 
repair NOW. You owe it to 
yourself to use Paroid. There's 
a Neponset Roofing for every 
need and every purse. If you 
do not know who is your nearest 
dealer in Neponset Roofs write 
to us. Send for full informa¬ 
tion. 
BIRD & SON, incorporated (Established 1795) East Walpole, Mass 
at a Saving 
Save all the ex¬ 
pense and the 
labor of cutting 
up your walls and 
partitions for pipes. 
Install the famous 
Richardson One Pipe 
Heater, which burns 
any fuel available. 
And because there 13 
no waste heat, it is 
the most economical 
and efficient heating 
system used. 
Permit us to send you 
Booklet U describing the 
RICHARDSON ONE PIPE HEATER 
Keeps the cellar cool for vegetables — warms every room above 
RICHARDSON & BOYNTON CO. 
Established 1837 
258-260 FIFTH AVE.. NEW YORK 
Boston Chicago Philadelphia Providence Rochester 
in Every Room 
Notice the direction 
of the heat in the ac¬ 
companying picture. 
All the cold air in the 
house is drawn into 
the single register and 
the one pipe heater, 
where it is warmed 
and sent into every 
room. Know that true 
comfort and the kind 
of warm th which 
Richardson & Boynton 
Company has made 
famous because of its 
efficiency and econ¬ 
omy. 
COUPON 
Dear Sir: Please send us full 
particulars of your Richardson 
6c Boynton One Pipe Heater 
for house of- rooms. 
Name_—--——- 
Address - — 
