Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1886 — FARM NOTES. [ARTICLE]

FARM NOTES.

It is not he that sows but he that manures that gets the big crop. Illinois fanners are taking the lead in improving their lands by tile drainage. Memorial-trees planted on birthdays grow into living and lasting monuments. If the farm is small plow deep and manure strong. If the farm is also poor manure more. The floor of the hen-house should h$ dry if colds and cramps in the poultry are to be avoided. A correspondent of the Breeders' Gazette thinks it unwise to feed ensilage to breeding cattle. Meat smoked with corn cobs will have a better flavor than any other burning substance will give it Are we lawyer-ridden? Every village swarms with them, and they make a living by “hook or crook,” says Home and Farm. The Grange is represented generally by men in middle and advanced life. Why should it not be as good a place for young men ? Many injurious insects arid their eggs will be destroyed by raking up all the dead leaves and weeds in the orchard and burning them. If you happen to have wood ashes the kitchen garden is a good place to apply it as a top-dressing. If leached for making soft-soap it is still valuable. Water house plants only when they require it This may be from two to three times a week, depending on how fast the soil dries out in the pots. An attorney, formulating a set of rules for renting land, wisely adds, as seventh and last: Above all, be easeful in selecting your tenant There is more in the man than there is in the bond. A farmer of North Belgrade, Me., says three bushels of plaster on grass land are as good as six. He would apply it just after the ground becomes bare in the spring and just before a rain if possible. To supply any lack of vegetable matter in the soil there is no readier or cheaper means than the plowing under of some green crop. Manuring with rye is an excellent way to ameliorate and enrich a garden. Professor Caldwell says that succulent food increases the flow of milk, but does not necessarily increase the proportion of water in H. The flow is greatest in June, yet $e milk is no poorer than at other tim*. Carlyle has said: “Ovg grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.” This truth is eloquent in agriculture. The man who sees clearly what to do and does it is prosperous. Assist yourself in spring work by bringing up all odds and ends, square at once, see that all tools and implements are in order, and especially that the plows are sharp and well scoured. Then, when plowing time eomes, go to work with vim.

It you want to get the good-will of * your hens, says the Prairie Farmer, feed them dry, hot corn at night. Heat the corn in an iron pan or kettle in the oven, and stir occasionally. No matter if it gets a little charred. It won’t do any harm to give warm water, either. If a plow or other steel implement lias become very rusty, make a mixture of half a pint of oil of vitriol poured slowly into a quart of water, and applv to the rusted metal. Wash off with vi ator, and scour in the usual manner. It is better, however, not to let any implement get rusty. Every bed of asparagus should be manured in the fall or sometime during the winter. The more thoroughly this manure is mixed with the surface soil the better. Mineral manures are best applied in spring after growth begins and after the heavy rains which might wash them away have ceased. Speaking of ensilage, Professor Arnold explained that succulent food in winter is a means of saving animal force, which must otherwise go to properly prepared food for digestion. Mr. Hiram Smith, the great dairyman of Wisconsin, gives emphatic testimony to the great value of clover ensilage- for winter milk. An agricultural exchange says there is a strong conviction among intelligent and experienced breeders that "hog cholera” is clearly traceable to prolonged and excessive feeding of corn. In that section of this country where hogs are fed most upon this fat-pro-ducing food, there the disease is more prevalent. The hay crop of 1885 in the United States amounted to 38,000,000 tons. The largest crop ever grown in this country was that of 1888, which amounted to 46,864,000 tons. The total value of the crop of 1885 was $361,000,000. The exports covered 11,142 tons, valued at $204,705. The cost of transportation, commission, and insurance for the exported product was $lO per ton. In the separation of wheat plants any number may be secured up to several hundred from a single grain if, after the plantß are set out and multiplied, they be again divided. In such an experiment a single grain of wheat onoe produced over 80,000 heads, which contained 170,000 grains, making sixty* seven pounds of wheat Large fields cannot be treited in such manner, but it demonstrates what can be done with cultivation. ▲ correspondent of the Norik Britiok jiariouUttrioi, writing from a 4Mdet where calves are generally reared by hand, eaye: *1 rear #nnoally about twenty-fire calves on fire cows; I have been giving half milk, along with iactina and bruised mk*. H'ki* stummi

oouea ana prepared m tne usual way before mixing.” Farms are schools, the best of all in which to learn much that concerns farming. They are the only schools worth naming, so far as acquiring practical knowledge in farming is concerned. Teaching by object lessons is effective. The things we see, the things we do, are better remembered and better understood than the things we hear or read about. Learn the practice of farming on a good farm. Mr. Edward M. Teal], in the Breeders' Gazette, upon feeding ensilage to cattle, says: “When fed to bulls it makes them sluggish and indifferent, and in the majority of cases of service the bull fails to get the cow in calf. When fed to cows long in calf, say one to two months before Calvin?. I tie calves have the worst kind of scorn .--, and in a large majority of cases the calf dies.” Mr. J. J. H. Gregory makes the statement that the corn plant has the power of getting its nitrogen from the air. We have, therefore, but to supply potash and phosphate to the soil. For three years the experiment has been tried upon the poor-soil plots of the Rural Grounds. No matter how large the quantity of potash and phosphoric acid used, we can not get a good crop without nitrogen.— liural New Yorker. Many farmers fear, says J. W. Pierce, that if manure is left spread on the surface for any length of time it will waste by evaporation, but I anysatisfied by a careful study of the scientific aspect of the case, as well as by my own observation, that there is no appreciable loss in this way by the exposure of unfermented manure, and that the only possible loss of any amount is by washing off from very hilly land, when the ground is frozen, and that this loss is seldom great. Speaking of preparations for killing lice on cattle, Professor A. J. Cook thinks a decoction of tobacco, upon the whole, gives the best satisfaction. This is easily made by turning hot water on any kind of tobacoo. The cheap stems answer as well as any other kind. Were it not for the eggs one application of this would always suffice. He has often found it unnecessary to use it more than once. The work of washing An animal is quickly and easily performed.