Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1902-10-07

More farmers are gulled on the steel
range swindlc than on any other fake
oats fake.
Farms upon which focks of sheep
are kept are always clean farms and
fertile ones. This fact deserves more
than it receives.
The utter inability to secure good
country schoolteachers at the old
wages has compelled school directors
TO advance the wages of the teachers.
The crop of apples on an Illinois or
chard of 125 acres was recently sold
for Sill 800, while the property cost the
spring.
An agricultural paper published in
an eastern city contains a picture Of a
man harvesting his wheat crop. using
a moving machine to do so. This sort
Of thing makes western men grin.
Every civil township should own
gravel bed if there is one to be had in
side its borders. In all the black pra-
RE country there is no way in which
to improve the highways so easily and
cheaply as to use gravel
What may be termed the leavings
and pickings of farm can be more
readily utilized by the sheep than any
other animal. Aside from the scattered
grain thus saved and used, fence cor
ner crop of weeds and grass is also
turned into money.
Who ever heard before of making a
roadbed out of straw? Out i'll Wash
fngton in order to get rid Of the dust
in the summer and the mud in the Win
ter over 300 miles of highway have re-
Gently been covered with about 4 foot
of straw, the straw being contributed
by the farmers along the highway.
To get rid of two mice which had
been seen in the house. one of which
was killed with a broom, we have kept
one uncouth old tolncat, his black con-
cubine, raised two patches of kittens,
had the young wrens and robins all
killed and been wowwowed O nights
to beat the band. Give us the mice.
| We don't know very much.
There is one great advantage about
the silo often overlooked, and that is
that wet and catchy weather never
prevents the putting up of the silage,
nor does the rain in any way impair
its quality. 1t is safe to say that one
half of the hay put up in the United
States this season has been injured by
rains to a greater or less extent.
1t is worth mentioning that the cat
| tie which brought the highest price
paid for beef animals for twenty years
on the Chicago market up to the mid
| die of September were eighteen grade
| Hereford steers grown i'll South Da
llota and fed for q year on soaked corr
and oats, averaging 1918 pounds anc
bringing $3.50 per hundredweight, OF
S13434 per head.
The hardest job which the society
| journals have is to instruct the deal
! people how to eat sweet corn from the
| cob when in company with becoming
grace and gentility. The best way il
! which to serve it for company is to cut
the corn from the cob before it is
| brought on the table, for no fine lady
can shipper just right when she has
three big shelled ears lying by the side
of her plate and her teeth fast in 9
| fourth one.
So well satisfied are we that stuf6ns
the young pigs with new corn Rnt
nothing else is most provoking caus'
of swine plague and cholera that W.
would not feed a ration wholly com
posed of it even if it were Furnished
! free One or two ears of new corn
day, with slop Of ground rye, bar
ley and oats and plenty of green food
4 rape or blue grass or clover-will pusl
the pigs fast enough to be finished TO
market during the early winter on til
new corn well matured.
A dairyman friend of ours is just nov
filling 500 ton silo with the produc
of forty acres of field corn. The corn i
SO large crop that he will hardly &c
it all in his sile. This silage will ful
nish him most excellent dairy ratio
for 1873 cows for six months, allowin
forty pounds a day per COW. In no ott
er manner is it possible to so easily an
cheaply provide desirable ration fo
dairy herd. He will supplement thi
, silage ration with well cured Glove
hay and gluten meal.
There is whole lot Of foolish stu
, printed about corn growing SO tall, jus
as though the height of the stalk j
any manner indicated the prosperity
, yield of the crop. Our own experienc
| proves that it is not the tallest stalk