Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 January 1894 — REAL RURAL READING [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

REAL RURAL READING

WILL BE FOUND IN THIS DEPART M ENT. Criadstooe That Does Away With the Small Boj -dood larmt and Good Farmera—Care of Food —Weevil in World's Fair Grain. A Bit ytie Grindstone. The accompanying cut shows how a grindstone may be easily and cheaply set up on any farm and in a manner so as to dispense with the small boy as a motive power. Two solid triangular pieces of framework should be made, in each of which is a strong upright piece I D with a groone DD in which the axle of the grindstone rests. Between the triangles should be ‘placed a pan C, to

hold water. A wheel B is hung between the grindstone A and the water pan 0. The wheel should be of iron and the tire-as wide as the stone and the pan kept filled with water so as to ju-st. touch the tire of the wheel. The wheel also has pedals, H, pn the outside of the arianglesso the grinder as he sit-; in the old mowing machine scat, K, which is fastened to the triangle, turns the small wheel by means of the pedals. The small wheel is kept wet enough to moisten the grindstone just about as much as is needed. The grindstone rests wholly upon the wheel and as its axis is kept within the slotted upright, it can move freely and easily. As the wheel wears away it gradually drops in the slot. —Farm and Home. The Care of Food. It is a very common practice to put away food that comes from the store in the brown paper in which the dealer wraps it While this may be convenient, it certainly is open to serious objection on tbe score of health and cleanliness. Most of the cheap papers are made from materials hardly up to the standard of the housekeeper’s ideas of neatness, and, although Ja certain degree of heat is employed in theic preparation, it is by no means sufficient to destroy all of the disease germs with which the raw material may be filled. When it is taken into • consideration that waste paper of all sorts and those used for ail purposes are gathered up and worked over into new paper to wrap our food in, it behooves the housewife who cares for the health of her family to see to it that articles of food remain in contact with such wrappings the very shortest possible time. It is not unusual to see meat, butter, cheese, and other extremely succeptable articled put away in the very cheapest, commonest brown paper, a practice which is usually discontinued forthwith as soon as a realizing sense of the objectionable material is borne in upon the mind. Immediately upon the receipt of soft groceries or fruits they should be put into earthenware dishes, ancl under no circumstances should they be allowed to remain in the papers in which they were delivered. It is useless to expect that a better class of paper will be employed, and so we may as well make up our minds to guard against trouble by shifting all articles of food to some dish that is absolutely free from contaminating demon:s.—New York Ledger.

Good Farms and Good Farmers. The first essential of good farming is a good farm, says the American Agriculturist, and a good fanner is pretty certain to have a good farm. That close observation and sound practical iudgment requisite to success in farming will enable its possessor to select a good larm. If a good farmer by any chance or accident—inheritance for instance—comes into possession of an irreciaimably poor farm, he will not keep it long. He will not waste his energies in an attempt to make money from a poor farm. What kind of a farm would a good farmer select? He would avoid extremes: selection neither a light sandy or gravelly soil, nor a stiff, heavy clay. Especially would he Rvoid a cold, wet, shallow soil with an impervious hardpan subsoil. A jvery light soil will not produce large, paying crops without too much outlay lor manures. A stiff clay soil too much subjected to climatic conditions. When the season Is ji|st right, neither too wet nor too dry. it may be cultivated well and produce large crops, butiu a very wet or very dry season it is pretty sure to baffle all the efforts of the farmer, ahd result in failure. Draining will do much toward ameliorating such-soils, but even then there are tob many days in the year when they are untillable, and it is very difficult to accomplish the necessary work in the proper season for plant growth. Shelter for Stock. A very cheap and warm shelter may be made by setting pests firmly in the ground and covering with a roof of po'.es or 10. g rails. Over this lay a covering of straw or coarse hay. Cover this with a few poles or boards to hold the straw in position, bet other posts two feet outward from the first ones. Wire a few poies to each set, tilling in the spaces with straw firmly crowdcc} into position. By having a door at one side the result will be as warm a room as can be nidde from boards and straw in a barri basement. For shedding rain properly, make one side three or four feet higher than the other, or make it level, putting a load of straw on top in the form of a pyramid to shed the rain. While this and other forms of temporary shelter are cheap and require no direct outlay for material, yet rather than follow up their construction year after year a permanent

structure of wood should be erected. This should be built in a substantial manner, making the foundations solid, and nailiDg each piece firmly in position. The roof should not be less than a quarter pitch, and. if possible, obtain all boards a year in advance that they may become properly seasoned. To KUt Hog Lie. We hear a good deal about lies on poultry and ticks on sheep, but there is rarely any mention of the parasites on hogs, though these animals are tormented equally with the others bv little insects which feed on them freely. These parasites, which are doing their best to render our fattening ration of no avail, are easily destroyed bv the ever-useful kerosene emulsion. When a dip in the mixture is not practicable, a spraying machine can be used with good effect. The kerosene emulsion is made by boiling a pound of soap, hard or soft, in a gallon of boiling water. Theft add to this two Quarts of kerosene, and the lather of the soap will cause the oil to mix so that it will not again separate Kerosene emulsion may be mad ’ with milk instead of with soapsuds, but the best place to apply milk to hogs is on the inside. For destroying vermin the soap lather emulsion with kerosene is quite as good, and perhaps better, as the soap helps to clean away anv scurf from the skin. Convenient Pig Tzoughft. When a pig comes to a trough for feed or slop he generally comes in a hurry, and is not content with plunging his snout into it, but must thrust his fordfeet into it also. If these are covered with mud and filth, as very often they are, this is mixed with the feed or slop, and certainly cannot

be very conducive to the health of the animal. It would be much better for tbe pig, and the eater thereof, if this should be prevented, and the animal compelled to Keep his dirty feet out of his dish. It should be borne in mind shat the pig’s neck is short, and that ho cannot reach very far, and, therefore, his trough must neither be high, wide, nor deep, and itr should be so placed that the bottom is on a level with his feet. Some good forms of troughs are shown in the illustrations from the American* Agriculturist. A General Purpose Cow. A good many farmers are coming to believe that theie is a general purpose farm cow, in spite of all that has been said to the contrary. By a general purpose cow is meant, of course one which is good for butter and milk, and which is sufficiently well bred to impress all her good characteristics on her progeny. She may be of any one of several breeds, but it is a great mistake to suppose that she ii av be of no breed at all, for then she would not possess this last and most desirable quality. This ideal farm cow should have a large Ira’iie so that her male calves should ■be valuable, beevea She should be well pedigreed, so that the hei er calves would have a pro nise to been . e as good milkers and buttermakers as herself. She should be handled for dairy purposes fro u the time she drops her first calf, so as to promote the tendency toward a long period of milking. There are many farms upo > which such a cow will prove of greater value than one handled especially for milk or butter. —Philadelphia Enquirer. Building Up a Flock. On a farm one of the cheapest as well as one of the best ways of building up a flock of sheep is to select the best of the ewes and breed to full blood ram of a good breed —one that is best adapted to your locility and the purpose for which you are keeping sheep. Keep on selecting the ewes, selecting a new ram every two years in order to infuse new blood. There is five times as much profit in mutton as in the fleece A sheep may be (fed for one-seventh of-the food that an ox requires, and will make a growth of nearly three quarters of a pound a day for the first 280 days of Its life, when it becomes excellent mutton. For 600 days it will make nearly a half a pound a day. Such sheep will net 6 cents a pound at the farm; but such sheep, too, having a large carcass, will have a large fleece in proportion.

Yield of Potatoes. The average vield of potatoes in this country is about fifty bushels per acre, yet in competitive trials as many as 900 bu-hels per acre have been grown, proportionately, -on,an experimental plot. This was done with care and judicious use of fertilizers. It is true that it would l e difficult for any lariuer to produce 900 bushels on an acre of land, but the low average indicates that something better can be done with such a crop. Peat Spread Broadcast. It is claimed, witli much show of truth, that the entire exhibit of foreign grain at the VVorld’s Fair was infested by the weevil', which has done enormous damage to crops in Southwestern Russia and in India, and was brought to the fair in the grain from those countries. Any farmer who has procured grain from the World’s Fair should burn it immediately, and every effort made to prevent the spread of this pest.—Ex. - i A Aim for Isijc Yields. If a farmer can grow 100 bushels of corn on an acre instead of fifty bushels he will make more than twice the profit, although his yield is only doubled, for the'reason that he will haye fess land. to ; plow,- and the flist cost of production will be less. The greater the yield of crop the smaller the cost proportionately. - _ —. . * 1 1 It doesssonle peoplfe‘much good to catch you in a blunder that you may be a certain kind of a philanthropist by making a tew occasionally. . r

EICYCLE GRINDSTONE.

DEVICES FOR KEEPING FEED TROUGHS CLEAN.