Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1891 — AGRICULTURAL TOPICS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AGRICULTURAL TOPICS.

A FEW SUGGESTIONS FOR OUR RURAL READERS. • Plea (or Low Stables for Stock—Moles as Grab Killers—lll* Men Who “Uoed Tlielr Own Row'’—Horns on Domestic Cattle Serve No Useful l'urpoew— H ease hold. Kitchen, Etc. Stock Barns. •jj . Tt is hoped that \ a the era of big

barns has pa sse d. For twenty years we have-been bnilding immense structures o f wood, stuffing them with hay and grain with the stock below it all. An overturned lantern, a smoker’s match has changed many such a pile into

a mass of seething llame so quickly that it seemed to be the result of explosion. The time is coming—may it hasten—when stock will be kept in barns where there is no hay. where there is nothing to burn like a tinderbox. If the stock barn in which there is no inflammable material catches on lire, the result cannot be so disastrous as before, for there is only the shell to burn. If this shell be of iron, as it may be at a moderate cost, there is absblyte safety from fire. For the protection and finding of 6toek, unpretehtiouSj, kgr,.buildings, merely stable rows of stalls with space between), are just as good as larger stfwctures. The only inconvenience is the bringing of the fodder from the stack outside, • or from the hay barn. In winter these stalls are comfortable, ' for every farmer knows that every cow is as good as a stove and helps to heat the space. If the horses and all ithe stock (pigs in the cellar below) are under this low roof, between tight walls, all are as comfortable as they would he of tons of hay were piled above them, and they are safe from lire. Arid there can toe no objection to the stacking of hay in the opeb air. Slay stacks on any farm, fine as it may be, give it always a picturesque and thrifty appearance. Probably less hay is lost im the stack than 4n the barn, for in the latter it often heats as not salted, and sometimes when it is salted. If on :a cold day 'hay he brought from a stack and placed in the mangers, the cows will turn at once from the barn hay to it. The hay is fresher, brighter from the stack, and is Clean and dustless. iLow stables for stock alone, practically fireproof, cost comparatively little, and the farmer has the assurance that his stock is safe, or comparatively safe. These buildings may be snug In winter and cool in summer. The best stable of this kind was built withdouble walls with six inches of sand between.—George Appleton in Farm and Fireside.

Moles as Grub Killers* A Kansas correspondent tells in the Farmers’ Review, that every investigation goes to show the mole lives on insects and starves on cereals.and vegetables. He calls .attention to the fact that when lawns arc apparently renolered unsightly by moles, if on© will cut a section of the sod, he will find the cause in .quantities of white grubs, the presence of the mole being to feed on this larvae. It was Mr. Landis who first came to the .assistance .of .the mole. 'On his ground at Vineland, S'. J.. , he paid 25 cents for all the moles sent to him. He was ridiculed, but,alii knew that his enterprise was .a great success. To attack a popular idea is-unpopular., and it takes a long time to make reform; the mole-trap wall toe sold. Cultivate the moles, and as soon as the lan,'® are eradicated the moles will leave the lawn for other pastures. Depend upon it, that whenever evidences of the mole are found, there you will find the white grub, concludes the Kansas correspondent. Farm Lite mu) RralM. Nearly three-fourffes of the men who have been chosqp by the people for the great offices of the nation who are men who were early familiar with wooded hills and. cultivated fields—for example, Lincoln, Grant, Garfield, Hamlin, Greeley, Tilden, Cleveland, Harrison, Hayes, Blaine, and many others almost equallv conspicuous in current events or living memory. Among journalaists, Henry Watterson spent his early life in rural Kentucky, and Murat Halstead was born and lived on a farm in Ohio. W. Vanderbilt was born in a small New Jersey town and early engaged in the business of ship chandlery; Russel Sage was born in a New York village; Jay Gould spent his early years on his father’s farm In Now York State. Ingersoll first saw light in a country town in New York; Talmage in a New Jersey village, and David Swing, though born in Cincinnati, passed his boyhood on an Ohio farm. Whittier and Howells spent their youth in villages, the former dividing his time between farm employment and his studies. Follow the list out yourself and see how long it will become.