Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1878 — HOME, FARM AND GARDEN. [ARTICLE]

HOME, FARM AND GARDEN.

—Neverkeepyour cattle short; few farmers can affordUt. If you starve them they will starve you.— Prairie Banner. —The simplest thing on the farm needs study. Not one man in ten who claims to be a farmer, knows how to feed a horse, pig, cow or sheep. —Nothing bnt ultimate and deserved ruin stares that farmer in the face who does not pay personal attention to the most minute details of his farm.— Stale Register. —When laboy is scarce it will be dear —when it is abundant it will be cheap. It is the inevitable law. Legislatures cannot help or hinder.— lowa Stale Register. —Sour Sauce.—Half a cupful of butter and stir in a tablespoonful of flour and one pint boiling water, nearly one cupful sugar, two spoonfuls good vinegar; spice to taste. —Dark Steamed Pudding.—To be steamed two and a half or three hours —one cupful molasses, one cupful sweet milk, two cupfuls butter, four cupfuls flour, one teaspoonful soda, three quarters cupful fruit; spice to suit the taste; to bo eaten with sour sauce. —Raised Dough Cake..—Two cups of dough, one of sugar, one of sweet cream, one-half cup of butter, the same of washed and drained currants, two eggs, half a teaspoonful of soda, spice to taste. Mix well together and set in a warm place to rise. When light bake in a moderate oven. —Vinegar Pie. —One cup of vinegar (if very sharp have one-third water), one tablespoon of flour, one cup sugar, one egg, a piece of butter the size of an egg. Boil the vinegar; wet the flour with a little coin water and stir it in; when the vinegar boils up pour it on the sugar and butter; after it cools add the egg, and bake with under and upper crust. —ln reply to your questions regarding the cactus, I woula say that I never change the earth about the roots of the plant, but I occasionally remove the surface earth to the depth of a couple of inches or so and replace it with well-rotted leaf mold. 1 have two specimens of this plant that are about five feet high, some of the leaves being naarly twenty inches in length.— Cor. Free Press.

—Cocoanut Cake. —Two cups of sugar, one cup of butter, one cup of sweet milk, three and one-half of flour, three teaspoonfuls of baking-powder, six eggs, leaving four of the whites out for filling. Bake in jelly cake pans. The day before baking grate one goodsized cocoanut or two small ones. Beat up four whites of eggs to a stiff froth; to each egg add ten teaspoonfuls of powdered sugar; spread on each layer, sweeten your cocoanut and sprinkle it on top of icing. —Floating Island.—Put a pint of milk in a small tin pail, set it in a kettle of boiling water and let it scald; take the whites of three eggs, beat to a stiff froth, then drop a spoonful at a time into the milk and let them cook About five minutes; then skim them out into a deep dish. Take the yelks, add one egg, sugar, nutmeg, lemon and a very little salt; beat and turn into the milk; let it cook until it is as thick as cream; then turn into the dish with the islands, which will rise to the top. —A Tennessee correspondent says: I want to give you my plan for raising geraniums from the seed. First, to prepare the soil, take one-third of garden mold and two-thirds of “cnipyard” dirt. Then dampen the dirt slightly before sowing the seed and cover of the thickness of a quarter of an inch. Of course you know they will not bloom till the second year. Mine bloomed beautifully the second year, and I gathered seed from them. Have tried this plan for four years and know it to be good.