The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1890-05-28
The hard wheats have

school days. 1t should 90 on through
out life, and the farmer should familiar
ize himself with every branch of knowl-
edge. There is great pleasure in the
acquisition of knowledge, also great
profit and power.
On the farm there is no need to be
rich, as the world understands the
term. The richest pleasures of life are
within reach without wealth of money
But in order to enjoy them we must
cultivate our better natures, and our
minds, as well as our land.
OUR surest hope in getting cheap
supply of nitrogen for fertilizing pur-
poses lies in favoring the conditions for
forming nitrogenOus compounds in the
soil, and in saving everything that con-
tains nitrogen as one of the ingre-
+ dients among the farm wastes.
1" IN Great Britain they have an in
dustry not yet developed here, and that
is, raising the calves of the dairy
farmer. Calves are contracted for and
taken away when young. They are
raised partly on milk and partly on
specially prepared feeds" says the
Dairy World,
THERE are many sections in the older
/ Western States in which the steady de-
cline in farm values has been going on
for years, because farming doesn't
pay" And still, to buy farms in that
same section one has to pay more per
acre than in some of the best town
ships of the East.
IT is better to pitch the manure out
of the window than to have it ferment-
ing under the cattle; but what is the
objection to having a low shed over it
to prevent it from being leached by the
storms? That is what we have always
provided-a rain-tight summer shed:
and so can any farmer.
a WRITER in the Indiana Farmer
says: i got tired of getting up at
midnight to drive dogs off the sheep,
and built a house for them. Every
night the sheep are shut up. The
! dogs come to the house; they want
sheep still. Lawmakers paralyze the
sheep husbandry by licensing dogs"
THE Dairy World is informed that
Denmark has organized a new system
of state butter shows. The scheme in
cludes a continuous butter show al the
expense Of the state, during several
months in each year, where fresh SAM
plies of butter will be received every
fourteen days, the judges decision
to be given on the butter as received,
and its condition at the end of fourteen
days.
DUDLEY MILLER says " it is hard to
be compelled to bear the taunts of those
who are continually throwing the
skim-milk characteristics of the
Holsteins into the owners faces" He
does not deny the fact, but claims that
these Dutch cows give enough of their
weak milk to beat the JERSEYS and
Guernseys on the final result. But
butter dairymen are hard to convert
to this idea.
REGARDING the subject from a
practical point, it is morally impossible
for a man, ignorant of the first princi-
piles of natural philosophy, to become a
thrifty and progressive farmer" says a
writer. We think he can not have a
very wide acquaintance among farmers,
if he means formal acquaintance.
facts which they would not be able to
state in technical language.
THAT profitable sheep-farming is not
impossible in New England is shown
by the experience of +. f. Bowditch in
Massachusetts,. Mr.. Bowdtch has
found tho' a flock of $50 sheep has paid
him dir>ct profit of from twenty to
twenty-five per cent on the money in
vested, while he has always found that
they have been of immense service in
retaining considerable tracts of worn
out land. Mr.. Bowditch employs an
experienced shepherd
A CORRESPONDENT of the New York
Examiner says: We once owned
what we considered a very fine dog,
and were very fond of him. He was
one of the quiet, peaceable stay-at-
home sort. When we retired at night
he would be lying on the doorstep and
when we arose in the morning he was
there to greet us. That he would kill
a sheep, or even dreamed of it, never
entered our heads. Yet that same in
nocent dog was shot at midnight while
worrying a sheep in pen four miles
distant from home.
A CORN crop of forty bushels per
acre takes out of that acre in the grain,
cObs and fodder about twenty pounds
of phosphoric acid, sixty pounds of pot
ash and 80 pounds OF nitrogen. In
dressing of 600 pounds of an average
fertilizer an acre gets, in more or less
available condition, seventy-two pounds
of phosphorc acid, ten pounds of pot
ash and sixteen pounds of nitrogen.
Whatever is lacking in the fertilizer
must be supplied by the soil, and what
ever is in excess in the fertilizer re-
mains in the soil except, perhaps, the
nitrogen.
A GENTLEMAN said to writer in the
Maine Farmer: "' If you want to keep
your young men on the farms, do not
educate them. AS they become intelli-
gent they surely leave the farm. Obser-
walton proves this to be true Now
was he correct? Possibly so, in
measure, under the systems of educa-
ton and farm practices as they now
exist But when we get good class
of agricultural textbooks in our schools,
and their tendencies are to teach due