work of making manure for next year’s crops grow continuously. It is 
lamentable to see how careless many farmers are in this respect, and then 
at crop planting time have to run off to the fertilizer merchant and spend 
the little money they have saved, or mortgage their unplanted crop, to 
pay for the fertilizer, which ought to have been made at home, and might 
have been for the mere labor of providing the stock with material to 
make it for them. If short of straw, gather leaves into the pens and 
store away for future use all you can take care of. 
It is too late to seed any crops except rye, which may be sown all 
through the month. Rye is useful as a spring pasture, and for preventing 
washing of the land and to provide humins, making material for succeed¬ 
ing crops. It is worth seeding for these purposes, even when not de¬ 
sired as a grain crop. Sow from one to two bushels to the acre. 
Renovate and improve the old grass pasture that is beginning to fail 
by giving a dressing of lime, say 50 to 100 bushels per acre, and then 
running over it with a sharp-toothed harrow. Then follow with light 
seeding of a mixture of the best pasture grasses, and top dress with 
farmyard manure, or 300 pounds bone dust and 300 pounds kainit. Early 
in the spring run over the field with a brush harrow, rake off all loose 
trash and roll with a heavy roller. 
Make good roads and pathways from the house to the farm buildings 
and pens, and don’t have to walk through the mud all winter in order 
to care properly for the stock. 
WORK FOR DECEMBER. 
Have all implements and tools carefully housed and cleaned up during 
bad weather. The slaughtering of hogs should receive attention as soon 
as the weather will permit. One of the prime requisites for securing a 
good curing is seeing that the natural heat is out of the carcass before 
salting. Let the meat hang on the gambrel long enough to thoroughly 
chill it all through before cutting up, but do not allow it to become 
frozen. Rub the salt well into the skin side of the meat; then lay on the 
table on a bed of salt and cover each piece well with salt. A little salt¬ 
peter sprinkled on the meat will make it a better color when cured. Allow 
the meat to stay in the salt a month, keeping it well covered with salt 
all the time; then hang up to dry, and smoke if desired. With an abund¬ 
ance of good wood in the shed and forage in the barn, time may be taken 
to figure up the profit and loss of the year’s work. The farmer need 
never fear of going out of business so long as people continue to be born 
into this world “naked and hungry.” He must feed and clothe them, and 
never, until the farmer fully utilizes the whole of what he grows at a 
great cost of labor and fertilizer, w’ill he have any right to say that 
“farming doesn’t pay.” The whole profit which manufacturers of many 
large lines of goods make is made out of the careful utilization of the 
waste products which arise in the ordinary course of their business. 
Armour & Co., of Chicago, could not in many seasons make a profit 
on their meat trade if they did not carefully utilize every scrap of the 
animals slaughtered. It has, indeed, been said, and with truth, that they 
convert into a salable article everything except the squeal of the hog, and 
even this they can now save in the phonograph, but they have not yet 
found a market for it. 
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