The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1874-09-17
Farm, Garden and Household.
Cleaning stubbIe Land.

Cleaning Stubble Land.
The farmer who has grown wheat, or
barley, or oats this year, and is not
seeded down. and which is not to be
sown with any other crop until next
spring, has an opportunity of cleaning
his land, that should on no account be
neglected. The English farmers sell
dom seed down their land with wheat.
After the wheat is harvested, they har-
row the land, or tear it to pieces with q
three or four horse cultivator or "grub-
ber." This pulls out the roots of quack-
grass, and starts the seeds of other
weeds. The field is afterwards plowed,
when, of course, all the young weed
plants are destroyed. The grubber is
kept at work as ofen as necessary, to
clean and mellow the land. The next
spring, this land is sown to turnips or
mangels, or, on heavy land, to beans or
barley. 1t is said that this autumn
cleaning of stubble land by the free
use OF the grubber, especially when
operated by the all-powerful steam en-
gine, is one of the agricultural improve
ments of the age.
What is true of English farming,
might be still more emphatically true
of American agriculture. Our autumns
are longer and drier than they are in
England, and we have better oppor-
tunity to clean our land, while there is
certainly great necessity. Our fields
are fearfully foul with all kinds of
weeds, and in many instances, they are
annually gaining stronger foothold.
We must fight, if we would win. 1t
will not do to go on in the old way.
With our drying winds and hot sun, we
ought to have the cleanest farms in the
world-and sooner or later, such will
be the case. We must kill weeds by
wholesale. 1t will not do to depend on
the hoe and the fingers. Nature is
never at rest. It will not do to let land
lie idle. When it is not occupied with
growing crops, we should be occupied
in stirring the soil, and killing weeds.
1t is the great secret Of success in farm
ing.
Smoking them TO Death.
The ground squirrels and gophers of
the far West become so numerous and
mischievous that farmers have to resort
to shorter and more sweeping methods
of defence than dogs and guns, or
even traps. The Santa Barbara Press
says:
Some time since, Mr.. Dixie W.
Thompson took us out in his buggy to
an outside lot on which the squirrels
had "squatted and taken up their
claim and were in high glee over their
possessions. He had with him large
"man bellows" to which he had at
tached about a yard of guttapercha
bose. On reaching squirrel burrow,
where q colony had evidently settled,
he set his machine down, thrust the
end of the hose into one of the numer-
GUS quirrel-holes, threw some shay
ings, cobs and sulphur into the tea
kettle, struck a match, set the shavlngs
on fire, caught hold of the bellows, and
in moment the earth all round began
to send up puffs of yellow and informal
looking smoke where a squirrel had
ever run his underground road. The
precaution had been taken to cover all
the holes with earth before the smoke
was forced into the burrow. In one in
stance the smoke rushed out of hole
over thirty feet distant from the main
entrance of the nest. It takes about
five minutes to smother whole colony
of these troublesome pests, and they
never show any signs of life again, the
holes remaining closed and undis-
turbed. The work of determination is
complete, and is accomplished at a
trifing cost. A multitude of squirrels
can be thus destroyed byOne man in a
single day.
The Skunk,
In the american Journal of Science,
for May, Rev. Il. @. Hovey, has very
important and interesting article under
the title of "Rabies Mephitica," in
which it is shown that the skunk can
no longer be regarded as simply very
disagreeable animal, but on the con.
trary most dangerous one, and is te
be classed with the rattlesnake as al
enemy to mankind. AS strange as il
may appear, Mr.. Hovey has brought
forward an array of facts to prove that
the skunk is very often affected with 6
disease, or perhaps with a natural
salivary secretion, that causes its bite
to be far more dreaded than that of {
rattlesnake or of mad dog. AS the
skunk is nocturnal animal that steals
upon his victim without warming, ani
gives the bite which almost invariably
Especially is this the case in the West
gill OpdtcS, WutIS VIC dulLldl 10 dpuu
dant, and many persons are nightly ex
posed to it's attacks.
To Preserve Green Corn.
Steam it on the cob, to harden tn
milk cut it off the same as for drying
pack it in stone jars, to every fou
pints of corn add one of salt, until you
jar is full. Then cover one-half incl
thick on the top with salt. Corn pu
up in this way, will keep good till corr
comes again. Soak the salt out befor
using it. / have tried this way severa
years, and find it is much nicer wa
than drying. Give it trial.
London 0yerflOwed from Sewer.