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AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
fJ uly, 
Do Farmers Eat Enough? 
Farmers work hard. Many of them work harder 
than their horses. A hired man will seldom do it, 
but a farmer that drives his own team will take 
occasion to get out a stone, or put a few rails in 
place that have been blown from the fence, or re¬ 
move an old stump, or do some one of the score of 
odd jobs that are always staring him in the face, 
while his horses are taking a breathing spell. At 
noon the horses get two hours’ rest; but the farm¬ 
er finds something that calls for his attention. 
And in the evening, though tired by the labors of 
the day, there arc sundry chores that must be done 
before he can rest for the night. With morning he 
is up bright and early, and sees that his horses 
and other stock are well fed and carefully attended 
to. But is he in no danger of neglecting himself? 
If he does nothing but work, and has good diges¬ 
tion, he doubtless gets enough to eat. But a farmer 
has to think as well as work. He must use his 
brain as well aS his muscles. Nor is this all; the 
daily cares and anxieties tax his constitution. The 
work, whether mental or physical, will not hurt 
him, and he can stand the cares and anxieties—in 
fact, he who is free from them will not make much 
of a man. But he must look to his stomach. 
One of our country neighbors, a hardy old farm¬ 
er, came home from the city one cold afternoon 
and fainted as soon as he got into the house. Why ? 
“ It wasn’t a very cold day,” he said, “ and I don’t 
understand it. But the moment I got into the 
house I knew I was a goner.” “Perhaps you had 
taken a drop too much,” we remarked jokingly, for 
our neighbor is strictly abstemious. “I hadn’t 
tasted bit or drop since I left home. You see I was 
busy running round—the women want such lots of 
little contraptions—and thought I wouldn’t stop to 
get dinner.” And so he rode home on an empty 
stomach. As well expect a stove to warm a room 
without fuel as expect a man to keep warm with¬ 
out food. 
The truth is, a farmer nowadays wants the best of 
food. A professional man tells us he cannot live 
on the kind of food on which his driver fares 
sumptuously. But a farmer that is adapting him¬ 
self to the new order of things is a professional 
man and a driver too, and if any man in the world 
needs good food it is the modern American farmer. 
Does he get it? As a general rule, we think not. 
A short time ago a number of farmers were clean¬ 
ing out a creek in our neighborhood, and one of 
them hospitably asked the writer to share his din¬ 
ner with him. He was a hard-working, intelligent, 
well-to-do farmer. The dinner he had brought 
with him to the woods consisted of apple pie, 
bread and butter, and cookies. There is not much 
brain and muscle in such a dinner, and the quid of 
tobacco for dessert could not supply the deficiency. 
Now, why should farmers, of all men, have the 
poorest description of food and the poorest of all 
cooking? Half the labor the good wife spends in 
making the apple pie, cookies, doughnuts, and 
sweetmeats, would furnish a meat soup fit for a 
king! Sheep have been slaughtered by the thou¬ 
sand and the soup given to the pigs. Can’t a farm¬ 
er afford to have good mutton soup? We have 
sheep from which the butcher has been picking out 
the best at §3 apiece. The pelts are worth $1.25. 
Kill one of these sheep every week. Say it costs 
you $2. The legs and the shoulders may be roasted 
and eaten, and are certainly as healthful as pork. 
The rest, cut up for soup. Do not ask the women 
to do it. It is a man’s work. Cut it up yourself. 
Save the legs and shoulders, and also a chop or 
two for breakfast, if desired. Cut up all the other 
parts of the sheep into mince-meat, bones and all. 
The finer it is chopped the better. Then put five 
or six lbs. of this mince-meat into cold water. Let 
it soak all night. Then let it be brought nearly to 
the boiling point, in the same water it has soaked in, 
and keep it cooking on the stove for several hours 
till all the “goodness” is extracted from the meat. 
This makes what the cooks call “stock.” We have 
not traced the process further. “ Too many cooks 
spoil the broth,” and at this stage of the affair 
the man may safely leave it in the hands of his 
better half. If she has some black tSrtle beans, or, 
better still, some Spanish red beans, she will make 
a soup that is, in the language of an eminent physi¬ 
cian, “ positively transcendent!” But beans dr no 
beans, with such a “ stock” it is hardly possible to 
make anything that is not highly palatable and nu¬ 
tritious. Kecollect we are a man, and it is just 
possible that there are sundry little bits of flavor¬ 
ing matter that should be added to the soup that 
we know nothing about, such as carrots, celery, on¬ 
ions, parsley, and tomatoes. The latter, we can 
testify, greatly improve the flavor of the soup; 
and they arc so easily preserved that no one need 
be without them at any season of the year. Bean 
soup made as follows, from the mutton stock above 
described, is excellent: 
After the meat is well boiled, so that all the 
juices are extracted, turn off the liquor into a large 
pan or earthen dish, and when it is entirely cold 
take off all the fat. When you wish to use it for 
soup, if it is too strong add boiling water. Season 
with pepper and salt; and then add the beans. The 
beans should be soaked over night in the water in 
which they are to be boiled. They require full four 
hours’ boiling, and water must be added as it 
boils away, or they will burn and become hard. 
Mash them in the pot as thoroughly as possible, and 
then pour the meat soup on them. Flavor with 
celery, herbs, onion, etc., but above all let it be 
salted enough. Let the soup boil from half an hour 
to an hour, according to the quantity and how well 
the stock and the beans have beeu cooked before. 
Preserving Fruit in Bottles. 
An esteemed correspondent, who has tried various 
plans, sends us the following as the one found to 
he attended with the best success. This, of course, 
is intended for ordinary bottles with corks. Where 
some of the many patent jars are used, the sealing 
process is unnecessary: “ Put the fruit in bottles, 
and add one-eighth of its weight of sugar. Place 
the bottles, completely filled, in a boiler with a 
board or other material in the bottom, to prevent 
the heat breaking them. Fill the boiler with cold 
water nearly to the top of the bottles, and heat it 
to boiling. Dip the corks in melted sealing wax 
and drive them into the bottles. Tie the corks 
down with wire or twine, and then seal the corked 
bottles by turning the necks down twice into the 
melted sealing wax. When sealed, place them 
again in the boiler, and boil a short time. Put 
them in a cool place until wanted for use. The 
necks of the bottles must be heated in water before 
the corks can be drawn. The first boiling expands 
and expels most of the air from the bottle, coagu¬ 
lates the albuminous part of the fruit, and retards its 
fermenting tendencies. The second boiling, after 
the bottles have been corked and sealed, renders 
the free oxygen contained in the small quantity of 
inclosed air inert; the oxygen unites under the in¬ 
fluence of heat with the organic matter, it is wholly 
converted into carbonic acid, and cannot act further 
in causing decomposition. To make the wax to seal 
the bottles, melt together one pound of resin, four 
ounces of beeswax, and three ounces of tallow.” 
Bottled Fruits Again. 
“Mrs. H. C. L.” writes: “I have heard many 
say strawberries could not be canned, ‘ they lost 
their flavor, cooked to pieces, lost their color,’ &c. 
I have canned the Wilson for three years very suc¬ 
cessfully in the following manner. They kept their 
form very well, and nearly all their flavor. To 3 
lbs. of carefully stemmed berries, put 1 lb. of sugar; 
lay them in a bright tin pan in alternate layers, let 
them remain 6 or 8 hours, then pour the juice off 
into a preserving kettle, and boil rapidly about 20 
minutes. Put the berries in, and cook slowly 10 
minutes, then bottle and seal them. For ripe cur¬ 
rants, 3 lbs. of stemmed currants tol lb. of sugar; 
put them all together in the kettle and boil until 
the juice is pretty well out—say 10 minutes ; then lift 
the fruit out, and let the juice boil 15 or 20 minutes, 
then drop in the currants and let them remain only 
long enough to heat them through, and seal. After 
cooking currants in different ways, I find this the 
best, as the skin does not become tough, and they 
float in a thin, jelly-like juice that is delicious.” 
--— < —a --- -- 
Sunday Morning Breakfast. 
That brown loaf smoking from the oven, and 
those codfish balls nicely browned amid slices of 
pig pork, are savory memories that most Yankee 
hoys carry away with them from New England. 
Unless they marry Yankee girls they are apt to 
miss these Sunday morning institutions in their 
new homes. We have never found anything quite 
equal to them, and for the sake of the multitude 
of wanderers from the dear old homestead, we give 
some recipes from grandmother’s cook book. 
Brown Bread.- Scald 2 quarts of Indian 
meal, and when cool, add 1 quart of rye meal. 
Pour in warm water enough to make a thick batter. 
Then add a X pint of molasses and a little salt, and 
one teacup of yeast. Butter an iron pan or kettle, 
pour in the batter, and let it stand until it rises 
enough to bake. Bake from six to eight hours, 
in a brick oven. Put it in at any time when it is 
ready, Saturday P. M., and let it stand until break¬ 
fast the next morning. There is a very wide differ¬ 
ence of opinion as to which is the best kind of 
meal, white or yellow. Grandmother always used 
the yellow meal, and could not abide the white. 
CoulflsSi Balls. —Peel the potatoes the night 
before you wish to make the balls, and put them in 
clean water. Put the codfish also in water to soak. 
In the morning boil both, and after picking up the 
codfish very fine and mashing the potatoes, mix 
about two-thirds of potato with one-third of fish, 
and fry the balls with thin slices of nice pork just 
taken from the brine. The making of the balls 
from fresh cooked potatoes and fish adds very much 
to their excellence. When warmed up they are 
called codfish balls, but are quite another article. 
Baked Beans. —Take a quart of Marrow¬ 
fat or White Kidney beans. After washing the 
beans, soak them 24 hours. Parboil them until quite 
tender; then put in a pan with a pound of fat pork 
and bake very slowly several hours, or all night. 
Philadelphia County Yeast, by Mrs. 
S. Grate 12 large potatoes, and boil in three pints of 
water. Boil a handful of hops in two pints of water, and 
strain ; then wash the hops with one pint of hot water, and 
strain. Then mix the boiled potatoes and hop water to¬ 
gether, and stir in one good-sized teacupful of salt, and 
one of brown sugar, and let them cool. Then take of this 
mixture one pint, and add one pint yeast to it, and let it 
rise; then pour all together and keep moderately warm to 
rise. Keep it in a cool place for use. It will keep 3 or 
4 weeks. Always keep some of this to make fresh 
yeast, but other yeast will do, if you have none of this. 
ESop Yeast. —By Jane E. Duffle. Into 3 quarts 
of boiling water put 1 pint of hops tied up in a muslin bag. 
Add one tablespoonful of salt and boil 14 hour. Then 
in another vessel, stir a pint of flour into a smooth paste 
with cold water. Take out the bag of hops and stir the 
paste into the hop water, which is still over the fire. Let 
it come to a boil, stirring all the while. When nearly 
cold, add a pint of old yeast. After 21 hours it is ready for 
use. A teacupful of yeast is enough for a loaf of bread. 
Tea, j^Iwflins. — {Mrs. M. C. contributes this 
and the following recipe :) 1 cup of milk, butter size of an 
egg, 1 tablespoonful of sugar, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoonful cream 
of tartar stirred in the flour, y x teaspoonful soda in a table¬ 
spoonful of hot water, and about 1 pint of flour, or 
enough to make a batter stiffer than usual for cake. 
Drop it into well-greased muffin pans or rings, and bake 
in a hot oven fifteen minutes. First mix the butter, 
sugar, and eggs together; then add the milk, then flour, 
and the soda last. 
BrattleBox-o — 1 cup of milk 
(or water), 1 cup of molasses, 1 teaspoonful of soda, 1 
teaspoonful of salt, 1 lb. of raisins, flour to make a stiff 
batter, )4 cup mixed spices. Boil 4 hours. Leave suffi¬ 
cient room in the bag or mold to allow for swelling, as it 
will be of double the size when boiled, if allowed room 
to expand. By adding more fruit (such as currants and 
citron), it makes a most excellent plum pudding. 
