Lime.–A Pennsylvanian farmer raised 400 bushels of wheat from a field of land which five years ago produced but thirty bushels. He spread fifteen hundred bushels of lime on said land.
Barley is becoming more an article of diet. It makes the finest of cakes when prepared like buckwheat. Farmers are finding it as poor economy to turn barley into beer to make paupers and criminals for them to support, as to convert apples into cider to create an appetite in their children for stronger drink. Ground, it is a most valuable food for all kinds of stock.
Sunflower yields 140 bushels per acre, and each bushel of seed one gallon of good oil. Cost of expressing, 25 cents per gallon. Its leaves furnish provender, and its seed is capital food for poultry, cattle, and hogs. It is a profitable crop on poor soils, requiring but little labour.
An Emetic may be made in emergency by taking two teaspoonsful of mustard mixed with water.
Rye is most thrifty on soil of a dry, sandy or gravelly texture, if well manured, and winters better the earlier it is sowed. It is the least healthy of all the grains. Sown early for winter a bushel per acre, and in spring a bushel and a half, wilt generally be sufficient. The earlier harvested, the whiter the flour; later, the grain may be heavier from the thickness of the skin, causing more bran but no increase of flour. Roofs well thatched with rye straw last 20 years.
Corn.–Sprinkling with salt and water will check the Wevil.
Keeping Fruits.–The three best, of eight different modes, fairly tried, are, 1, covering in pure dry sand; 2, in dry fern; 3, in a deal box buried in the earth; in all cases placed in a cool situation.
Orchards of pear or apple trees are more subject to blight and destruction, if open and sloping to the West, than in any other exposure. Either ashes, iron or soap suds, applied to the roots, have cured blight in pear trees.
Caterpillars and other insects are effectually destroyed by a drenching of tobacco juice.
Butter.–Heating the milk in winter, after straining, to 130 degrees, improves the quantity and quality of butter, and reduces the time and labour of churning.
Borer.–Kill this insect’s eggs in apple and quince trees by a solution of potash, applied with a brush about the foot of the tree, occasionally, from April to June.
Draining is important, and covered drains are more lasting and valuable than open ditches. Cut drains three or four feet deep, place a row of poles at bottom, then a layer of brush to within ten inches of the top, then a few inches of straw or dry leaves, and cover with earth well rammed down.
Bone Dust.–An English proverb says, “One ton of bone dust saves the importation of ten tons of grain.”
Ashes, although leached, form an excellent manure.
Pumpkins may be kept a year, sound and well flavoured, if carefully gathered and hung up in a dry cellar. Or, take out the soft parts, slice, and dry in the sun or oven. Keep dry, and boil; a rich good food.
Ducks, when young, should have but little water, and be fed exclusively on boiled food, potatoes, &c. Hominy for fattening is good.
“Salt is health to a gosling, but death to a chicken,” is an old and true saying.
Cider.–Cleanse barrels with lime, then rinse well out. Half a pint mustard seed will preserve it good a long lime. Filtering through a hair sieve and racking off improves it.
Roots.–Feeding with roots, especially with sugar-beet, cannot be too highly prized, being rich, juicy, fattening, and economical.
Turnip Fly may be expelled by the use of fish oil, one or two gallons to the acre.
Pork Cured. Soon as cool enough to cut, and before it freezes, pack a clean cask full, with plenty of salt on all sides of each piece. Fill up with water, taking care, by means of a large stone, to keep the pork under the pickle, and covered from flies, in a cellar. Never boil pickle.
Pork Feeding. It is a well ascertained fact that more meat will be made on half the weight of corn, if ground and made into mush instead of being fed whole.
In Smoking Hams, &c., be careful not to have the fire too nigh, or the smoke-house too tight. It is best done in an upper story to which the smoke is conveyed in tubes, from oak or maple chips in the cellar. In passing this distance, the vapour which smoke usually holds, is deposited, and the hams are perfectly dry and cool during the whole process.
Hollow Horn. Where supposed to exist, feed half peck potatoes twice a week, and treat your cattle kindly in food and shelter.
Timber. To preserve, soak in lime and water, long enough for the lime to penetrate.
Sheep must be fed well, kept dry, have salt often, and pure air, and be grazed in hilly stony pastures.
For packing Plants, use saw-dust.
As a general rule, with but few exceptions, square large fields are more advantageous than small irregular ones, requiring less fence, and being more easily watered, manured, ploughed, and harvested.
SUCCESSFUL FARMING.
The Farmers’ Cabinet relates an instance of a farmer the neighbourhood of Amherst, N. H., who commenced in the world as a day labourer, and who, notwithstanding he has at various times sustained heavy pecuniary losses in the investment of his funds, is now worth at least one hundred thousand dollars.
“This man, when thirty years of age, by the avails of his industry added to a small legacy, was enabled to purchase and pay, in part, for a farm of one hundred and thirty acres of land, one hundred of which was under cultivation, but in a very low state. The farm is altogether upland, with a soil composed of loam, clay, and sand, in the chief of which the latter preponderates, the former being least considerable. When he commenced farming, he adopted a particular system of rotation, to which he has implicitly adhered from that time to the present, which is forty years, and his success is the best comment on the worth of the experiment. His mode was as follows: having divided his farm into eight fields of equal size, as near as possible, three of those fields were sowed with wheat each year, one with rye, one planted with corn, two in clover, and one an open fallow, on which corn had been raised the year previous. One of the two clover fields is kept for mowing, the other for pasture, both of which are ploughed as soon after the harvest as possible, and prepared for wheat in the fall. All the manure which is made on the farm for one year is hauled in the spring on the field intended for open fallow, which is then ploughed, and, after one or two cross ploughings through the summer, is also sowed wheat in the fall. The field on which the rye is sown is that from which a crop of wheat has been taken the same year, and which had yielded three crops. Corn is planted on the field from which rye had been taken the year previous, the stubbles of which
