Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 February 1883 — FARM NOTES. [ARTICLE]

FARM NOTES.

The Minneapolis Tribune says that goate are the best land cleaners known. It mentions that a herd of 1,000 entirely oleaved a piece of brash land, consisting of 600 acres, in three years. So complete was the work that not a vestige of undergrowth was left. The practice of pasturing sheep or hogs in orchards is excellent, lees for the value of the pasture than for the benefit of the fruit by destroying wormy specimens. The animals should be fed liberally daily but not late at night or early in the morning, so as to encourage them to make early forays for fallen fruit Dark honey sells lower than that which is white. Dark honey Will not ( be found in the hives until summer heat and moisture have liberated oertain chemical properties contained in decomposing vegetation. Thoee properties are secreted by flowers or growing vegetation. Within a radius of seventy-five miles from Montreal upwards of 200 cheese factories have been built within a compara lively shorttime. Ontario isalso increasing her make of cheese. Thus far this year Montreal has shipped to England one half as much cheese as New York.

The evaporation of blaok raspberries by the new process is so suooessfol] that it keeps np the price of this fruit during' the summer. Three and a half quarts of green fruit will makes one pound when evaporated. It takes a bushel of apples to make six pounds of dried fruit Among all of the field crops which the farmers'grow there are few if any that afford a more certain profit than winter rye, whether it be sown for the grain and straw or for a green crop to feed stock in > May. In fact it is a good crop to grow for any early spring pasture. As timothy grass seed, if sown at the same time as winter wheat, is apt to crowd the grain too much, the better way is to wait three or four weeks until the wheat is well np before sowing the timothy. Sow just before a iyin, and no harrowing or bashing will be needed. The Los Angeles Times says that about three miles south of that city is to be seen a hollyhock plant raised from the seed sinoe last April, measuring sixteen feet in height The body of the stock is nearly flat and at a distance of five feet froioMhe ground is five and one half inches in width and fall of bloom.