American Agriculturist, November 15, 1924 
841 
November Farm Days 
Making- Vinegar, Killing Hogs, Fixing Up Next Years Roses 
T O make good cider vinegar, pure cider 
from clean, ripe apples is kept at a 
warm temperature under sanitary condi¬ 
tions, according to C. J. Schollenberger, 
assistant chemist Ohio Experiment Sta¬ 
tion : 
“Fresh cider is plentifully seeded with 
yeasts and acetic acid bacteria, which at a 
temperature of 65 to 75 degrees and in 
containers admitting air, will transform 
the cider into vinegar. Although the 
yeast can change the sugars to alcohol 
without air, the gas must be allowed to 
escape. From two to six weeks is re¬ 
quired for this fermentation. When it is 
complete, the cider ceases to foam, and 
should be poured or siphoned off to clear 
of dregs and be placed in a clean barrel 
only partly filled and admitting air 
freely through a screened bung hole. 
Old barrels must be thoroughly cleaned 
and scalded to insure a good product. 
“Adding a quart or two of first-class 
cider vinegar with a little active ‘mother’ 
from the surface hastens the process. 
However, the acetic acid bacteria present 
in the cider multiply rapidly under 
favorable temperature and in the presence 
of air and soon form a whitish film over the 
surface. On no account should this film 
be disturbed, for, should it sink to the 
bottom of the container, the bacteria will 
be shut off from the oxygen of the air and 
will use up the acetic acid already 
formed.” 
Hog Killin’ Days 
By Adelaide Utter 
T O the woman in the country these are 
truly busy days, but days that are 
always enjoyed by those living on a farm. 
The supply of spareribs and back bones 
brings a welcome change in the diet, and 
the other parts of the meat if properly 
cared for, mean many delicious meals for 
months to come. 
In caring for the meat, the lard de¬ 
mands one’s first attention. The fat 
should be freed from skin and any meaty 
or bloody particles and cut into small 
pieces. To each gallon of the fat, add a 
teaspoonful of soda and a pint of cold 
water, and cook carefully until the lard is 
clear and the cracklings are a light brown. 
Then take a collander and place it over a 
stone jar; put a piece of cheesecloth or 
other thin muslin over it and pour the hot 
lard through. Lift the cloth at the sides 
to hasten the lard running through, but if 
directions have been followed there will 
be few cracklings and little sediment, and 
there wall be no necessity for squeezing 
the cloth. When you have finished the 
process you will have sweet, white lard 
that will keep for a long time. 
After disposing of the lard, the sausage 
comes next. Cut up your meat in small 
pieces, having about equal quantities of 
fat and lean. Bun it through the grinder 
and then add the seasoning. To each 
twenty-five pounds of meat use ten ounces 
of salt, one and one-ha'f ounces of pepper 
and sage to taste. This can be mixed 
with the hands and if you wish it to be 
particularly well blended, run it through 
the grinder the second time. 
One of the easiest and best ways of 
preserving the sausage for future use is 
to form it into small cakes and fry it; 
pack the cakes in sterilized jars, pour the 
grease that fries out of the sausage over 
it, cap the jars and invert and the fat will 
then form a perfect sealing of the sausage, 
and it will keep till late spring. When you 
wish to ifse the sausage, place a jar in a 
pan of hot water till the grease melts, 
then take out the cakes and heat in a 
frying-pan. The tenderloin can be 
roasted, cut into strips and canned in 
exactly the same way. 
By this time the hams, shoulders and 
bacon will be entirely cool and should be 
given a thorough rubbing with a mixture 
of salt, brown sugar, pepper and salt 
ditions, where sharp obstacles stick out 
of the road and cause soreness in horses' 
feet, the college recommends the use of 
leather padding under the shoe. But the 
use of leather padding is restricted quite 
largely to city streets, where the wear is 
unusually hard. 
For the average winter work about the 
farm, however, it is not absolutely neces¬ 
sary to have work teams shod, but it is 
advisable to keep a careful watch on the 
hoofs, keeping them well-trimmed and 
shaped. 
Help Us Write the Paper 
E VERY day we are becoming more convinced that what farm people 
most want to see in their papers are the discussions of the perplex¬ 
ing problems that come up in the everyday work on the farm. What 
you are thinking about, for instance, most of the time, is not the tariff 
or some new proposed legislation to help farmers, but rather how you 
are going to cure a sick cow, or how you are going to get a few more 
eggs out of your flock of hens, or whether or not you should hire help 
at four or five dollars a day to get some pressing job done. The only 
ones who can write worth-while letters or articles on such subjects are 
the farmers themselves. They know from their own experience what 
they are talking about. Therefore, we are coming to YOU to get more 
of you to help write the American Agriculturist. 
Here is the first subject: “HOW I SAVE MONEY BY GOOD USE OF 
CROP WASTE AND BY-PRODUCTS.” We would like to get a lot of 
letters on this subject which may, for instance, tell how you use bean 
pods and vines, how you get the best use out of straw of various kinds, 
broken or undeveloped cabbage, small and cull potatoes, corn stover, 
skim milk, cow and horse manure, particularly how to handle these in 
winter time; what you do with your calves, the best way to get the most 
out of hen manure, feathers, apple culls, corn cobs, or any other sub¬ 
ject of a similar nature. 
For every letter that we can publish we will send the writer a check 
for one dollar. They should be long enough to tell the story, but not 
long enough to be of article length or so “wordy” as to be tiresome. 
Do not put more than one subject in the same letter but anyone can 
write on riore than one subject if he wishes. —The Editors. 
petre, This is the formula for each one 
hundred pounds: 
4 pounds salt, 
1 pound brown sugar, 
pound black pepper, 
yi pound cayenne pepper, 
ounce salt petre. 
Use about one-half of the quantity for 
the first rubbing, and then put your meat 
into a barrel, box or other container, meat 
side down. I use galvanized tubs, put¬ 
ting the meat in one, covering with an old 
sheet, and then turning a second till) over 
it. Let the meat stand for ten days, and 
then take it out and rub it with the re¬ 
maining part of the mixture. Rinse your 
tubs, and repack the meat and let stand 
for about six weeks when it will be ready 
to be smoked. The meat should then be 
washed and drained, and hung up in your 
smokehouse. I prefer hickory wood for 
smoking, but some like oak or corncobs 
equally as well. Ignite your wood each 
day with live coals and watch carefully 
to prevent the fire becoming too hot. 
Smoke till the meat is the right degree of 
brownness—I usually smoke my meat from 
a week to ten days. Then put a tiny bit 
of borax around the joints, wrap with 
paper and sew tightly in a muslin bag. 
The bacon does not need to be wrapped, 
but I usually wrap mine. 
Scrapple or head cheese can be made 
out of the heads, ami the feet can be 
pickled. If the pickled pigs feet are 
dipped in flour and then friend, they 
make a delicious dish. 
Untrimmed hoofs break off after a 
time, making the feet sore and resulting 
in lameness. A rasp, a paring knife, and 
a pair of pincers are all the tools required 
to keep the hoofs down. 
Horses Feet Need Watching 
H UMAN beings have no monopoly on 
foot ills. Horses likewise know what 
it means to have sore and tender feet, 
especially in freezing and thawing weather. 
For that reason, the animal husbandry 
men at our state colleges of agriculture 
suggest that special attention be given 
in winter to old Dobbin’s hoofs. 
Roads that have frozen rough after a 
thaw are extremely hard on Worses' feet 
if the feet are not protected by some kind 
of calked shoes. For heavy hauling work 
in the winter time, the feet should be 
protected by a good set of well-fitted 
calk shoes. 
Under particularly heavy hauling con¬ 
tract the honey from the weaker hives. 
Such hives as we plan to unite with others 
can be cut short when extracting even if 
the uniting is not done at the time. If 
the colony has double as much honey as 
they will consume it is no detriment, for 
they will have plenty in the hive in the 
spring to prevent any loss from spring 
killing of brood when a bad spell shuts 
down the flow after the bees have begun 
to rear brood heavily. I would rather 
have honey enough in the hives to feed 
them safely until the regular flow comes, 
for if they do not use it then they will 
later and it saves new honey they will 
gather. Bees do not spend it just because 
they have it like so many of us humans 
do.—L. H. Cobb. 
Protecting the Bees in Winter 
W HILE bees will live over winter if 
the colony is a strong one and the 
hive is closed down to just the hive body 
or, if very strong, a body and one super 
of honey, it is a saving of honey and often 
of the bees, to give them protection, and it 
is easily arranged. A windbreak is the 
first essential. Then when settled cold 
weather arrives th<^ hive entrance should 
be closed down to about three or four 
inches and filled in under with packing 
to keep the cold from the bottom of the 
hive as much as possible. Cut a cover to 
fit all over the hive from the bottom 
board up. Oil cloth is good or rubber 
roofing may be used. Place several 
thicknesses of newspapers over the hive 
first and then the cover, which should be 
tacked securely. Top and sides may be 
made separately if top laps over sides and 
tacked closely. 
Do Not Leave the Hives Empty 
If a colony loses their queen and dies 
during the winter and spring, or winter 
kills from any cause do not leave the 
hives unoccupied, for the moths will ruin 
the combs, and they are worth keeping. 
Get a package of bees from the south and 
put on the frames and you will find they 
will do about as well as a strong colony 
kept over winter. I tested this myself and 
bought two two-frame nuclei, as they ship 
safer and are the same price as two- 
pound packages of bees, which is the size 
generally used. I received the bees the 
twenty-second of April when fruit trees 
were in bloom and before the flow the 
hives were running over with bees, and 
they did better than a very strong colony 
that wintered well. 
The Bees Should Have Good Stores 
There is no economy in cutting short 
the store of honey for the bees to winter 
on except when we plan to unite and ex- 
Prepare the Rose Garden in Fall 
T^ALL is the time to prepare the beds 
A for a rose garden, says bulletin of the 
state college of agriculture at Ithaca. 
The beds should be dug from eighteen to 
twenty-four inches deep for the best re¬ 
sults. 
If the subsoil is clayey or otherwise 
offers poor drainage, a six-inch layer of 
stones, gravel, broken bricks, or clinkers 
should be placed in the bottom of the 
excavation and then a six-inch layer of 
manure. Garden soil mixed with well- 
rotted manure ma.v then be filled in to 
bring the beds up a little above the sur¬ 
face of the ground to allow for settling. 
In the spring the beds should be dug 
over with a fork, so as to mix thoroughly 
the upper soil and the manure, and to 
bring about a general good condition of 
tilth. Fresh manure may be used if 
placed in the beds in the fall and the 
planting deferred until spring; but fresh 
manure used in the spring in contact 
with the roots of the roses is fatal to the 
plants. 
All kinds of roses do not thrive equally 
well in the same kind of soil. Hybrid 
perpetuals succeed best in a heavy clay 
loam, and teas and hybrid teas in a 
warmer and more sandy loam. The rugo- 
sas grow well in a rather sandy soil. 
Altogether, the bulletin says, the en¬ 
couraging part of it for a beginner is that 
roses give satisfactory results on a wide 
range of soil conditions. 
This bulletin w r as first issued in 1917, 
and the demand for it made several re¬ 
prints necessary; it is now available to 
anyone who will send in his name and 
address to the State college at Ithaca and 
ask for F 121. 
Speaking of hog killing, here is a 535-pound 
beauty raised by James Sutton of Sparta, 
Livingston County, N. Y. That was the 
weight of the carcass when it was ready for 
market. Note the use to which Mr. Sutton 
has put a block-and-fall. It surely is needed 
with a hog of this size. 
