Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1898 — FARM AND GARDEN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FARM AND GARDEN

Village Bara and Stable. A business or professional man living with his family In a village misses more than half the pleasures of life unless he has a little farm well tilled to supply the family with the fresh milk, fruits and vegetables, the eggs and the poultry without which the housekeeper will be utterly lost. Of course there must be a barn having every convenience In a modest way to supply this want. The

drawings here given represent buildings that have been found entirely satisfactory In every way. The barn has an opejied or covered yard for manure and litter, with a pen for a pig or two to consume the waste, so that nothing be lost. The sizes are not given, as the plan Is expensive and may be made larger or even smaller. The central part has two stalls for horses. This is always a convenience, as although but one is kept there may often be need for R spare bed in the stable as well as In the house for a visitor. The cow stall, roomy and convenient in every way, Is at the rear of the horse stalls, and opens by a gate into the yard, as does also the horse stalls. In the feed passage there Is a feed chest, the hay Is dropped from the upper floor through a shoot directly into the racks In front of the animals. There is roomy carriage house at the other end of the barn, with a drive way clear through R and closets for harness. There may be a poultry house added to the end or rear of the building, and a place for tools adjacent to it. This may be used t by a hatching house for the hens. A cistern should be added unless there is a well to supply the water, or there may be a

cistern In one corner of the carriage room, which will obviate the necessity for expensive drainage to carry, off the roof water. A building of this kind completed in the best manner, painted and guttered, has been finished for $350. Paste Thia in Your Stable. It is everybody’s business to interfere with cruelty. You can get no more power from a horse than you give him In his food. Yelling and jerking the bit confuses a horse and advertises a blockhead. The horse is man’s Invaluable helper and should be treated as a friend. Auy fool can ruin a team, but a wise driver maintains Its value. The best drivers talk much to their animals. Your horse needs water oftener than you. A sandy or muddy road doubles the work. A rise of only one foot in ten doubles the draft. Balking is caused by abuse, overloading or tight harness. Beat Use for Clover Sod. Very few fanners now plow under clover sod to sow for wheat. It is not merely because the sod thus plowed under «annot be put Into condition tor a good seed bed for wheat. The land pays much better to plow next spring, putting ou all the coarse manure that 'can be spared for a crop of corn or potatoes, and then following the hoed crop with winter wheat or spring grain, and thus getting e the land back into clover seeding again with the least |>o«slble delay. Growing Mushrooms. To make a mushroom bed have It In a somewhat dark place. The bed may be of any dcNlred size, tillid threefonrtlie of Its depth with fresh horse manure that is free from litter. covering one-fourth deep with rich earth. Pack the mass and allow it to heat, and when the heat subsides plant pieces of nniAltrooni spawn six Inches apart and two inches deep. Sprinkle or otherwise moisten the bed with lukewarm water. The bid should be k<«pt at growing heat. The Robber Weeds. Unless the cultivator and hoe are kept actively at work among the crops, the robber weeds will speedily outgrow them and take the larger share of the plant food ir the soil whiub. the farf)er

has provided for the requirements of the crops which he has planted. In most cases the weeds, if left undisturbed, will make enough growth in a single week to take all the profit of the crop made by previous working of the surface soil. If there is not moisture to be gathered from the subsoil, the destruction of weeds will do but little good. The weeds have taken all the moisture from the subsoil, and if the field has been plowed shallow in spring, that is all the moisture that there is. Forward Steps. While the advance in labor-saving Implements and machinery has been marvelous, yet a much greater progress has been made in the growing of crops. Fifty years ago but few farmers knew of any fertilizer (other than barnyard manure) outside of bone meal, the bones being pounded and sold at a cost of about SSO per ton. Then came Peruvian guano, which was largely used alone, but which would have given much better results had farmers then Understood that potash and phosphoric acid were necessary’ adjuncts to the guano, as the guano would enable the farmers to secure good crops for a year or two. but exhausted the soil of potash and phosphates, which fact was not fully understood for many years. With the discovery that the refuse from gas works contained a valuable nitrogenous fertilizer, and that there were mines of potash in Germany, a great advantage resulted to farmers, followed by cheaper phosphates from the rivers and rocks of South Carolina, Florida and Tennessee. Fertilizers became cheaper, farmers studied their composition, experiment stations grew into favor and agriculture rose to be a science. Croksinjr for a Fence. It is often necessary, says the New York Tribune, to get over a barbedwire fence or to go a long way around it. Any one who has ever tried it knows the sorrows of an attempt to scale such a fence or to crawl through or tfhder it. Where there is an everyday need for crossing such a fence some plan should be adopted for avoiding the barbs. The cut shows stich a plan. The upright boards are driven into the ground, and the wires let into notches in |he sides. Board steps are nailed in

jnst above each wire, and the wires are stapled to the under side of each. One oan thus readily walk up, over and down on the other side. Make the lower steps wider than the upper. To secure greater rigidity, put the steps nex| to a post, and nail one of the uprights to the post. Coiiimon-PenHe Bee-Keeping. While working with bees the most essential thing to do is to prevent waste. Waste in so<me form makes the difference between poverty and comfort.- Are any of your hives, boards, feeders or others implements of the apiary unnecessarily exposed to the weather? What becomes of your broken combs and pieces of wax? Do you allow the moths to destroy your empty combs? If so, get your hand on the stop that controls waste, and bear on; get on it with both feet if necessary; it will improve your circumstances. Don't waste time waiting for some promising invention that is to work wonders. Don’t get discouraged; be neither elated nor depressed; don’t give away your bees nor dewtroy them; crowd them for all they are worth, but go slow on increase. Add as few to the number of your colonies as possible; feel your way until you know your ground and stick close to your business. In beekeeping the work must be done at the right time; to do otherwise is to give success away. Manure for Peach Trees. One of the difficulties In successful peach growing is to jryt good land to grow them on. The success of peaches on a poor, sandy soil when the country was new, and when even this had plenty of potash, has led to the belief that sandy soil is always best. It requires not only heavy potash manuring to make long cultivated sandy soil fit to grow peaches, but also the building up of humus in the soil so that it can be filled with carbolic acid gas and make the potash effective. Aphides, or Plant Lice. The small, soft-4>odled, green or black, mostly wingless insects that feed in colonies on the loaves of orchard trees, commonly culled the “aphis,’’ or “plant louse," are only too well-known and need no further description. The surest remedy is to spray the infested parts of the trees with diluted kerosene emulsion. The aphides are usually on the under sides of the leaves, and the emulsion, to Im* effective, must lie applied as a strong underspray.—Utah Station. Koodslde Weeds. Probably the farmer who permits all kinds of weeds to grow along the roadside of his farm may not consider It his duty to cut down the weeds on a public highway, but such weeds will be the souix-es from which seeds will be scattered broadcast for next year’s crop, entailing lalwr from early spring until late in the fall. It will be found cheaper to mow the weeds from the roadside than to ignore them. Hurpliie Cow Feed. Never give the cows reason to let up on their milk giving for a single day, and then they will always be at their best. In tiffs great forage crop country of ours the cow should never have to suffer on account of dry weather pasture. Have something In store 'when the dry weather strikes' them. • i

BARN AND STABLE.

FOR CROSSING A FENCE.