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When a farm is worked on shares, the proprietor should so frame the contract that hay straw, cornstalks and other coarse material shall not be carried off the soil; and he who works it should make and apply a given amount of manure annually. If foreign fertilizers are applied, the proprietor ought to sustain a small portion of the expense, if he receives a share of the rain. The contract should not allow a man to plow up the entire farm at one time, so that there will be no grass the next season, either for pasture or meadow.- Working Farmer.

Rye as a Farm Crop.

straw is worth from twenty-four to thirty dollars per ton in New York city, and is of ready sale. At the mills East they pay twenty dollars per ton for it. The business is confined to the States of New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and Illinois. Nine-tenths of the printing paper made of straw is produced in New

poor farming district before the introduction of rye growing, and now the farmers are making good incomes. The mills at Herkimer are now using six tons of rye straw per day. Matthew Smith, of Frankfort, grew last year on an acre of land and from two bushels of sowing, fortyseven bushels of rye, for which he got one dollar aud twenty cents per bushel, and two tons of straw which were sold at twenty-four dollars. This makes eighty dollars and forty cents as the yield from one acre, which may be considered a very profitable crop. Probably the farmers of Herkimer would find it to their advantage to grow rye in connection with the dairy. The Herkimer mills are using two thousand tons of This grain is little cultivated in regions well straw annually, and are forced to get their supadapted to those more valuable and of more gen-ply from Schenectady. It comes in bales. Rye eral use. It belongs more properly to cold, heavy highlands, where Indian corn is in yearly danger from frosts at both ends of the season, and grass is the main crop. If grown exclusively for the grain it is an unpleasant and somewhat expensive crop to handle, on account of the bulkiness of straw, and the grain itself does not bring a comparatively high price in the market. But the straw is far more valuable than that of any of the cereals. The farmer has many uses for it. For thatching purposes it excels, and a roof of this material well put on, will last twenty-five or thirty years. Why should not farmers use straw roofs in preference to expensive ones, or humbugging patent rights? Rye straw is excellent for cutting and mixing with more nutritious food, and for many purposes around the farm it is convenient. It makes cheap and good protection for fruit trees. But the paper makers will pay the most money for it, and farmers will find it profitable to grow rye straw to supply their demands wherever paper mills are in operation within convenient distances. The Utica Herald gives some information respecting the value of rye straw in the central part of this State, which

we copy:

"The making of white printing paper from rye straw was commenced at Fort Edward, N. Y., in 1857. At that time, rye straw could not be procured in sufficient quantities to keep one mill running. It takes two tons of straw for a ton of paper. The farmers began to grow the crop in Washington and Saratoga counties, and now ten large mills are in operation, using in the aggregate fifteen thousand tons annually. The straw at these mills, for the past five years, has averaged less than fifteen dollars per ton, and two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars are brought into these counties for straw alone. Then there is the value of the grain. It was a

York."

We give the above from the Rural New Yorker as an offset to what was said last month on

rye as a grain crop. It was as a grain crop against wheat, and for grain districts, where straw is not merchantable, that our remarks were intended to apply.

BARNS.-We should like to preach a sermon to all our parishioners on barns. We think they need a sermon on this subject—and it should be enforced in a positive style. There should be no milk-and-water sentiments or opinions uttered on a subject of so much importance to every Western farmer. Millions of dollars are wasted every year by the want of good barns. Grain and hay are stacked in the fields, and exposed to the storms of the seasons, and damaged materially thereby. The waste and destruction thus caused would pay more than 25 per cent. interest on every judicious investment of money in barns on every farm in the West. They are indispensable appendages.-Exchange.

The increase of live stock in Australia has so outgrown the requirements of the population that an influential meeting of squatters of the Riverine districts was held at Demliquin in May, at which it was resolved to establish at Hay, on the Murrumbidgee, a joint stock establishment capable of boiling down ten thousand sheep a week.

Sunday Reading.

Alone must every son of man meet his trialhour. The individuality of the soul necessitates that. Each man is a new soul in this world, untried, with a boundless possible before him. No one can predict what he may become, prescribe his duties, or mark out his obligations. Each man's own nature has its own peculiar rules, and he must take up his life-plan alone, and persevere in it in a perfect privacy with which no stranger intermeddleth. Each man's temptations are made up of a host of peculiarities, internal and external, which no other mind can measure. You are tried alone, alone you pass into the desert, alone you must bear and conquer in the agony, alone you must be sifted by the world. There are moments known only to a man's own self, when he sits by the poisoned springs of existence, "yearning for a morrow which shall free him from the strife." Oh, it is then when

human advice is unavailable that the soul feels what it is to be alone.

Satan would seem to be mannerly and reasonable, making as if he would be content with one half of the heart, whereas God challengeth all or none; as indeed He hath most reason to claim all, that made all. But this is nothing but a crafty fetch of Satan, for he knows that if he have any part, God will have none, so the whole falleth to his share alone. My heart, when it is both whole and at the best, is but a strait and unworthy lodging for God. If it were bigger and better, I would reserve it all for Him; Satan may look in at my doors by a temptation, but he shall not have so much as one chamber-room set apart for him to sojourn in.

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It is a wonder how full of shifts nature is, ready to turn over all good purposes. If we think of death she suggests secretly, "Ticoh, it shall not come yet;" if of judgment for sin, "this concerns not thee, it shall not come at all;" if of heaven and our labor to reach it, "trouble not thyself, it will come soon enough alone;" address thyself to pray, "it is yet unseasonable, stay for a better opportunity;" to give alms," thou knowest not thine own future wants;" to reprove, what needest thou thrust thyself into wilful hatred?" Every good action hath his let he can never be good that is not resolute.

It is good to make a jest, but not to make a trade of jesting, Jest not with the two-edged sword of God's word. Will nothing please thee

to wash thy hands in but the font? or to drink healths in but the church chalice? Let not thy jests like mummy, be made of dead men's flesh. Abuse not any that are departed, for to wrong their memories is to rob their ghosts of their winding-sheets. Scoff not at the natural defects of any which are not in their power to amend. Oh, 'tis cruelty to beat a cripple with his own crutches. No time to break jests when the heart strings are about to be broken.

I never loved those salamanders that are never well but when they are in the fire of contention. I will rather suffer a thousand wrongs than offer one; I will suffer a hundred rather than return one; I will suffer many ere I will complain of one, and endeavor to right it by contending. I have ever found that to strive with my superior is furious; with my equal, doubtful; with my inferior sordid and base; with any, full of unquietness.

A man under God's affliction is like a bird in a net, the more he striveth the more he is entangled. God's decree cannot be eluded with impatience. What I cannot avoid I will learn

to bear.

I find that all worldly things require a long labor in getting, and afford a short pleasure in enjoying them. I will not care much for what I have; nothing for what I have not.

I care not so much in anything for multitude as for choice. Books and friends I will not have many: I would rather seriously converse with a few than wander amongst many.

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FERTILIZERS.-Peruvian Guano. $82; California $70; Rodunda Island $30; Patapsco Co's $60; Reese & Co's Soluble Pacific Guano, $65; Flour of Bone, $co; G. Ober's (Kettlewells) AA Manipulated, $70; A do. $60; Ammoniated Alkaline Phosphate, $55; Alkaline Phos. $45; Baltimore City Company's Fertilizer, $40; do., Flour of Bone, $60; do., Ground Bone, $45; do., Poudrette, $20; Baugh's Raw-bone Phosphate, $56; Maryland Powder of Bone, $50; Rhodes' Super Phosphate, $55; Lister's Bone Super-Phosphate $55; Andrew Coe's Super-Phosphate of Lime, $60;-all per ton of 2,000 lbs.; Pure Ground Plas ter, $13.50a$14.00 per ton, or $2 50 per bbl. Shell Lime, slaked, 6c., unslaked, 10c per bushel, at kilns.

FLOUR.-Howard Street Super and Cut Extra, $9 25a 9.50; Family, $12.50a13.00; City Mills Super, $9.25a 9.50; Baltimore Family, $14.50a15.

Rye Flour and Corn Meal.-Rye Flour, new, $8.25a 8.75; Corn Meal, $6 50.

GRAIN. Wheat.-Good to prime Red, $2 50a2.75; White, $2.50a2.80.

Rye.-$1.40a1.45 per bushel.

Oats.-Heavy to light-ranging as to character from 65 a70c. per bushel.

Corn.-White, $1 20a1.30; Yellow, $1 30a1.35 per

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Pet Hawk, to Scarce Yellow Birds....................................
Grape Culture...................
Cream and Butter..................................
The Midge and the Weevil...........
Agricultural Reconstruction
The Colorado Potato Bug
Our Educators.......................
Book Table........

Hops--What Varieties to Plant..

Centrifugal Disseminator.........

The Profits of Farming..

Experiments in Feeding Cattle..................... 120 Manuring the Wheat Crop.......

New York Nurseries................

Heading off the Curculio................................................

Golden Fleece.....

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Winter Wheat-Drilling and Manuring.
Preparation of Land for Wheat.........
Wheat Bread..................................

Beet Sugar in Illinois..................................................
How to Rent a Farm.............................

............................ 125 ............................. 126 Sunday Reading. ......................................................... 127

Rye as a Farm Crop.

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DECEMBER.

"White ermine now the mountains wear,
To shield their naked shoulders bare.
The dark pine wears the snow, as head
Of Ethiop doth white turban wear.
The floods are armed with silver shields,
Through which the Sun's sword cannot fare:
To mutter 'twixt their teeth the streams,
In icy fetters, scarcely dare.

Hushed is the busy hum of life;
'Tis silence in the earth and air."

Gossip from the Farm.

GOOD FARMER: This month of November is a month of elections, and all the country is alive with politics. What shall a countryman say then, if something he must say, and shun the ground, for your pages, forbidden. He may record a fact which is very remarkable now, and in long years coming will interest such readers as may be conning the record of the past in your then musty pages; it is this, that in this good old State of Maryland, every county, every towu, every ward, has cast its vote the same wayelecting Governor and every State Official, every Senator, every Member of Assembly, every Judge, every Attorney, every Clerk and Register, all Sheriffs, County Commissioners, Mayor and City Councilmen of Baltimore-all without exception of that side that, in the belief of her people, means kindness and good will and sympathy and love for our afflicted and helpless brethren of the South.

Let it be hoped that it is a harbinger that all division of sentiment on matters vital to their

Vol. II.-No. 6.

interest will soon cease, and that the whole country will ere long be devoted to the interests of peace. Not until then can the material interest of Southern Agriculture, on which allother interests are based, be restored to that point from which it may take a start on a new career of prosperity. The mind of the Southern people is ready for this work, whenever the complications and embarrassments of their political condition shall allow it.

Within a year past the people of Maryland have spent a million of money to feed the hungry and clothe the naked of the States of the South. The voice of protest against their political wrongs which sounds unbroken from the tops of her Alleghanies to the shores of the Ocean, has a moral worth which is of more value than food and clothing. Yours, truly, &c.

Work for the Month.

The work for this month on the farm is the closing up the operations of the season generally, and making all those necessary preparations, yet unfinished, which conduce to the comfort and well-being of all within the circle of the farmer's

care.

CORN CROP.

The corn should now be got under lock and key as quickly as possible. It is by this time sufficiently cured, and is every day, as the season advances, more liable to depredations. The careful manager will always inform himself of the number of barrels put away, and of the quantity already fed to hogs and other stock, and thus ascertain as nearly as possible the yield per acre. The young farmer who will, every season, care

fully estimate his crop by its appearance as it stands in the field, and then pass it through the corn barrel, will soon be able, by such practice in this and other crops, to form a correct judgment of the value of land by the growing crops, besides having the advantage of knowing at every step of his business, just what he is doing. The corn shucks make a valuable fodder, and should be well preserved under cover.

CARE OF STOCK.

We have spoken repeatedly of the care of stock at this season. No time should now be lost in making all necessary provision. It is too much the practice to allow store cattle to shift for themselves in the fields to so late a period that they begin to lose flesh before the regular winter feeding in the yard begins. This is very bad economy. Experience amply shows that cattle kept

well to their flesh in this month are much more economically fed through the winter, than when allowed to fall off as they soon will do, to a point inconsistent with vigorous health. Cows that are to calve in spring are particularly liable to suffer seriously, and their lives are often endangered by this sort of carelessness.

Work Horses.-Work horses and mules, if they have work to do now, need more than usual Let them have ample stable room and bedding. Let them never be put up without being rubbed dry, and their feet and legs cleaned.

care.

Working Oxen.-These should always be fed apart from other cattle. When not at work they will drive off the weaker stock from their food, and when kept out of the yard at work they will suffer in turn by having their rations interfered with.

Cows. Such as are to furnish milk through the winter should be as well tended as a riding or driving horse, with warm shelter, good bed, perfect cleanliness, with bran and cornmeal, and sugar beet or ruta baga. A good cow pays well for the best attention. Cows in calf should be comfortable and very quiet. Do not make them very fat, but keep them in strong condition.

Calves.-Calves weaned should be provided with shelter open to south and east, and have best hay or corn fodder, with little bran or meal daily, if you would have them continue to grow. Do not suppose it necessary that young animals should cease growing now, and take two or three months of spring to fill up their wasted dimensions, before starting for another season's growth. They need not be forced, but let them not lose a day of growth.

Sheep.-Sheep should have open shelter, and racks and troughs for feeding. Such as are

being fed for the butcher may be confined to their pens, provided they be fattened off as quickly as possible and are amply littered. Store sheep should have full liberty in all good weather.

Hogs-Continue the feeding of hogs for slaughter, as heretofore directed, until you get rid of them. Give them a little salt occasionally, or corn soaked in salt water, and charcoal or rotted wood, and let them be very quiet. In slaughtering do not indulge servants in the brutal practice of bleeding them to death, without first striking on the head; nor do not allow them to be raced around ip catching them for slaughter.— Such practice is injurious to the quality of the meat. Store hogs should be kept in thrifty condition, and not allowed to sleep about manure heaps, or other filthy places. A bed of leaves on a wooded hill-side to the south, is best for them.

Water-Have water in your yards if possible. The purest is the rain water from a clean roof, and it costs little to hav cistern and pump.

TOBACCO.

Whenever the tobacco is soft enough to admit of being handled without breaking, the work of stripping off the leaves and tying, in preparation for market, should be carried on with no loss of time. Early in the season, a press of other work is very apt to cause the stripping to be postponed, and if the crop be a large one, the getting ready for market is too long delayed. Great care should be observed in the proper sorting and handling. On each plant there will be usually three or four sorts, which should be put each in its separate allotment. In taking down the crop for stripping, do not allow the sticks to be thrown to the ground, but handed down with care. The bundles are to be neatly tied, and then while held in one hand, pressed by the other against the breast of the stripper into the shape it is intended to have when taken out of the hogshead for inspection. It shows better when pressed into a fan-like shape. This is very quickly done by passing the hand over it; then the bundle is to be laid down with care, not thrown down. It is an easy matter to make it keep this shape throughout the preparation for market. The value of the crop is much enhanced by neatness in handling it, and attention to such little matters begets a habit of care very essentiat to the successful planter. On the close of a day's work all done during the day is to be laid in bulks of two rows, with the tails somewhat lapping, and with no weight upon it but a few tobacco sticks. The floor of the house is to be cleared up, the sticks put out of the way, and the tobacco stalks preserved under cover. It is

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