The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1875-11-23
THE FARM AND HOUSEHOLD.
Hints for Winter.

ILLUS IOt UlutcIs
As the farmer will have no more occasion
to use his agricultural implements until the
return of spring, it should be the last work
Of autumn, or certainly the first work of
winter, to collect and repair them and to see
that they are painted or oiled and then care
fully PIT where they belong. The old max
i'm, ga place for everything and everything
in its place." needs to be repeated oftener to
farmers, than to their wives or children even.
This is the time Of the most leisure before
out.ofdoor operations can be commenced,
and light work of this kind can be easily
attended to. One days work now may save
two in the spring, making the difference be-
tween haste and waste, and well arranged
and productive labor, beside putting one in
readiness for all the opportunities of an early
season. Nothing is more veXatious, or ought
to be more notifying, than to be obliged to
stop in the midst of a prosperous days labor
or with large force of hands employed, and
run to the blacksmith or carpenter for some
little job of repairs which ought to have been
done six months before, and thereby saved
tuC iOoo Va tiulC duu tCnpCls CO idl dS tuC
arrangement Of tools and implements is con-
cerned we recommend the plan of painting
upon the tool house walls representation of
each article in its proper place-of course Oh
a small scale, and it may be without regard
to taste or skill. By this method child,
and every new hand knows at once without
being told where to put things, and then
where to go to find them.
Before the ground is much frozen, little
heaps OF earth should be shoveled around the
foot OF young and tender fruit trees as
one of the most effectual methods of
protection against the depredations of field
mice, and for an additional safeguard, it will be
advisable to tread down closely around them
the first footof snow that falls. Mortar should
be carefully applied to crevices inthe underpn-
ming ofall buildings, and to openings in cellar
walls Where cellars under house or barn are
exposed to frost, an external banking of tar
or chips will prove a good defence, although
cellars should be kept as cool as they can be
without freezing. If water is carried into
barns through pipes of any kind, special care
the reservoirs against the severest cold of the
winter. Poultry houses, with an under
ground basement, or an outside embankment
of earth, will aid largely the operation of egg
laying, and also keep them from being frozen.
About the time of Christmas the fattening
OF swine and poultry should be brought to
close. Some of the food used for this purpose
cannot be conveniently or profitably kept
later in the season-but the principal reason
is that the winter feeding ordinarily does not
pay. 1t is one of the elementary truths of
agricultural science, that large consumption
of food is required by all domestic animals,
merely to enable them to withstand the in
creasing cold of winter, leaving but small
surplus deposit to 60 to the credit of flesh or
fat. The poultry raiser who sells his flocks
out of the fields in October. usually makes
more money than he would to retain them till
Thanksgiving or Christmas-although We are
aware that the interval between these hoi-
days, seems to be needed to put well round
ed covering of flesh on bodies hardly full
grown at its beginning. Were it not for
eggs and breeding purposes, it would
not tie very profitable to carry poultry into
the second year. So far as swine to be fat
tened are concerned, it is clear that the same
rule should be applied to them. In modern
times the five or six hundred hog is out of
fashion; and the requirements of hygiene
and civilization are better satisfied with the
nine or ten months pig of half his weight. 1t
is heavy tax in well ordered family, to be
compelled to cook food enough TO satisfy the
demands Of cold and hungry swine during
the winter months; and it becomes eXtraya-
gance not to say profigacy when it is found
on the return of spring that they have not
much more than held their own.
We advise our country readers who use
wood for fuel, to supply themselves as early
in the winter as December. As socn as the
ground is sufficiently covered with snow, the
best time has come for going into the woods.
II one owns wood lot-or for buying on the
sled from the seller. Waiting till mdwinter
when the cold is severe, and the snow deep
and drifted, or else wet and crusted over,
seems unaccountable management for COM
mon sense farmers, and yet majority of
them practise it. 1t is true that one obec-
ton exists, and that is the shortness of the
days; but more can nevertheless be accom-
plished, than when the horses or oxen can
hardly eat enough 10 keep themselves warm,
and hours are spent in breaking roads-and
every tree that is cut buries itself deeply in
the snow. Beside all this there is the physi
cal impossbility that any man can work to
advantage while suffering from the intensity
OF the cold. Much injury is done to the
health of man AMI beast, and harnesses and
sleds are unnecessarily broken TO pieces ev-
cry year, by postponing to an inconvenient
season the work which ought always to be
done early in the winter.