Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1874 — FARM AND HOUSEHOLD. [ARTICLE]

FARM AND HOUSEHOLD.

• —Cayenne pepper is death to bed-bugs. Dust the bedspreads, crevices and niches well with the condiment.— Exchange. —To sweeten a tainted meat barrel, after washing and scalding to remove grease, fill with fresh soil and let it remaiD a week or ten days. —Lemon Buttery-One pound sugar, five eggs, juice and grated rinds Of three large or four small lemons (none of the seeds), one-quartej pound fresh butter Put into a saucepan and boil about ten minutes, stirring all the time, till thick as honey. Good for jelly cakes, tarts and cheese cakes. Keeps well if dry and cool. —Filing Handsaws. —In filing handsaws that are intended to cut only one way, the majority of mechanics file toward the handle, which leaves the teeth with more bevel on the back than on the front, which is caused by the taper of the file. A few persons file their saws toward the point, which gives more bevel to the front or cutting side of the teeth. Some think that the back side of the teeth should be filed nearly square across, and that the saw will cut equally well and remain sharp much longer. The front side of the teeth should be beveled to suit the timber; soft wood requires more bevel than hard wood. —Western Rural. —Strawberry Short-Cake.—Rub a piece of butter the size of an egg into a little flour, pour into it two cups of sour cream, one teaspoon of soda and a little salt. Mix into dough and roll into cakes about one-half inch thick and ten inches in diameter. Prick with a fork and bake in a quick oven. IjHten done split them open with a knife ana spread with nice butter; lay the bottom piece on a plate and cover it with strawberries nearly an inch deep. (It is better to have the strawberries sprinkled with sugar a few hours before they are put into the cake.) Put over this the topjjf the cake with the crust side down, and a layer of strawberries again; over this lay the bottom piece of another cake and more berries, and put on the top piece right side up. Serve with sweet cream. Short-cakes are sometimes made in this way, substituting raspberries or other fruit for strawberries. —Cut-worms.—The New York Times says: “We have succeeded in greatly reducing the number of this pest by enticing a flock of poultry into the field while it was being plowed. The fowls followed the plow closely, picking up every cutworm exposed and searching every furrow _ for more. There is no other way of ridding the fields of these vermin but by encouraging their natural enemies. These are crows and blackbirds, which devour the grubs and skunks and moles, which devour both the grubs and the beetles, of which they are the larvse. While these creatures are killed or driven off we shall suffer from the depredations of the insects, which are their natural prey. To prevent the destruction of the young corn by the cut-worms to some extent, the seed should be rolled in common pine t§r and then dried in plaster before it is sown.” —Mr. Isaac N. Jacquess, a pioneer of Mt. Carmel, 111., has found a way to kill caterpillars, and that way he tells through the Register, as follows: “ I have an orchard which has been badly infested with caterpillars and I have tried many ways to get rid of them. First, by burning them out, which perhaps would have answered had I commenced soon enough. I then tried shaking them out of the trees, but they were soon back again. My last plan was as follows: Scrape all the loose bark from the trunk of the tree, then take a strip of woolen cloth, and, after saturate ing it with sulphur and grease, tie it around the body of the tree just below where the branches start out; then take a brush and paint a strip two or three inches wide at the band on the tree. The caterpillars, after being shaken out, will again endeavor to mount the tree, but will stop at the sulphur line, where they can be destroyed by the bushel. A week’s labor could have been saved had I known of this plan at the start. I believe it worthy of publication.”