Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 December 1879 — FARM NOTES. [ARTICLE]

FARM NOTES.

Hogs may be kept from measles, trichinosis, etc, by mixing a handful of good wood ashes with their food twice a week. t The United States buys more and more Canada horses yearly. In 1875 we Imported only 214, valued at $28,955; while last year the number was 6,632, valued at $391,255. A Maryland farmer thinks he has found a sure cure for the Canada thistle. It consists in sowing the land infested by them with buckwheat early in the spring, allowing it to grow till it is in full blossom, turning under and again reseeding with the same grain. The last crop is harvested when ripe. The Franklin (Mass.,) Fanners’ Club have had a potato competition this year, All the contestants planted seed of Early Bose, and each chose his own mode of cultivation. A. "W. Cheever got the largest yield, at the rate of 488 bushels per acre, by the use of stable-manure, 400 pounds of sulphate of potash, and about 800 pounds of guano per acre, spread over the furrows in which the potatoes are planted. Eggs in Winter. —A writer in an agricultural journal has found out the secret of making hens lay in winter. He bonght a lot of corn that had been damaged by fire, and fed it to his hens. He found that ihey laid wonderfully well all winter, Upon this hint he has since acted, and has fonnd no difficulty in securing plenty of eggs in winter; keeping his (pwls in good warm quarters, and feeding them largely with roasted or parched grain, principally com. Cabbage Worms. We— Country Gentleman —have seen a statement in some of the papers that cabbages had been kept entirely clear of the insect by the aid of chickens, in a plantation of some thousands of plants. Screenings wete first scattered to attract the fowls among the oabbages, and then, discovering the worms, they kept the patch clean. We have found this method to answer well, provided the chickens are not full grown; when older, •they eat tho cabbages. Young turkeys are still better; their keen eyes and quick motions allow nothing to escape. A member of tho Elmira Farmers’ Club kept his cabbages entirely free by cayenne pepper. * Improve the Stock.— For about half the year we have to fodder cattle and sheep. Shall they grow while young steadily all the time till they are mature? Or, shall they be fed and shelered by a straw stack or a rail fence ust enough to hold them in place diirng winter and then do all their growing during a part of tho warm months? As the country grows older, competition becomes greater in everything. It requires better to make money. Poor stock, poorly managed, costs more than it will bring. Within a a few years the prices of choice animals have declined, till they are within the reach of every man who keeps stock. Now is a. good time to select a good, for use next season or later. The price will be lower now than in the spring when such animals are most salable. A thoroughbred male, of course, pays his way when used with pure-blooded females; but in a still more marked degree does he pay his way when used with grade or common stock. These are points whioh are well established beyond controversy.—Rural New Yorker. All About Muck. —Muck is the richness of the uplands washed by the annual rains down to the lowlands. It accumulates there, because it can get no lower, and coming down in a semi-liquid condition, as soon as it is at reet the sun evaporates the water from it, and leaves ar--generally—black, uuctous mass of soil, which is composed almost entirely of soluble material. Cultivating the uplands to exhaustive crops, and washing the remaining richness out by rains, soon renders such lands nearly barren. Digging out this deposit and hauling it to such fields as supplied it is merely restoring a runaway to its home. As the muck, in its'passage down-hill, has lost the coarser parts of the original soil, which make a loose and porous seed-bed, it has become so solid, so compact, that the atmosphere is absolutely excluded, and tho muck by itself is a mere paste, impervious to air, warmth, and all the invigorating influences of summer rains. To make it again soluable, then, it must not merely earted out and spread over the field, but it must be mixed with the soil as deep as the roots require, by plowing, harrowing or shovel-plowing under. This process restores it to the place it occupied before the washiDg-out process took place, and, to enable us to do this cheaply, the unctous mass is dug out in the fall, piled up on a slope to drain, and left to freeze friablo during the winter; then it will return to its proper place in the barren soil, and at once restore its original fertility.— Rural New Yorker.