Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1882 — Cornstalk Fnel. [ARTICLE]

Cornstalk Fnel.

An lowa farmer, who has both coal and wood on his farm, warms his house with cornstalks, and claims that thev make the best aud cheapest fuel that he cau get. He uses a large stove, and burns the stalks in tightly bound bundles, weighing about forty pounds each. A bundle burns[three houis (without flame) in an air-tight stove. The large stove otters so much radiating surface that the stove does not need to be very hot. Five bundles a day, or 600 for the winter, suffice to keep the stove going and the room warm. The farmer, Mr. Ruggles, says: “I can bind up 600 bundles of cornstalks in two days alone. Icoulden,t fchop the wood to warm, this room in a week. Then in the Spring I have a load of stoug ashes for my wheat-field, while my neighbors have to cut up the same cornstalks in the Spring to get them away from the harrow. It makes me smile when I here about people up in Minnesota who have fiftyfftcre corn-fields, and still go cold, or buy coal. Why, I’d rather burn cornstalks than cut maple wood within sight ot the house.”