Year: 1872

Farm, Garden and Household.

 Co1D WATER SPONGE CAKE.-Three eggs, beat ten minutes: one and one half cups of sugar, beat five minutes; one cup of flour, one spoonful of cream of tarter, beat one minute one-half cup of water, one half spoonful of saleratus, one cup of flour, little salt; beat one minute.

 GRAHAM BREAD.-To make Graham bread, to each quart of flour take a heaped teaspoonful of saleratus, adding salt and little molasses or sugar, with sufficient quantity of sour milk to make the dough. We consider it very much better to steam an hour or two, and then put 1t in the oven to brown over.

 A HINT FOR THE COMING WINTER. The London Spectator is responsible for the following suggestion. The ex- pertinent can be easily and economically tried by any one using Q grate: "The most practical suggestion yet made to wards economy of coal seems to be the use of solid bottoms in ordinary fire grates. It is asserted, and indeed proved, that in any fire place not excessively small, plate of iron placed upon the grate, will halve the consumption of coal, reduce the smoke, and leave cheerful, free burning fire. Quite sufficient air enters through the bars, no poking is necessary and the fire never goes out till the coals are consumed. There is no ash and no dust, every particle of fuel being consumed. Any householder can try this experiment, and reduce his coal bills say thirty per cent, at the cost of shilfing."

 How EASILY BUTTER IS SPOILED, farmers wife writing to the Ohio Farmer butter is most liable to be tainted by noxious odors floating in the atmos- phere. Our people laid some veal in the out, and was neglected until it commence ed to smell. The result was, that a jar of butter which was then packing smelled and tasted like spoiled beef" Another lady reader observes that there is a pond of filthy, sta9nant water a few hundred feet from her house, from which an offen- sive efluvium would be borne on the breeze directly to the milk room, when the wind was in certain direction, the result of which was that cream and but ter would taste like the disagreeable odor coming from the pond. As soon as the pond was drained we had no more damaged butter.

 BUTTER SPomED.-A lady writing in The Ohio Farmer, relates this incident illustrating the propensity of butter to spoil itself by absorbing noxious odors {: s'Our people laid some veal in the cellar, from which little blood flowed, which presently commenced to be offensive. The result was that 8 jar of butter that was then packing sme1led and tasted like spoiled meat" Another lady, at another time, observes that when the wind IS in the right quarter, nose-ele- vating efhuvium is borne from stagnant pool - distant several hundred feet directly to her milk-room, and that this odor fastens itself in cream and casino. She induced the men folks to drain the pool, and thenceforth there is no further trouble. No, sisters, however it may be in morals in butter-making you cannot give cleanliness any second place.

 THE AMERICAN FARMERS CLUB.-It was said by MT. Fuller, in reply to question, that chestnut is not the best tree for "hard-pan land" It naturally grows in loamy soils, and dishkes lime. Better in the hard-pan plant white ash and hickory two of the best of timber trees. Mr. Geddes said, that clover is, of course, the best crop to blow in, and that the farmer whose land IS too poor to grow clover might wisely consider the propriety of "moving West"

 An inquiry with regard to the best green crop for milch COWS, drew from MT. Geddes remark concerning certain care- ful experiments made by Harris Lewis, and which resulted in proving that or. chard grass is much superior to corn This grass, with sufficient manuring, will give in one season three cuttings, or six feet of growth, and is more easily wilted and handled than corn.

 A South Carolina correspondent wrote that he once had an old COW, blind and likely to give up the ghost, at the ap- proach of winter. He penned her, fed her on clay peas as much as she could eat, and after awhile, though still seeming poor and bony, she was slaughtered, and to his agreeable surprise her meat proved unexceptionably sweet and tender. Since that experience he never allows an old OK or COW to die without extra food and the assistance of the butcher.

 The same writer told how he utilized a defunot, water toundered plow-horse; Ihad killed and put up fatted beef with the fol. lowing preparation, viz. one ounce sal. petre, one pound brown sugar, one quart salt rubbed on the meat, and packed and weighed down. I directed the horse tc be skinned, cut up and packed in barrel and the pickle made with the above bee poured over it for my hounds, of which kepta pack, and to my surprise the meat although very offensive, immediately be came inodorous, which gave me grea faith in my recipe for curing beef.