Connecticut western news., 1889-09-25
ABOUT THE FARM.
Hints for Farmers and Busy
 Housewives to Appreciate.

Fowls need careful attention at this season if they are expected to lay during cold weather. Put them through the moulting season as quickly | as possible by good feeding and plenty l of exercise, taking care not to fatten them. Whole wheat is excellent for them, provided it is placed among chaff and rubbish SO that they must scratch for it. The early Spring bullets will probably begin to lay when they are five or six months old. If the laying habit is formed at this early age egg production is increased, and the fowl l becomes more valuable for future | years.
 The careful economy shown by many 1 owners of village and city lots in util- izing vacant spaces is lesson to many who own more land than they can properly work, and allow waste places to go unused about the house and other buildings. These are, indeed, just the places for grape vines, espe- cially if trellises are built, so that the vines need not cling to the buildings or run over the roofs. If there is little vacant land at the bottom run the trel- lis higher. Roots will run and thrive under stone or brick walls, and a crop of grapes may thus be grown from land that is capable of producing nothing else.
 The pruning of Tea and hybrid roses should be left until early in Spring. Rose plants having flexible shoots should be bent down and fastened to the ground by begging. Then, at the approach of severe weather, they can be covered with leaves and straw, over which little soil can be be placed to keep them in position, or some brush laid over the litter, and stones on them will keep it in place. Strong-stemmed rose plants can be strawed up and thus protected. Drawing the soil up eigh- teen inches or more in mound about the base of rose plant will effectually protect the lower part of it, and if the upper part should be injured it can be cut away in the Spring. .
 London has this year the luxury of strawberries five or six weeks, and now talks of getting this fruit from France and Spain to further protect the season. The immense area and great variety of climate of this coun- try give Americans much longer sea- sons in fruit than are common any where else. All along the coast fruit is brought successfully from Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Delaware and New Jersey, and return ing it comes from Nova Scotia and Maine southward. Railways now ex- tend from Manitoba to our northwest to New Orleans, and when the prob lem of cheaper transportation is solved, will give the residents of the Mississip- pi Valley more fruit luxuries than any other people ever before enjoyed.
 It is useless to SOW wheat when the soil is not in proper condition. To be in condition it should be competed and moist near the surface. If the soil has been hardened by heavy rains do not try to mend it. Drill the seed in as shallow as possible, so as to cover the grain, and if not all covered drag it and then leave it. Wheat thus sown is more likely to stand the Winter than if the land was plowed up and made so mellow that the seed is necessarily covered to greater depth. But so long as dry weather continues, keep the wheat seed out of the ground. It is better to SOW late with the soil in proper condition, than to get large and unnatural growth in dry, hot weather. It is to be always remembered that wheat needs moist, cool climate, and seeding should be delayed until this can be obtained.
 It may not generally be known, but it is nevertheless true, that there is forestry division in the department of agriculture. We hear little of it, and practically it accompishes nothing. A committee of the American Forestry Congress estimated that thirty billion feet of lumber were taken from our forests during 1888. With the vast fires that have ragged during 1889 in Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Montana and California, it is impossible to cal culate with accuracy the amount of timber used and destroyed, but the destruction of forests certainly has been larger than is commensurate with safety for the future.
 Our people have never been charac- terized by the provinciality that pre- vents one country from learning by the experience of another. Therefore it it is wise to know what other nations are doing in this regard. Russia knows the value of the forest, and in sections where trees are sparse, forbids the