Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 July 1879 — FARM NOTES. [ARTICLE]

FARM NOTES.

The average price of the milch cow in this country is $26.41. Beans planted between thin rows of potatoes drive away the potato bug. Exterminate totally the first crop of potato bogs, and there will be no second crop. Sheep, owing to their shyness, should be treated with great kindness. Their treatment should be such that they will actually learn to entertain an affection for their keepers. Cling to the farm, make much of it, put yourself into it, bestow your heart and your brain upon it, so that it shall savor of you, and radiate of your virtue after your day’s work is done. , Db. Hoskins tells the writer that he plants twice as many trees in his orchards as he intends to remain, calculating that the intermediate trees will twice pay for themselves before they seriously interfere with the others, and have to be removed.— Rural New Yorker. iT-shonld be remembered, especially in the West, where we have flush pastures, that large cows will, as a rule,produce more milk for the food eaten than small animals. There is great value in a given breed in the purity of the stock; bnt small cows will not hold their own on full pastures as against animals of greater feeding capacity. To Kill Black Ants.—Take a piece of old cheese, moisten it if dry, and dust it with corrosive sublimate or arsenic. Or mix whisky, molasses and water in equal parts and fill a tumbler half or two-thirds full, and set it partly in the ground infested by ants. It will soon be full of drunkards, which can be scooped out and killed. A calf will draw milk in three minutes, and the nearer a milker can come to that time the better. A slow milker makes a cow impatient, which often causes her to hold up her milk. The “strippings” are the richest part,and if a cow is milked quietly as well as quickly there will be more as well as richer milk because of the “strippings.” The Lightning Fertilizer. —A. singular experiment in agricultural methods has lately been tried in France. A savant took two tobacco plants, each weighing the same and being in an equally healthy condition, and placed them side by side in a locality favorable to their growth. One was supplied with an electric conductor, and the other was left in its normal state. In four months the plant under the influence of electricity attained a height of 3 feet 5 inches, and weighed about 44,000 grains; the other measured 2 feet 4 inches, and weighed about 22,000 grains, about one-half. Fertilization by electricity is certainly a new and startling notion.

How to Keei> Chickens. —Keep a record of your work. Do not burden your minds with trying to remember either success or failure. If you make an experiment, record it, so that you car trace it up for reference if it is a sut cess; if a failure, you can protect yourself against it another time. Do not allow the bones from the table to be thrown into the dust heap, or lie around the yard; throw them into the fire, burn them a little, crush and givo them to your fowls. If bread is burned, or anything else that is cooked in the house, do not throw it away, but use it as charcoal for your birds. If they have been obliged to run in the orchard or meadow to pick up their living as they can, and feeding on wnat they could get, their eggs and flesh are likely to taste; feeding charcoal in any shape will remedy the evil.— Western Rural. Sunflower Seed for Poultry.— Many farmers look upon the sunflower as simply a worthless weed, and never dream of the valuable qualities the seeds of this plant possess. For several years they have been used by the breeders of fancy poultry as a food for choice fowls; in small quantities they are mixed with the other food, and the peculiar properties of the seeds impart a beautiful gloss which no grain will give to the plumage of Ahe adult birds. For those who raise fancy fowls for exhibition, it is essential to perfect success that the plumage should be in perfect condition, and to attain satisfactory results we can recommend no more valuable aid than judicious feeding of this seed. It has long been known that the oil extracted from sunflower seeds makes a dressing for the hair which is very beneficial, imparting a smootlmes and vigor highly appreciated by all who have tried it. It grows very readily, and the poultryman should not forget this cheap and useful assistant to his labors.