The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1890-01-01
FARM AND GARDEN NOTES.

FARM AND GARDEN NOTES.
There would be much better satisfac-
tion to most farmers if they would make
corn the minor instead of the principal
ration for their breeding swine.
The farmer who thinks cattle can pick
their own living from late autumn grass
is not wholly wrong, for they can get u
living, but the farmer must not expect
profit from such feeding.
1t is not necessary to claim that en-
isilage is more nutritious and palatablc
when it comes out of the silo than when
it went in, for it is enough to know that
its properties are fairly well preserved.
When large amount of grass roots,
and also grain stubble is plowed under,
the land will be benefited proportion
ately, and by plowing under vegetable
matter the ground will gain in nitrogen.
Wyandottes make excellent market
fowls. White Wyandottes are being
sought after for this purpose, they look
so tempting when ready for the table
and the upper price is obtained for them.
1t may cost less to buy cows than to
raise them on the farm; nevertheless, it
is better to raise them, for then one may
know what they are, and they will do
better, as a rule, than cows shifted from
place to place.
Good country roads may be regarded
as one of the highest evidences of civiliza-
tion, but there are many places where
this evidence is not found in such
abundance as to become tiresome to
dwellers along them.
Thickened boiled corn meal and oat
meal mixed with chopped suet and u
little pulverized charcoal every few days,
will fatten turkeys in eighteen days.
They should be kept in a partially dark
ened shed or stable while being fat
tened
If your poultry house is built with
double walls you are pretty sure of pro-
lection to the fowls against the coolest
weather. They will be laying all winter
while your neighbor has very few eggs.
Providing they are supplied with proper
food.
No succulent food is more greedily
eaten by pigs at any age than beets. They
may be fed any time from the first thin
nings during the growing season to the
fully grown roots in winter. They are
especially valuable as part of the winter
food for breeding sows, and some beets
should always be saved for that purpose.
The object of caponizing fowls is to
improve the quality and increase the
quantity of the flesh. Poultrymen, and
especially farmers, have the impression
that it is a very difficult operation to
caponize II fowl, fraught with all sorts
of danger to the life of the bird, and can
only be performed bya skillful expert.
This is wrong impression.
The "why" for not disturbing milk
while the cream is rising, Is very sim
pie one. The cooling of the milk causes
currents in the fluid the end of which
is to deposit fats at the surface. When
these are disturbed by dipping or other
wise, these currents are broken and the
particles of fat go floating aimlessly
about, and some of them never reach the
top.
Do not waste wood ashes They are
of sufficient value TO pay for saving and
applying to the soil. When applied to
the soil they aid greatly in reducing the
organic matter in the soil to its mineral
elements, and in setting free abundant
nitrogen from it also. Thus, being
valuable plant food, it is also an effective
provider of other food substances, with
out which vegetation could not attain its
highest vigor.
There is little difficulty in retaining
potatoes in nearly as good condition as
those freshly dug, provided the temper
ature is kept so low that they will not
sprout or grow, the skin being nearly
imperyious TO moisture, so that they will
not wilt. Beets, turnips, and especially
turnips, become withered and dry in a
comparatively short time, and it is essential
to imbed them in a suitable packing sub
stance to prevent the escape of moisture.
Sometimes after threshing cows turned
into the barnyard at night, with access to
a fresh straw stack, will pick at the chaff
and eat enough to diminish their milk
flow. It is this often, rather than the
diminished pasture, that lessons the milk
yield a. this season. We have known
farmers to put fence around the stack,
so as TO keep their COWS from injuring
themselves at it, as a simple-minded per
son is said once 10 have put a fence
around a very poor lot 10 keep his stock
from grazing il.