Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1881 — Farm and Workshop Notes [ARTICLE]

Farm and Workshop Notes

The Msrecbsl Niel rose is of no particular value for house culture. Ills estimated that there is not more than one acre of laud to a farm in Vermont planted in corn. Pigs art able to oonsome far more food in proportion to their weight, than either sneep or oxen. Combs and wattles of fowls may be prevented from freezing by oiling them so as to prevent their getting wet. Sweet apples are an excellent feed for cows, if supplied in moderate quantities and under favorable circumstances. A. B. Goff, of Michigan, is said to have exhibited an onion seventeen inches in circumference, weighing upward of two pounds.

Green manuring, or the ploughing in of green crops, is especially adaptea for light, sand soils, which need humas to increase their retentive power. To remove rust from knives: Cover them with sweet oil well rubbed on, and after two days take a lump of fresh lime anc rub till the rust disappears. A farm can be stocked with sheep chaper than with any other animals. Sheep will come nearer to utilizing everything which grows on the farm. Professor Beal, a.the Michigan Agricultural College, has 1,000 different grasses and clovers growing, each in a separate bed, in the garden attached to the College. Add a little glycerine to the grease applied to harness, and it will be kept in a soft and pliable state, in spite of the ammoniacal exhalations of the stable, which tend to make it brittle.

Sheep should be tagged regularly and kept clean. They should be culled every year, and those in any manner deficient in form or age should be put In a separate pasture and fattened for the butcher. Swamp iffuck is of little value for pot-plants. Leaf-mould mixed with the loam taken just under the sod of an old pasture is suitable for nearly all plants; additions of sand and manure can be made as necessary. The celebrated French agriculturist, who for many years held first ratik in the art of fattening sheep, when urged to diVUlge his secret, replied: “My secret? I have none; It is only a question of fare. Induce the animal to eat abundantly by a large, choice variety and good preparation of food; that is all there is In it.” Hollow steel shaftiitg is being introduced into France. It is made by casting the metal around a core o' lime, the ignot being finally rolled into shafting, the lime Core going with it and diminishing in diameter in the same proportion as tbs metal, even when the total diameter is fedbised as low as one-fourth of an inch.

All parts of the oleander are deadly A very small quantity of tho leaves has been known to kill a horse. The flowers have produced death in those persons who carelessly picked and ate them. The branches, divested of their bark and used as skewers, have poisoned the meat roasted ou them and killed seyen out of ten people who partook of iL Bricklayers make use of spirits of turpentine, alpo of vinegar, for thg purpose of removing mortar stains from preosed brick fronts, the materials being Carefully applied with a sponge or rcg. Any acid applied in tue above manner, Gi very dilule form, would antwer the purpose, iinegar beiug a very dilute acetic acid is probably as good a receipt as can ba given Tlie scales which drop oft from iron when beiug worked at forges, iron rimmings, things or other ferruginous ma'erial, If worked into the a*>ii about fruit trees, or tbe more minute particles spread thinly ou the lawn, mixed with the' dirt of flotfer beds or in pots, are extremely valuable.- They are especisf.y valuable to the peach tfee, and in fact supply nect-Ssari ingredicuts to the soil. For colored ft >wefs they beighteu the bloom; they afe also found to be beneficial to the pear when worked in arouud their roots.