Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1885 — AGRICULTURAL. [ARTICLE]

AGRICULTURAL.

Ax Eastern fanner recently announced his conversion to ensilage, and announced his intention of immediately building a “cyclone. ” —Chicago Journal.

The chemist of the Agricultural Department at Washington says that the soil best adapted for the growth of sorghum for sugar appears to be a sandy loam. An authority says there are $1,900,000,000 invested in the 6,000,000 miles of fences in the United States, and that they have to be renewed on an average once in fifteen years. Thomas R. McConnell, of Scott county, lowa, soaks his wheat in vitriol water for twenty-four hours before sowing as a cure for smut. He uses one pound of vitriol to twenty bushels of wheat.

Very careful experiments made in New York last season, show that the flat culture of potatoes produces the finest tuber and the largest yields. The best results followed the Dutch method of planting, which consists in keeping the surface level, planting a single eye in a place, covering it six inches deep and allowing but a single stalk to grow in a hill, which are a foot apart each way,

A correspondent of the Farmers' Review has practiced during several winters the plan of keeping apples in dry sand, poured into the filled barrels after storing in the cellar, and finds it a “decided improvement’’ on any other ever tried, the fruit remaining till late spring “as crisp and apparently as fresh as when first gathered. ” He does likewise with potatoes, and uses the same sand year after year. The practice of some of the best farmers new is to keep pigs through the summer on green food, cut and carried to the pens, with a little grain,and what milk can be spared after butter making. Spring pigs are thus made to weigh 200 pounds at 7 months old, and, except in the last month, they get little grain. The best time to self such pigs is at the beginning of cold weather, usually in October.

The Indiana Farmer says one of its subscribers kept a record of the time employed in cultivating fourteen acres of corn last season in the old-fashioned way, and finds he gave about two days to the acre. The yield was 800 bushels, over fifty-seven bushels to the acre. He estimated the value of his crop at $320, and the labor expended on it at $l2O, and, deducting expenses, he claims a profit of sl4 per acre. President Ohmer, of the Dayton Horticultural Society, says he knew a man who made a great success with an acre or two of strawberries, gathering from twenty to thirty bushels a day, and he was so elated with his success that, on enlarging his fields, he said “he would gather 100 bushels a day or bust.” He “busted.” His single acre was well attended to; his five acres were necessarily more or less neglected. This scrap of history has been many times repeated —Chicago Journal. A farmer vouches for the following as a prevention of chicken cholera: “Take a tight barrel, saw it in two in the middle, then wash it out good with hot water, so that there is not a particle of bad flavor in it. Then take two quarts of fresh lime and slack it, filling the tub or half barrel full of fresh water; when slacking, add one pound of alum to it and stir it good; let it stand until the sediment has settled and the liquor is clear, and it is ready for use. When using it, take one pint of the clear liquor and add it to one pail of freshwater, and,give your fowls to drink during summer months.” An exchange, speaking of the Central Ohio farmers, says: “They abandoned our old-fogy, antiquated way of allowing every farmer to work out and fool away his own tax according to his own notion. There is a money tax, and the money is used by the lowest responsible bidder who agrees to keep the roads in repair. At one time there were a good many toll roads, but the people are gradually buying them out, so that all roads shall be free. They go much further. They often tax the land a mile or more back from a certain road up to as high as $8 an acre, and make a good pike. This tax is in most cases very willingly paid. Several men assured me that it raised the price of land from 25 to 50 per cent. They could not be induced to go back to dirt roads, using a foot or so of gravel on a well-graded foundation. It is certainly a great treat to live where the roads are good the year round; and a farmer is thereby brought much nearer his neighbors, nearer market and the rest of the world. ”