I  18 
Iht  RURAL  NEW-YORKER 
January  27,  1P2J 
HOPE  FARM  NOTES 
The  daily  papers  tell  of  a  remarkable 
performance  of  certain  wild  geese  at  Cape 
May,  N.  J.  Great  flocks  of  these  geese 
were  seen  flying  North,  so  low  that  they 
barely  topped  the  church  steeples.  This 
was  accepted  by  the  “natives”  as  certain 
evidence  of  a  very  mild  Winter,  on  the 
theory  that  wild  geese  and  other  migra¬ 
tory  birds  know  by  some  sort  of  instinct 
when  'Winter  is  expected  to  pass  out . 
.Those  who  believe  in  “signs”  may  think 
as  they  please  about  it.  but  as  I  look  out 
of  the  window  today  it  seems  evident  to 
me  that  those  wild  geese  are  very  wild  in 
their  guess.  The  signals  are  mixed  in  some 
way.  We  are  having  a  fierce  Winter, 
with  more  snow  and  high  wind  than 
usual.  Our  own  geese  do  not  seem  to 
mind  it.  They  will  squat  right  down  in 
the  snow  and  rest  in  apparent  comfort. 
These  wild  geese  at  Cape  May  had  per¬ 
haps  lost  their  leader  and  were  flying 
aimlessly  about,  as  I  have  seen  horses  or 
dogs  or  cattle  or  men  do  when  dazed  by 
the  sudden  loss  of  leadership.  We  are  all 
more  or  less  creatures  of  habit,  and  we 
“follow  the  crowd,”  or  run  very  close  to 
the  plan  of  thinking  which  was  marked 
out  for  us  as  children. 
But  it  is  a  cold  and  disagreeable  Win¬ 
ter.  We  have  had  a  succession  of  snow¬ 
storms,  followed  by  freezing  winds.  This 
is  a  commuters’  section,  and  most  people 
have  sold  their  horses.  It  is  only  now 
and  then  that  you  meet  a  horse-drawn 
vehicle  on  the  road.  Our  folks  use  cars 
freely.  Years  ago,  after  a  snowstorm 
the  problem  was  to  make  a  good  track  for 
sleighs.  The  snow  could  be  smashed 
down  with  a  big  roller,  or  tracked  out 
with  bobsleds.  Now  there  are  hardly  half 
a  dozen  sleighs  in  this  entire  territory, 
and  the  plan  is  to  scrape  off  the  snow  as 
quickly  a.s  possible  and  make  a  track  for 
the  cars.  Broker  and  Tom,  the  big  grays, 
have  been  out  every  morning  working  on 
the  snow  plow,  and  our  roads  have  been 
kept  open.  The  cars  groan  and  slip  at 
times  on  the  icy  hills,  but  they  get  along. 
It  is  curious  how  this  development  of  the 
cars  has  affected  all  sorts  of  business  en¬ 
terprises.  Many  of  us  can  remember  the 
days  of  the  road  cart.  There  was  a  per¬ 
fect  craze  for  those  two-wheeled  vehicles. 
Farm  papers  were  filled  with  their  adver¬ 
tisements,  and  you  met  them  everywhere. 
With  the  old-style  dirt  road  they  were 
very  useful,  and  while  the  craze  lasted 
one  would  have  thought  there  was  a  tre¬ 
mendous  future  in  the  business.  And 
then  what  an  immense  business  was  de¬ 
veloped  in  making  and  selling  buggies. 
There  seemed  -no  end  to  it,  but  with  the 
development  of  the  cheap  car,  the  cart 
and  the  buggy  are  now  about  as  common 
as  the  long-tailed  coat  and  bell-crowned 
hat  that  grandfather  used  to  wear.  I 
once  wondered  what  became  of  the  cart 
and  buggy  and  harness-makers  when  the 
car  seemed  to  ruin  t'lieir  business,  and  I 
have  followed  several  of  them  up  in  an 
effort  to  find  out.  Most  of  them  seem  to 
be  doing  better  than  ever  in  new  lines  of 
work.  Many  of  them  are  making  cars  or 
car  tops  or  other  fixtures.  Others  saw 
what  was  coming  in  time,  and  swung 
their  factories  into  new  production.  It 
occurs  to  me  as  I  look  out  across  the 
great  stretch  of  frozen  snow  that  this 
illustrates  one  great  difference  between 
what  is  called  “industry”  and  farming.  A 
manufacturing  business  must  adapt  itself 
to  industrial  changes  or  die.  It  might 
linger  along  on  surplus  capital  in  the 
face  of  such  changes  as  have  been  brought 
by  the  cheap  car,  but  it  will  surely  die  a 
lingering  death  unless  the  owners  get  off 
the  track  into  new  lines.  Farming  has 
faced  even  greater  changes,  but  most 
farmers  have  been  much  slower  to  accept 
them.  A  farm  can  run  on  and  yield  a  liv¬ 
ing  to  its  family  much  longer  than  a  fac- 
tory.  Farmers  as  a  class  would  probably 
have  been  better  off  if  this  were  not  so. 
Some  of  them  have  been  content  to  put 
up  with  a  poorer  living  rather  than  make 
such  radical  changes  as  the  cart  men 
were  obliged  to  Work  out. 
*  *  *  *  * 
The  great  trouble  with  farmers  or 
gardeners  in  this  part  of  New  Jersey  is 
that  most  of  us  have  no  profitable  Winter 
employment.  We  spend  one-third  of  the 
vear  just  about  marking  time  or  drilling 
for  the  labor  of  the.  other  two-thirds. 
Just  now  we  are  cutting  dead  chestnut 
for  fuel.  The  woods  are  half  a  mile  away 
over  a  steep  hill,  and  it  is  a  hard  and 
dangerous  job  to  haul  this  wood  down  on 
a  sled.  A  great  pile  is  accumulating  back 
of  the  house,  and  soon  the  sawyers  will  be 
at  it.  Dead  chestnut  is  good  for  a  quick 
fire,  but  burns  out  too  rapidly  for  the 
furnace.  Then  there  are  hogs  to  kill  and 
dress.  As  I  write,  four  big  carcasses  are 
hanging  in  the  shed.  We  sell  the  entire 
hog  to  families  who  know  how  to  handle 
it  for  sausage,  ham.  bacon,  lard,  and  all 
the  rest.  An  entire  carcass,  sold  in  this 
way.  brings  14  cents  a  pound.  What  we 
ought  to  have  is  a  good  storage  house  for 
fruit.  T.ast  Fall  we  practically  gave  away 
much  of  our  fruit  because  we  could  not 
hold  it  and  the  market  was  flooded.  If 
we  could  have  put  it  into  storage  it  would 
now  be  bringing  twice  as  much,  and 
would  be  giving  us  a  good  Winter  job  at 
delivering  it.  That  is  one  way  in  which 
\vc  must  do  it  o  tinsel  vet.  Of  course,  the 
trees  must  be  pruned  this  Winter.  _  I 
think  this  deep  snow  will  give  the  mice 
and  rabbits  their  chance.  I  look  for  great 
damage  before  Spring.  The  best  thing  we 
can  do  now-  is  to  prune  and  leave  the 
prunings  on  top  of  the  ground  or  snow. 
If  this  is  done,  in  most  cases  the  rabbits 
will  gnaw  these  prunings  and  let  the  trees 
alone.  Then  we  must  spray  the  trees 
with  oil  before  Spring.  But  while  these 
operations  are  all  necessary,  they  do  not 
make  a  profitable  Winter  business.  Poul¬ 
try  rearing  is  developing  in  our  county. 
The  success  of  our  pullets  at  the  egg-lay¬ 
ing  contest  has  prompted  us  to  build  new 
houses  and  go  in  a  little  deeper.  I  can¬ 
not  say  that  our  home  birds  are  doing 
very  much,  but  these  pullets  at  Westwood 
are  still  going.  Up  to  January  13  they 
had  laid  560  eggs,  or  148  ahead  of  the 
nearest  Bed  competitors.  I  think  it  will 
pay  us  to  keep  that  family  going. 
V  $  'i5  ♦ 
Yes,  we  need  new  forms  of  work,  and 
we  also  need  new  ideas  about  play.  There 
are  many  who  will  shake  their  heads 
when  I  talk  about  playing,  but  00  per 
cent  of  the  gray-haired  people  who  read 
this  would  be  happier  and  more  useful 
today  if  they  could  have  had  more  play¬ 
time  in  their  youth.  Play  is  the  oil  of 
life,  and  naturally  there  are  various  kinds 
of  oil.  Some  people  try  to  learn  how  to 
play  after  they  grow  up.  They  make  a 
melancholy  job  of  it.  The  other  day  I 
read  about  a  beetle  race  staged  by  some 
idle  and  lazy  city  people.  These  men  and 
women  captured  bugs  and  beetles,  put 
them  at  one  end  of  a  long  table,  and  start¬ 
ed  them  going  like  race  horses.  The  bug 
first  crossing  a  certain  mark  on  the  table 
was  the  winner.  Money  enough  to  pro¬ 
vide  for  a  dozen  needy  families  was  bet 
on  this  senseless  performance.  These 
men  and  women  had  grown  weary  of  or¬ 
dinary  forms  of  amusements  and  tried  to 
get  up  a  new  form  of  playing. 
*  $  $  $  $ 
And  such  foolish  things  are  not  con¬ 
fined  to  the  city.  I  have  seen  grown-up 
men  in  the  country  betting  on  flies.  Each 
put  a  lump  of  sugar  on  the  table.  Then 
each  put  up  50  cents  in  a  pool,  and  this 
money  went  to  the  owner  of  the  lump 
which  first  attracted*  five  flies.  Then  1 
have  seen  grown-up  men  in  a  lumber  camp 
spend  Sunday  afternoon  in  a  spitting  con¬ 
test !  A  shingle  would  be  put  up  some¬ 
thing  more  than  a  rod  away,  and  all 
hands  would  take  turns  spitting  at  it! 
The  champion  spitter  was  a  man  of  some 
consequence  in  that  region.  I  give  these 
somewhat  disgusting  details  to  indicate 
that  such  foolish  attempts  to  divert  the 
mind  through  play  are  not  confined  to 
either  city  or  country,  or  to  any  locality 
or  race.  I  take  it  they  are  the  natural 
products  of  idle  or  untrained  minds  seek¬ 
ing  hard  to  escape  unpleasant  memories, 
or  to  satisfy,  the  craving  that  most  people 
have  for  some  form  of  play.  I  think  any 
human  being  must  lighten  the  mind  with 
some  form  of  play,  or  go  more  or  less  in¬ 
sane. 
*  *  ❖  &  * 
With  the  idle  rich  these  abnormal 
things  mean  that  human  beings  have  ex¬ 
hausted  most  of  the  ordinary  amuse¬ 
ments.  They  crave  fresh  excitement,  as 
the  drinker  craves  stronger  and  stronger 
doses.  The  child  who  is  never  taught  to 
play  will  grow  up  with  an  unsatisfied 
mind,  which  never  will  be  able  to  invent 
simple  or  satisfying  forms  of  amusement. 
Thus  they  must  race  insects  or  spit  at 
shingles — low  forms  of  amusement  to 
keep  their  minds  out  of  mischief.  It 
seems  to  me  that  all  this  represents  the 
struggle  between  the  spirit  of  the  old 
cave  man  (who  slumbers  in  all  of  us  and 
variously  known  as  old  Nick  or  old 
Adam)  and  the  modern  man  with  his  thin 
veneer  of  civilization.  At  any  rate,  I 
know  it  will  give  the  man  a  far  better 
life  if  when  he  is  a  boy  he  is  taught  tp 
play  and  given  reasonable  time  to  develop 
a  sense  of  humor.  Of  course  there  is  al¬ 
ways  the  argument  that  these  senseless 
games  are  harmless,  that  such  men  and 
women  might  be  in  worse  business,  there¬ 
fore,  let  them  alone !  In  the  worst  days 
of  Rome  or  Carthage  people'  (well  called 
the  rabble)  were  kept  reasonably  quiet  by 
giving  them  forms  of  public  amusement 
which  satisfied  their  minds.  As  individ¬ 
uals,  such  people  may  not.  do  much  dam¬ 
age,  but  when  the  same  spirit  strikes  into 
a  mob,  then  there  is  real  danger.  Small 
minds  will  usually  be  up  to  small  busi¬ 
ness,  done  in  a  small  way.  They  rarely 
do  much  damage  with  individual  work, 
but  look  out  for  them  when  they  fire  in 
volleys.  The  human  mind  must  be 
amused,  or  it  will  jump  to  the  other  ex¬ 
treme  of  emotion.  During  the  war  there 
was  a  great  scarcity  of  coal  in  New  York, 
and  something  of  an  outcry  was  made  be¬ 
cause  the  theaters  and  moving  picture 
shows  were  kept  well  supplied— next  to 
the  hospitals.  The  answer  was  that  the 
public  must  be  amused:  otherwise  a  col¬ 
lection  of  fairly  satisfied  individuals 
would  be  turned  into  a  mob  of  brooding, 
resentful  people,  bent  on  destruction. 
#  ❖  5j e  #  sj: 
I  think  we  should  teach  our  children  to 
play — to  learn  to  amuse  themselves — to 
wear  about  with  them  as  they  do  their 
clothes  the  flint  and  steel  that  can  always 
strike  a  spark  of  fun.  At  the  battle  of 
San  Juan  Hill  our  soldiers  were  aston¬ 
ished  to  find  the  Spanish  fire  exceedingly 
deadly  at  one  particular  spot  in  a  valley. 
Usually  the  Spaniards  seemed  to  fire  at 
random,  but  at  this  particular  spot  they 
concentrated  their  fire.  It.  was  found 
later  that  the  Spaniards  had  arranged  at 
the  top  of  the  hill  a  series  of  grooved 
boards  nicely  trained  upon  a  certain  part 
of  the  road.  The  soldiers  were  ordered 
to  lay  their  rifles  in  these  grooves  and 
then,  as  usual,  blaze  awawy  without  aim. 
The  guns  were  thus  aimed  for  them,  and 
each  bullet  went  where  it  did  the  most 
barm.  It  seems  to  me  that  our  schools 
Healthy  Crops 
It  has  long  been  known  that  Ger¬ 
man  Potash  Salts  prevented  cer¬ 
tain  plant  diseases,  as  well  as 
greatly  increased  the  quantity  and 
improved  the  quality  of  crops. 
Scientific  investigation  now  shows 
us  that  not  only  Potash  but  also 
Magnesia  is  required  to  prevent 
certain  plant  diseases. 
The  German  Potash  Salts  contain 
Magnesia  as  well  as  Potash. 
If  you  insist  on  having  your  fertil¬ 
izer  contain  from  5  to  10  per  cent 
of  Potash ,  derived  from  Genuine 
German  Potash  Salts ,  you  will 
secure  at  the  same  time  enough 
magnesia  to  prevent  plant  dis¬ 
eases  due  to  magnesia  hunger. 
For  Tobacco,  and  for  those  Fruits 
which  are  injured  by  Chlorin,  the 
fertilizer  should  carry  10  per  cent 
of  Potash ,  derived  from  Sulfate  of 
Potash  or  from  Sulfate  of  Potash 
Magnesia. 
Use  the  latter  if  your  tobacco 
leaves  are  not  sound. 
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