Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1879-06-21
FARM TOPICS.
Good Vegetables.


bles, either for comfort or economy.
No people living in the same latitude
eat so much meat as do the citizens OF
this country, and especially the farm
ers. The Esquimaux and Laplanders
eat more, as they have scarcely any
vegetables, and their climate is so cold
as to require an abundance of blubber
and other heat producing food; but for
the inhabitants of the temperate zone a
constant diet of meat is too stimulating,
driving the animal machinery too fast
and wearing it out too soon. Every
farmer knows that if he feeds his cows
literally with oil-cake, or even with
corn meal, they produce an extra al
lowance and an extra quality of milk,
but are liable to garget and other in
maturely. If he feeds with cOrn-meal
a liberal ration of mangle or other
roots, the infammatory tendency is in
measure counteracted, and the general
collapse of the cows constitution is de-
layed. Pork and fat beef are much
more concentrated and heat-producing
foods than oil-cake and corn meal, and
should never constitute the staple diet
of any citizen of the temperate
zone. We are no vegetarians.
Man is evidently carnivorous ami
NAL, but it is equally evident that
he Graves, and must have mixed diet
OF meat, vegetables, and fruit. The
latter are antiseptic and cathartic in
their nature, and, therefore, serve to
counterfeit the stimulating effects of
meat. We have known children that
had an abnormal appetite for meat and
rejected almost every kind of vegetable
and fruit, not relishing even straw
berries. Such children are uniformly
unhealthy, and seldom live out half their
days. Farmers should also remember
that vegetables are far more economical
than meat. 1t requires an average acre
of corn (45 bushels) to rear and fatten
q SEQ porker, but this same amount of
corn, used as breadstuff, will sustain
quite flock of children. In the torrid
regions, where comparatively little meat
is used, an acre of vegetables and fruit
will maintain several families. A ma
tive Hawaiian, with small patch of
kalo, made sufficiency of his favorite
food, poi, to sustain as many wives as
he pleased to possess, and as many of
their offspring as he chose to bring up.
We have no hsnkering after the
Hawaiian mode of living, but there is a
golden mean between the vegetable diet
of the Sandwich Islanders and the biuo-
Der food of the Esquimaux, and this
mean it is the privilege of farmers in
the temperate zone to enjoy to its fullest
extent, if they will only live up to their
privileges. Our friend has enumerated |
q few of the vegetables which flourish in |
this favored region, and we need not go |
over the catalogue. Oar object is rather |
to call the attention of farmers to few |
Of the most important and most neg
lectei.
Spinach is among the best of vegeta-
bles, though farmers seldom raise it.
They seem to prefer to send their wives
around the lots to cut dandelions for
greens, or their children into the
swamps after cowslips. 1t will spoil an
hours time of pretty smart woman to
cut dandelions enough for the dinner of
a good-sized family, and when they are
cut they are not 50 tender and succu-
lent rs spinach, that may be cut in five
minutes. A row OF spinach 20 feet long,
sown at the end of q row OF parsnips or
onions, will furnish greens enough for
an ordinary family, as it can be cut
times, for it grows like Jon his
gourd. Some ignorant cultivators pull
it up by the roots. This is killing the
goose that lays the golden egg. The
true way is to cut the tops, leaving a
few leaves for the plants to breathe with,
and if the ground is rich the roots will
furnish another crop in a few days. The
cuttings may be continued as long as
green's are wanted, or till substitute is
found in thinning out beets, when the ;
roots may be drawn and cucumbers or
.omatoes planted in ther place.