Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1878 — AGRICULTURAL NOTES. [ARTICLE]

AGRICULTURAL NOTES.

Bad salt spoils good butter. The specific gravity of butter-fats is always higher than that of meat-fats. A calf at 6 weeks old, if properly fed, produces the best veal. Pulverized charcoal has a wonderful effect upon bloated animals. Hay cut at the proper time and well cured contains a large proportion of saccharine matter. Fancy farming may be indulged in, as a recreation, by men with other means of support. Such men may pride themselves in it, and claim to be model agriculturists. They are not true farmers. Sawdust of itself is not a manure. It is an excellent absorbent, undoubtedly, when used as bedding; but whatever manurial influences it exerts, even then, are due to the matters absorbed. Straw or leaves are much preferable.— Canada Farmer, While leaks on the farm in the main are considered a bad thing, if all our farms were well supplied with the kind of leaks that carry off the surplus water quickly, we might soon gain a surplus that could be applied to stopping other leaks. Timothy and red top mixed, at the rate of a peck of the first and a bushel of the latter per acre, would do well upon a moist, drained meadow. Orchard grass and Kentucky blue grass, a bushel of each per acre, would be the best for open timber land.— American Agriculturist. The great error in wheat husbandry consists in this: Sufficient time is not suffered to elapse, between plowing for wheat and seeding, to admit of that packing of the soil and that preliminary decomposition of crude vegetable matter, which, on most soils, is an indispensable prerequisite to a good wheat crop.— Letter to Exchange. Among some of the best farmers of this State the practice prevails of letting the hay that the fork will not gather in loading the wagons remain upon the ground, for two reasons: First, that it does not pay for raking up and gathering; second, that it acts as a mulch against the burning suns of the latter part of July, and August.—Pennsylvania Journal. The use of straw, or coarse hay, as a mulch for protecting winter wheat during the winter is advisable. But care should be exercised lest too much straw may be used, and the wheat smothered. Six inches of straw would be too much. One inch would be enough. The obect should be to protect the soil from thawing repeatedly, during the winter as it is the frequent freezing after thawing which destroys the wheat.—American Agriculturist. A farmer of experience says that the feet of a horse require more care than the body. They need ten times as much, for in one respect they are almost the entire horse. All the grooming that can be done won’t avail anything if the horse is forced to stand where his feet will be filthy. In this case the feet will become disordered, and then the legs will get badly out of fix, and with bad feet and bad legs there is not much else of the horse fit for anything. Bleeding a horse is generally done in the vein with a broad-bladed lancet; and when the vein is sufficiently pressed and secured, so as to cause it to swell, then the point of the lancet is sent in with the left hand, and, cutting upward, makes all the opening necessary. When sufficient blood is taken, the cut ought to be squeezed together and fastened with a pin. By pressing the vein below the wound the blood will shoot out in a stream and fall clear into the bucket ready to receive it. To insects we owe wax and honey, silk and precious dyes, valuable medicines, food for birds and many other animals, the increase of plants necessary for the subsistence of many creatures, and thus, indirectly, for the preservation of man. In short, the human species, wholly deprived of the service of insects, would fade from the face of our planet. So the husbandman has only to make the best of it by learning to distinguish between his friends and his foes, and how to assist the beneficent operations of nature in encouraging the former and checking the latter.— Boston Journal of Chemistry. A young man starting out in farming cannot do a better thing than to plant an apple orchard if his land is within “the apple belt.” Don’t rely on the gnarled and decaying old trees; the life of an orchard, under favorable conditions, is only about that of a man. Nothing will lift a mortgage, or run up the profit side of the account, like a prime orchard in its first years of bearing. Go for the standard varieties or such as experience has proved do well in your locality and soil. Theories are good in their place, but a day spent in driving through your town and finding out what fruit-growers have actually learned and done, is better. Get your trees from some reliable nursery —the nearer at hand the better—and use your own best care and other people’s experience in planting them.