Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1887 — HUSBANDRY AND HOUSEWIFERY. [ARTICLE]

HUSBANDRY AND HOUSEWIFERY.

Matters of Interest Relating to Farm and Household Management. Information for tbe Plowman, Stockman, Poulterer, Nurseryman, and Housewife. ' THE FARJJ Stock Quickly Profitable. The pig is emphatically the poor man’s friend, though it should be supplemented by the cow. More meat can be made from the pig with the same feed than with any other animal. Besides, pigs breed so rapidly that even a small stock is quickly increased, and it is an animal that is always salable at something near its market value. J’ermanent Paeturce. Clover is excellent for the soil, but it is not a good pasture on account of its instability. It cannot be depended on more than one year, and is not a good feed for milch cows even then. Cattle will turn any time from a field of thrifty clover to eat the shorter and swoeter herbage in fence corners where the plow has not recently disturbed it. Convenience* in t arm-House’. Mrs. Kidgie, teacher of household economy in Kansas Agricultural College, says: A large proportion of the women in country homes, where housework is hardest, work a great disadvantage. The disadvantage comes to the worker in the kitchen—first, through not having a house built to work in, and, second, through not having the mnnv small conveniences to work with that are to be found in our ordinary furnishing stores of to-day. In building a house, the usual way on the farm is to block out a plan, then put it into the hands of the carpenter, and they really do the arranging of much of the inside of the house. Now, sinee a woman is to have the most of the living in these rooms, why doesn’t she do the planning? It seems reasonable that she should at least decide upon her kitchen, with its pantry, its cupboards, closets, drawers and sink—putting things in just as she individually wants them. She may tuck in a few large closets, also, where men might, as a rule, think there were none needed. Twenty years ago a Kansas carpenter was utterly astonished when a woman, who was having a house built, insisted on two closets for the second floor, w’here there were three rooms. Two closets were almost unheard of then in a Kansas farm-house. If the good work needed in the building of the house be neglected, a little money Bpent in the way of buying conveniences for doing work will often save itself over and over again in wages for help, and, mayhap, in doctor’s bills as well. The washing-machines and wringers take away half the horrors of Monday, and nickelplated irons, with wooden handles; help Tuesday to dispose of the irening with amazing rapidity. The carpet-sweeper is a true missionary to tired muscles, for it often saves them from destruction. Even the egg-beater, a good coffee-mill, sharp knives, light kettles,(the new granite ware is so much easier to lift thnn the old iron pots), plenty of pans and basins, all goto make up comfortable days for a woman by giving her a chance to do her work rapidly and well. Many cooks keep their flour in very inconvenient receptacles. A flour chest, which the young ladies of the kitchen laboratory have found very convenient, is easily made at home by almost any man if he can handle tools even only indifferently. It consists of a flour box on one side, with a divided box on the other for graham nnd corn-meal. A molding board slides over both, and small boxes on each side contain spices, flavoring extracts, soda, bakingpowder, and, indeed, all the small necessaries for cooking. Nails on the side hold the stirring spoons; and, in truth, nil tho articles wanted when one must do cooking are found right here. We often take our large cake bowl to this flour chest, and, scarcely stepping away, have a cake or biscuits ready for the oven. Of course, every woman in having made anything of that kind would have her individual ideas worked out. No stranger would want one exactly like ours, no two women would have them precisely the same. Many prefer the tilling flour boxes, where the chestful springs out or in at the touch of a finger. There are two of these in our kitchen laboratory, but the girls seem to prefer the larger one, where everything is within reach. Now, these are simply examples. Every woman who keeps house, doing her own work, can, if she choose, have many inexpensive .helps that will do much toward preserving her health and strength. I hold it every woman’s duty to so measure her work that she can do each day’s share without overtaxing her strength, that she has no right to draw upon; and when she does overuse the amount given her for her one day’s work, she draws upon tfie future, making herself liable to the henviest kind of nsury when she is called to pay her debts.— Ths Industrialist,.

THE STOCK RANCH. Healthy Hogs. It has been pretty definitely proved that •filth, impure water, and general want of core are largely conducive to epidemics of so-called hog cholera, a number of diseases—lung, intestinal, and blood diseases —going under that name when more than usually fatal. In view of the fact that water-courses and ponds are especially low this season, owing to the drouth, those •who have droves of hogs should be especially carefully that swine do not pet •water from these sources. Such water will bo more than likely to carry the germs of malignant disease. The better plan would bo to use only tho water of wells, even nt tho "expense of considerable extra labor. In addition to this great care should be -used that all the surroundings be kept perfectly clean. No less important is a diversity of food. Tho man who places his dependence on corn us diet for nogs, old and vonnp, is ponerally the first to suffer when malignant diseases become epidemic. Swine is riot only gregarious in their habits, but they are dependent upon a variety of food, and cannot be kept on one •single article even as well as other farm animals. Tbe sagacious man will'easily understand the necessity of changing the grain food of swino, as well as supplying a daily quantity of vegetable food. This may consist of any plants tbe hogs will eat, including .clover So . for as roots are concerned artichokes and potatoes will be indicated, and if swine can be allowed to gather these for themselves so mnch the better. At the first symptoms of disease the feeder shonld look to the surroundings and remove all the animals to clean pastures, separating tho sick from the well. When we find drooping cars, low-hanging head, diarrhea, vomiting, rapid breath, and on aversion to light, tho hog is far on the road to death. - t Pearling Colts. „ The average yearling colt wintered in the yard or in the fields, iu the North, is usually a sorry looking object Bony, ny, the skin covered with matted hair, as been indeed a strugglo with him for life. It is midsummer before he becomes

at all decent-looking as to flesh, and he never recovers from the cruelty that made a walking skeleton of him between weaning time and the spring. Such masters nsnsally make the mare do doable work in the summer-raise a colt and labbr every dnv on the farm. The consequence is the colt has had little milk, and that fevered. It soon learns to eat graßS indeed, but this is at the expense of disordered digestion, from which the colt never recovers. The mare, also, from being overtaxed, may have become the victim of dropsy and other seriohs disorders. And. yet how many otherwise kindly and God-fearing men are there who think they have performed their whole duty* to the animals of the farm. The stinting process “never made money in any department of industry. It never pays with any farm animal, and least of all with colts in their first year. It has filled the country with weedy, weak, undersized horses; and contiuued from generation to generation, the shambling plug type of horse is fixed, entailing loss year by year. We have written more than once that whatever of real flesh nn animal loses in winter is a dead loss. It is not necessary to reiterate the arguments why this is so. The fact shows for itself. Shall you have other colts to raise this summer? . . ■ Are you of the class that has followed the starving policy, both as to feeding and exposure? Turn over a new leaf and begin nnew. Feed so as to develop the frame, however indifferent it may be from bad breeding and lack of shelter. Weed out the plug mares of the farm, and get better ones as soon as you are able. One strong mare that has been well-fed and handled from colthood will do the work of two illkept starvelings, and require but little more food than the one ought to have. Work the mare up to the time of foaling. It will not be amiss. Once they have foaled give them a rest during tho heat of summer. It will pay both in the colt nnd in the future value of the mare. — Farm, Field and Stockman.

THE DAIRY. Sell Butter Promptly. The first market for butter is invariably the best. The chances for a rise, however good, will be of no avail to the holder of old stock. Time was when housewives packed June butter so that it would keep a year, but the art seems to have been lost, ns it is certain'that all popular faith in it is. The new-fashioned creamery butter cannot be kept long, however well made. Some farmers’ wives, however, who make butter from the cream, as skimmed from sour milk, are in the habit of packing grass butter for home use, and with good management they can keep it better than that fresh made in winter. How Milk Is Produced. In a lecture by Mr. Primrose McConnell on agricultural science, in the South Kensington (England) course, as reported in the Agricultural Gazette, milk was shown to have both a chemical composition and a definite structure, yet natural milk may vary from 83 to 90 per cent, of water, with a corresponding poverty of everything else, and with fats ranging from 6 per cent, down to less than 2 per cent. The average composition was stated at: W.at0r...... 87.26 Butter.. 3.50 Caseine. 3.50 Albumen. 40 Milk-sugar... 4.60 Ash .75 • . 100.00 or solids 12.75, against 87.25 per cent, of water. The total solids may be increased by special feeding, but not in the proportion of any one ingredient. Fatty matter given to cows is not turned to butter, but, assimilated in the body, it thus indirectly leads to improvement in the general quality of the milk. Albuminoids in the food are directly converted into butter-fats as well as albuminoids in milk. Hence it was found that oil-cakes were not the best food, but that bean-meal and decorticated cotton-cake were among the superior concentrated foods for cows. Washy (sloppy) food increases the water and hence reduces the solids. Exercise tends to the using up of nitrogenous matter, and in cows it is secreted as caseine, while rest tends to the conservation of fats. Hence, when cheese is the object, the cows Should have exercise, but for the production of butter the best results are obtained where cows are kept continually tied up. Variation in the relative ingredients are duo to breeds and their peculiarity, but the various ingredients are perfectly defined and separate from one another, nnd kept to pretty nearly the same relative proportions. The lecturer called attention to the peculiarities of milk as between that of Jerseys and Ayrshires, the former containing 5 to 6 or more per cent, of butter, with large corpuscles, the latter with smaller corpuscles, but rich in caseine, containing as much ns of butter, givingjn the average 3.50 of each. Large butter corpuseles require large gland cells to form them, and these are the result of development. The total solids depend most on food, treatment, etc., and variation of ingredients most on breed. There is no reason to suppose that any breed has as yet reached its “structural limit,” and improvement is to be sought in selection and using butter and milk tests as a guide.

THE FORESTER. Tree- Planting. Forestry is deservedly receiving increased attention from intelligent nnd far-sighted Americans. Many of us who have traveled through hundreds of miles of forests in sections of this country and in Canada nre apt to think at first sight that the lumber supply will last a century. It should be remembered that in the United States the Consumption of timber per capita of the population is infinitely larger than in Europe, where few or no frame bouses are bnilt, where no new settlements are made and where only a very small minority of the people are so situated that they may indulge in the luxury of fine furniture and carriages. The parlor and sitting-room furniture of almost any of onr skilled mechanics or small shopkeepers, made np from black walnut, cherry, or ash, would be considered a luxury for many a 1 European, officer of more than ordinary rank. In the rural districts of Spain, Italy, France, and Germany scarcely one out of a hundred persons is able to boy furniture of what we would call the most common kind. Here in America the proportion of the use of timber for furniture and carriage work to its production has become an important factor. Within the past twenty-five years the price of sack timber has risen at a rapid rate and is still increasing. Tbe governments of Prussia, of several of the smaller German principalities, and of France, Austria, and Italy, make foreßt culture an unfailing source of a large yearly jevenne. They find it profitable to buy tracts of inferior lands at prices eqnal .to those of onr farming lands and to stock them with Umber. This is not to be expected in this country at present, but it is high time onr people shonld be educated np to the importance of some Bystem of .forestry in the near fntnre. European Larch and Seeding. The veteran horticulturist, Robert Donglas, of Waukegan, in answer to the qneslion, “Does the European Larch Perfect Its Seeds in America?” says: “I have grown hundreds of European larch cones on onr

own trees, and bo far have never found a perfect seed in them. Some years ago a person stated that immense quantities of European larches were from seeds collected from his own trees. I followed the matter np very closely and found that the seeds were imported like our own. Mr. Meegan, of The Gardner’s Monthly, inspected the cones from the Barthnm specimen in Philadelphia, over one hundred years old, and the oldest tree of the kind in America, but never found a perfect seed. Several years later I examined Mr. Fay’s larch plantation on Cape Cod, and his brother’s plantation at Lynn. On the latter, the second time I examined it, I did find two large seedlings. Being in company with good t)r. 'Warder, I called his attention to them us, in my opinion, quite a remarkable flndl Last August, while examining a plantation of foreign trees at Hanover, N. H., that had bqen presented to the college there some years ago, I found a large number of European iarch trees as fine as I ever saw of their age. In the coolest part of this plantation, standing on two steep hill-sides and the narrow valley between, I saw a large number of larch seedings. This fact established that which previously had been only a theory to me. Those larches stood in a cold, exposed situation, further north than I had ever found larch trees of bearing age. But even here, judging from the ages of the Beedings, it is only now and then a year that European larches in this country will produce perfect seeds. The larches we sent to Minnesota, planted by Leonard Hodges along the railroad between St. Paul and Duluth, I think should be now or very soon producing perfect seed- Give the European larch a cool, moist climate, and it will, I think, prove itself to be of more value than any other imported forest tree.”

THE HOUSEKEEPER. " J . Finger Marks, Finger marks may be removed from varnished furniture by the use of a little sweet oil upon a soft rag. Patient rubbing with chloroform will remove paint from black silk or any other material. •4 Moth Preventive. The following recipe for keeping moths out of the clothing is a favorite in some families: Mix half a pint of alcohol, the same quantity of spirits of tprpine and two ounces of camphor. Keep in a stone bottle, and shake before using. The clothes or furs are to be wrapped in linen, and crumpled-up pieces of blotting paper dipped in the liquid are to be placed in a box with them, so that it smells strong. This requires renewing about once a year. Beautiful Articles Easily Made. Very pretty things can be made out of common checked glass cloths by working stars of colored wool and cotton in each alternate square—blue stars on the blue checks, pink on the pink. The work is really effective and makes up into nightdress cases, brush bags, cabin tidies, toilet covers, bed coverlets or morning aprons. A nightdress case of check glass cloth, worked with pale blue stars, lined with pale blue sateen, trimmed round with lace and finished Bff with a pale blue ribbon bow, makes a pretty present, accompanied by a brush bag to match. The same may be done in pale pink. For a bed coverlet several lengths of glass cloth must be joined and the alternate squares worked over. There should be a lining of pink or sateen, and a border of broad, coarse lace or white ball fringe. A morning apron looks pretty in this work, trimmed round with lace and with bows on th 9 pockets. Wool is more effective than ingrain cotton for working the squares, but it should be Andalusian wool or fine Berlin, that will wash well. Care of the Hands. If the hands are stained, use a handful of clean sand in the water, rubbing it on the stains. This sand can be rinsed off and kept in a dish for daily use. Oxalic acid will take off stains, but it is a rank poison, and dangerous to have about; it also makes the hands exceedingly harsh. They must be washed thoroughly in tepid water to insure its entire removal, then rubbed with glycerine. The use of too much glycerine makes tho hands moist and cold or clammy, and very disagreeable to the touch. Never hold the hands near the fire while rubbing with glycerine, as it dries in places before penetrating, leaving the hands harsh. Many housekeepers have rough hands in winter, which grow very painful, cracking open on the knuckles, the cracksextending into the palms of the hands. They take their hands out of hot soapsuds or starch, to hang out clothes in the wind. If they did not use hot water and the hands were thoroughly dried before going out, this would be avoided. A pair of white woolen stockings cut off rounding at the ankle and sewed across, with a thumb sewed in, make a very comfortable pair of mittens for hanging up and taking off clothes. Pin them fast to the sleeves with large safety pins before going out, bnving first stretched the arm upward, then they will not come loose and the wrists will be protected. After bring in thp clothes, if the mittens are put in the clothespin-bag they will be kept clenn and in the right place. Hands are injured in very cold weather by lack of protection at the wrists, as large veins and arteries are exposed. The blood is chilled in passing into the hands. Every one cannot have' handsome, white, and shapely hands, but every one can have clean and comfortable hands.— Good Housekeeping.

THE COOK. For Chapped Hands. An excellent glycerine ointment for’ chapped hands, says the Cook, is made by melting, with a gentle heat, two ounces of Sweet oil of almonds, half an ounce of spermaceti and one dram of white wax. When melted, remove from the stove and add an ounce of glycerine, and stir until the mixture is cold. The oinment can be scented with any perfume to suit the fancy. Keep it iu wide-necked bottles. JIOUBt Moose, Alter washing the goose rub it inside and ont with salt and pepper and fill it with mushrooms and two tomatoes or their equivalent of firm pieces of canned tomatoes, seasoning with salt, pepper, and a little lemon juice, sewing np the bird. Roast before a brisk fire for half an hoar “and have a pint of tomato juice and the jnice of one lemon, seasoned with a little pepper and salt, ready to torn over the fowl at the expiration of the time; baste constantly with it, dredging every now and .then with flour, so that the outside will be nicely browned. m -Jumbles. One and one-half capfuls hotter, two capfuls sugar, five eggs, li pints flour, one-half cupful corn starch, one teaspoonful baking powder, one teaspoonful extract lemon, one-half cupful chopped peanuts, mixed with one-half enpful granulated sugar. Beat the butter (and sugar smooth; add the beaten eggs, the flour, corn starch, and powder, sis ted together, and the extract; flour the board, roll out the dough rather thin, cut out with biscuit cutter, roll in the chopped peanuts and sugar, lay on greased baking tins, bake in rather hot oven eight to ten ipinntes. Is it logical to infer that an oyster is one of the moat unfortunate creatures in the world because its case it always a hard one? '