River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1884-05-22
Farm And HOUSEHOLD.
Budget of Farm Items.

CnlcheuS sucH as laSiatic3 suOulu
never be allowed to perch until about
six months old or the breast bone will
be liable to become crooked. There is
no cure and it is a disqualification for
exhibition fowls.
There is vast difference in the fla
vor of eggs. Hens fed on clean sound
grain and having good clean grass runs,
produce finer favored eggs than those
having access to stable and manure
heaps and eating all kinds of filthy
food.
Do not confine growing chicks if you
can possibly help it, but let them have
ample range over the lawns and pas
lures. If you have no grassy runs, let
the runs be on dry, gravelly bottom,
and feed them plenty of green food and
screenings of wheat, occasionally little
cooked meats.
A correspondent of the New York
Times tells how he had fresh pie-plant
pies during the winter: Last fall l
took up quantity of rhubarb root, and
instead Of throwing them away, as I in
tended at first, / dug them up with
plenty of soil, packed them in half bar
rels and put them into the cellar. In
a short time they sprouted and made
large shoots, which served for pies and
tarts through the winter in a very ae
ceptabIe manner. OF course, the roots
were exhausted by this growth, and of
r. 4. 10
to throw them away then than in the
fall, and there was good deal gained
by keeping them over. Old rhubarb
roots are greatly improved by taking
them up and replanting. Each root
may be broken up in several pieces, and
this work may be done now better than
in the spring"
Joseph Harris gives an account of his
carrot crop in his seed catalogue, his OBJ
ject being to save needless expense.
The seed was sown in rows p inches
apart. The plants came up thick, and
when he most wanted his day hands
they left him. He kept the cultivator
running within an inch of the plants,
which kept down tho weeds, and the
carrots grew with astonishing rapidity."
But they must be thinned or the crop
would be worthless, so the men went
through the patch with hoes and cut
spaces clear across the width of the hoe,
leaving punches of four to ten young
carrots. The cultivator was kept go
ing, and after harvest the weeds which
escaped were cut out by hand The en-
tire labor thus expended was no more
than for crop of potatoes, and Mr..
Harris says: Il do not want a better
crop" The roots were diverse in size,
but the whole crop was larger than
where regularly thinned.
Professor Bessey has recently been
showing in his lectures how among the
advantages of rotation of crops is the
Kidding of the soil of fungus growths
and insects, which. where the same crop
is grown year after year, are certain to
find easy means of subsistence. Smut,
he says, grows up through the interior
of wheat plant, and finally develops
its spores within the bran casing of the
grain, filling it with seeds of the parasite
which stick fast to sound grains of
NnGdtts hIltl anu w phi biClCo VI biio SoIl
where they are ready to enter into the
circulation of next years wheat, unless
killed by stepping the polluted seed in
blue vitrol solution and drying off with
lime. The polluted soil is purified
only by using it for some other crop on
which the smut plant cannot take hold.
Smut, in fact, although an extremely
low form of vegetable growth, is still an
organic vegetable, and may even be de-
scribed as parasite weed.
Germany having declined to take
American hog products, an enterprising
Chicago firm has resolved to teach her
how Teutonic hogs can be prepared for
market after the superior American
fashion. The manner of cutting-up and
preparing a hog in the Fatherland is
very different from that practiced III
the great Porkopolis of the West, and
Messrs. Moran & Healy have started
from that point to open q pork packing
establishment at Bremen, where the
Chicago system of packing will be ex-
emplified An American company is
seeking permission to build grain eleva-
tors in Russia and now another Ameri-
can firm is determined to teach Ger
many how to pack hogs. We are ready
not only to supply "effete Europe
with bread and meat from our own rich
fields, but also to teach it how best to
prepare what it has raised at home.