Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1895 — FARM AND GARDEN. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FARM AND GARDEN.

BRIEF HINTS AS TO THEIR SUCCESSFUL MANAGEMENT.. •a • - 1> Bow to Raise Sorghum and Make It Into Byrup Convenient Crate for Handling Young Stock Fighting the Army Worm—Red Cotton. Sorghum from Seed to Syrup. To raise good sorghum requires good seed. Early amber is the best variety for the North and requires about four pounds of seed per acre. Select good corn land, plow and pulverize thoroughly, and mark the soil as for corn, three feet each way. Plant by hand or with a cornplanter, from six to eight seeds in a hill. Plant May 10 to 20 In the North. Sorghum is a very ■low-growing crop, and one need not feel discouraged if It does not start well at first. When three or four Inches high, thin to three stalks In the hill, and cultivate and hoe as for corn, keeping the piece very clean. It ought to be cultivated four or five times. It is ripe when the seed becomes black and should not be cut before then. First, strip the blades from the stalks by using a piece of wood shaped like a sword. With a strong, sharp knife, and the stalks gathered under the arm, cut the tops off, then the canes. The

SORGHUM FURNACE AND EVAPORATOR, seed is excellent food for poultry. Lay the canes as cut in large piles, handy to load into a wagon, and then haul to the mill. If to be ground at home, purchase an iron mill, as a wooden mill, while the syrup is as good, wastes milch by leaving the juice in the bagasse. An evaporator for reducing the juice to syrup is perhaps best if there is a large amount. For small quantities, pans can bo made at home with less outlay. Each pan should bo at least three by six feet; and at least three will be needed ns well as three each of loug-handled skimmers and dippers. Never start a fire in the furnace until the first pan is filled with juice and there are several inches of water in the others. Great care should also be taken when the syrup goes Into the finishing pans that it is not scorched. The fire must not be too tierce, and it is well to have a wooden scraper to move back and forth. In the last compartment should be a faucet to run off the clear syrup into a clean, tight keg or barrel. While the juice is boiling, skim constantly. When the scum Is white, raise the gate, run into next compartment, and fill up the large pan with raw juice, and so continue. The fireplace or arch and the chimney can be made of brick or stone. The cane should never be allowed tbfreeze, as it spoils and makes the juice bitter. Hauling Hay from Soft Ground. On many farms there are marshes and other soft pieces of land into which the wheels of the ordinary hayrack cut deeply. A wood sled fitted with such shoes as are figured herewith can be used for hauling off hay. An inch-thick board is sawed repeatedly across one end, as shown in the upper sketch, and

is then forced into the shape desired. Strips of joist are fastened to the upper side, leaving just room enough between them for the side of the wood sled to set in. A bolt slipped through the joist and through the side of the sled at the front and rear holds the shoe on firmly. An ash board makes a serviceable shoe of this sort and one easily bent into shape. Churning by Machinery. When the churning of the cream is done by hand it entails a most arduous task upon some member of the farm household, and In many cases it falls to the lot of the housewife. During the summer, where from three to five cows are kept, there is half an hour of this heavy work every day. There is often a large dog watching the operation of churning, that he may obtain his usual fill of buttermilk. A treadmill can be obtained for a few hours, and the dog made to do the work, and you may watch the operation or devote your time to other household duties. With the Improved, or even the common powers, a dog weighing fifty pounds can do the chujnlng of the cream from five not Injure himself. Such work In hot weather should be done early in the morning, while it is cool. The butter churned then will be firmer. If the dog is treated kindly, and petted, he will gladly do the work, and be ready at the call, or appear as soon as preparations are observed for the operation. Calves, sheep and goats are often used in treadmills, but the dog is the most cleanly, and is best adapted to the Tyork. Human-life Is too short to spend much of it manipulating the churn dasher, especially when other power is so plentiful. An attachment can be placed on the windmill, but calms interfere. Balt in Hay Mows, There is no advantage in strewing salt over damp hay or grain, as is often done by farmers, but this only dissolves it, and the solution is not strong enough to put the hay or grain in pickle. A little salt hastens instead of retards decomposition. A much better plan is to throw an occasional forkful Of dry straw into the mow or over ths surface. If this cannot be had welldried brick scattered through the heap will answer a good purpose. It is astonishing how much water a dry brick will absorb before it is saturated. Bricks are often so used in granaries when the grain has been put Into them too damp. The brick takes up the moisture and thus dries the grain it Is in contact with, and this helps to dry

other grain until the heap is dried out .without beating. Weight and Yield of Egg*. Geese, 4 to the pound; 30 per annum. Polish, 0 to the pound; ISO per annum. Bantams, 16 to the pound; 100 per annum. Houdans, 8 to the pound; 180 per annlum. La Fleche, 7 to the pound; 200 per annum. Hamburgs, 9 to the pound; 200 per annum. Turkeys, 5 to the pound; 30 to 60 per annum. Game fowls, 9 to the pound; 160 per annum. Leghorns, 9 to the pound; 200 per annum. Black Spanish, 7 to the pound; 175 per annum. Plymouth Rocks, 8 to the pound; 150 per annum. Langshans, 8 to the pound; 150 per annum. Brahmas, 7 to the pound; 130 per annum. Guinea fowl, 11 to the pound; 160 per annum. Ducks, 5 te the pound; 30 to 60 per annum.—Farmers’ Review. Pisa in Orchards. All young pigs in the orchard should be left unringed and free to root the soil as much as they like. Ringing older hogs is sometimes necessary, as in a dry time old sows will get in the habit, if unringed, of gnawing the bark of the trees and thus destroying them. An old hog also in rooting will make deep hog wallows in the soil, destroying some apple roots and making the surface very uneven. It is probable from eating apple roots in the soil that ths older hogs get their liking for apple tree bark and learn to attack the tree trunk above ground. When they get this habit it is impossible to entirely break them of it. However well fed they may be they like a feed of apple tree bark for a change. Top-Boarding a Stone Wall. Many of the pastures in the older parts of the country, says the Orange Judd Farmer, are bounded by stone walls which are rarely built so as to turn sheep, and not always cattle. Driving stakes beside the wall and nailing a top board to these does not bring the board in the right position over the top of the wall. The cut shows how this may be done by using strips of board for stakes. When these strips have been fitted at the top, after being driven into the ground, a bit little is bored close to the ground through the

strip and a round pin driven through. This being done on both sides, the board cannot be pressed either way where the ground is soft. In firm ground such a pin is not needed. The Plnm Rot, Of all fruits the plum is most likely to overbear. It would do so every year if the curcullo did not thin it. As it is, it bears so heavily that it makes a great drain on the vitality of the tree and also on its capacity to furnish the mineral elements required to make the seeds. All stone fruits have very large seeds In proportion to their pulp. It is probably lack of potash and phosphates that makes plums rot badly in the seasons when the trees have set a crop that they are unable to mature. Good Feed in Plenty. Plenty of good feed for a cow is all right, but it will not make a good cow out of an inferior milker. The constitutional characteristics of the cow have more to do with the amount and quality of her milk than does her feed. Both, however, are Very important'matters. A Convenient Crate. The Illustration, taken from the American Agriculturist, shows a very convenient crate for handling sheep, calves and pigs. Each end is hinged, so that the animal can be driven in at one end, the handles slipped into the iron sockets at the sides, the crate carried to the point desired, and the

animal driven out at the other end. Such a contrivance is specially valuable in handling calves, which in many cases can neither be led, driven or coaxed along. The crate should be made light but strong, spruce being the very bMt wood for such constructions, as 11 la light but exceedingly tough. Weight of Fodder Per Acre. „ A yield of two tons per acre of hay is fair, and probably in good years more land goes below the yield than above it Yet as an acre of land is 43,560 feet this’yield is about one pound to every eleven square feet Looked at in this way the yield seems very small. It is probably true that in most meadows there are vacant spots not seeded which .reduce the yield. Fodder corn ought to yield fifteen to twenty tons per acre. Red Cotton. Red cotton has been raisbti at Alpharetta, Ga., where a wfell-known planter has quite a quantity of that curious stuff, every stalk of which is a deep red, even the leaf, boll and bloom. This novel crop comes from planting seeds obtained six or-seven years ago from a freak stalk of red cotton found growing in Florida. The Black Butter Bean, It may not be generally known that the common black butter bean will bear continuously through the season if the. pods are all picked as soon as they are large enough to use. If any are allowed to ripen, the plant has fulfilled it* mission and will die.

SERVICEABLE HAY SLED.

STONE WALL TOP-BOARDED.

CRATE FOR YOUNG STOCK.