Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1875 — Cooking Food for Swine. [ARTICLE]

Cooking Food for Swine.

These steamers, and food-cookers one aees at the (airs are all veiy nice, but a farmer can niak ■ a better cooker for him■elf at one-third the cost of those patented affairs. Hake a box of hard wood, and of flie desired capacity, ends and sides sloping. For the bottom use a piece of sheet inn as wide as the outside of the box. Race the box upon brick work (a trench in the gtound can be made to answer the poipoefe), within which the fire is placed. St should have a door, with a damper beneath, to admit the air, that the fire may be properly radiated ; the escape for smoke at the opposite end. In the end of the box should be a fauc et or slide, through which the box can be emptied. The "cover is movable, Jjndt should consist of plank, cut on a bevel to correspond with the slope of the sides and the ends of the box, and made to fit inside, not on the top. Place's few loose cleats or supports at interval* in file bottom of the box, after it iagdaced in position over the fire-box or treKSfUB Vpon these supports place a false bottom. Hie false bottom should be parfbtoted sufficiently to allow water topass down‘and up freely, bed the perforations should be sufficiently stnall to prevent considerable quantities of the contents of the box from passing down. The false bottom dbonld be taken oat whenever the box is cleaned, In order to prevent an accumula-

tlon of jnaterial beneath ft. Its object Is to S revent food firom burning, which it would o if upon the bottom of the box proper. It not only has the olferit pi economy in construction, hut oflxfing very economical in operation. The box will hold all that will likely lie required at one time. The fire-box is large and roomy, and the fire can be made largely of old chunks fit for nothing elsC, or of "long pieces of wood, and when the fire has once got fairlv under way the dampers can be cloaca, ami the farmer can go to other work while the cooking is '. proceeding, for if the wood does not burn long enough the bed of coals remaining will be sufficient for the purpose. In constructing such an apparatus it would Ik* well to make the sides oftbe lx>x long enough to admit of their lieing fastened together by iron bolts outside the ends to prevent spreading, and the bottom might In; made a foot or more longer titan the box at one end, and in the projecting port ion a joint of stove-pipe fitted to act as a chimney, and before the bottom is nailed to its place a heavy coat of thick whitelead should be smeared upon tlie edges of the boards that will receive it, that the joint may lx* tight. Tlie fire-box or trench shofild be a little narrower than the Ixittom of the box, so that the fire will not act directly upon the Ixittom where it is nailed to the wwhl. Such an apparatus as is here descril*ed will cook coni admirably, and would, we believe, answer the purpose with meal, if the mush were not required too thick. If corn unground is cooked long enough to become soft, it will probably be found to answer all the purposes of grinding. Such an apparatus can also be used for soaking corn when it is not designed to cook it; and, when hog-killing time comes, it will be found of great use as a scalding vat, keeping fire under it all the time, and reducing the temperature of the water, when necessary, by the addition of cold water. —National Lite Stock Journal.