Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1884 — AGRICULTURAL. [ARTICLE]

AGRICULTURAL.

Thtop • Farmer Should Hot Do. A farmer should not break np more land than he can cultivate thoroughly; half-tilled land is always growing poorer, while well-tilled land is constantly improving. A thrifty and prudent farmer will not devote his sole attention to the improvement of certain fields on his farm, because the land u “easy to work at,” and let other portions of his premises go uncultivated, and grow nothing but brush, bogs, briers and stones. A farmer shonld never have more cattle, horses or other animal stock than he can keep in good order. An animal in good order at the beginning of winter is already half wintered. Nor should he let his cattle endure the chilling storms of winter in an open yard or field, while a few dollars expended would amply repay him in saving fodder, and afford her * greater amount of milk. A farmer shonld never depend too much on his neighbors for what he can by careful management produce on his own land. He should not make it a common practice to cither bny or beg fruit while he can plant trees and cultivate them on his own ground—nor annoy his neighbors by borrowing tools to work with, while lie can make or buy them. “The borrower .a servant to the lender.” A farmer should never be so immersed in political matters as to neglect doing his various kinds of work in due season, and to snug np matters and things for winter; nor should he be so inattentive to politics as to remain ignorant of those great questions of national and State policy which will always agitate more or less a free people. A farmer shonld not be continually borrowing his neighbor’s newspaper, while he can easily save money enough, by curtailing some little extravagance, to subscribe and pay for one or more of his own. A farmer shonld never refuse a fair price for anything he wishes to sell. I have known men to refuse $1.50 for a bushel of wheat, and after keeping it five or six months they were glad to get $1 for it I have known farmers to refuse to take a fair marketable price for their dairies of butter, and after keeping it three or four months they concluded to sell the butter for only twothirds of the price which they were first offered. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” A farmer should not allow his wood pile to be reduced down to the “shorts” merely drawing a little by piecemeal, and green at that. He must expect to encounter the sour looks of his wife and family, and perhaps be compelled {in a series of leetures) to learn that the man who provide green wood to burn in winter has not mastered the first rules of domestic eoonomy. Nor shonld he employ some “blotch” mason to build his chimney “upside down” so that his family will be nearly smoked out of the house, and the walls of the room become as yellow as saffron. A farmer shonld not let his buildings look as old as tlie hills, and go to decay, while he can easily afford the means to keep them in go d repair; nor should lie allow tattered -clothes and old hats to be stuffed in the windows, in the place of glass. If he does, he need not be alarmed if he acquires the reputation of a mean man, or one who tarries long where liquor is sold by the glass. A farmer should not be contented with dilapidated-looking fences on his farm, so as to tempt liis cattle to become unruly and destroy liis crops, while he lias plenty of opportunities to make or keep them in repair.

I .nil Xute*. In answer to inquiries why hens lay soft-shell eggs, it may be stated that the difficulty is caused by a lack of lime. Pounded oyster shells should be within easy reach of the fowls at all times. In selecting fruit trees look rather to getting good roots than a large top. A small, well-shaped tree, with good roots, will soon outstrip a large one with an insufficient root, and will make a thriftier tree all the way along. Where the bark has been gnawed or scraped off from a tree the new bark may be made to grow again by covering the denuded place with clay. It has been made to grow in this way without leaving a scar even. —Chicago Journal. To every barrel of flour (190 pounds] there is about forty pounds of bran. If is too light to ship except at high rates, and there is an opportunity for some inventor to dexd.se a method for compressing it into bales, as is the case with liay. Every one interested in potatoes should try on a small scale new varieties till they find something adapted to their cultivation, etc., and by being a little careful, can double their yield on any of the old kinds with but little additional expense. Any one who intends sowing timothy alone for pure hay ought to manure it well, use some fertilizer that is rich in phosphates in the last harrowing; then, just before or after a rain, when the land is in a proper state, sow two gallons of timothy seed per acre, brush it in and roll down nicely. Where early potatoes or corn had been grown is a good place for this operation. At a recent talk on the strawberry, at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, Mr. C. M. Hovey said that “the pump and manure are (lie m >st important item." When I.a Constante was introduced, he said he planted a bed on hard, clayey ground on the slope of a hill, and laid a hose at the top, so as to give all the water they needed, and he never saw such a crop as they produced. Experiments were made at the Massachusetts Agricultural College in girdling surplus branches, which wore afterward to be cut away. A revolving knife cut rapidly a ring of the hark a.fourth of an inch wide, just l elow the buacn of fruit, about midsummer. Th s treatment was performed on twelve rows of grapes. The enlarged and early fruit sold for $36 more than the same amount of the common or main crop, the labor

oeing xess man nan mis sum. iso uijnry has been apparent to the Tines so treated, the girdled canes being cot away when done with.