North Carolina Newspapers

. ' ' . I . .1, - - III . THE INDUSTRIAL AND EDUCATIONAL INTERESTS OF OUR PEOPLE PARAMOUNT TO ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS OF STATE POLICY. Vol. 15. Raleigh, N. C, December 4, 1900. No. 42' Agriculti o e. THE OAT CROP AS A FORAGE. Cerresponding Editor Irby Discusses the Subject. P.diVorlal Cor. of Tho Progressive Farmer. Many farmers refrain from sowing oats because they cannot make a good grain crop ; "but that fact need not canso them to lose the use of this valuable crop for feed. In the spring, or early summer, there is always a scarcity of forage, and especially something fresh and appetizing to the cattle and horses. The oat crop of North Carolina generally is rather poor in grain compared "with other sections ; but the rest of the plant is good. It is not uncommon to see an oat crop four feet high and sown rather thickly. This, as can readily be seen, will furnish a large amount of forage. For the benefit of those who are not already growing this valuable crop, and who would like to do so, I vrill give my methods of growing. In the first place, I try so have a clover sod, or a pea or stubble on which to sow it, as the oat crop calls for a large amount of nitrogen to make its best growth. This element is fur lyshed abundantly by either the clover, or the pea crop. Many pounds of available nitrogen will be left on each acre by thee two legumes. Strange to say, the oat crop takes out less nitrogen from the soil, but requires more in the soil for its growth than does either of the afore mentioned crops. The piece of land having been selected, wo will now consider the rest of the work. If a stiff soil of any kind, turn under with a two horse plow or with a disc-plow. This Duts the stubble in deep and thereby 'lightens up the soil, rendering it porous and sponge-like. This enables it to hold an abundance of water, with which to tide over drouths, and it also allows the air to penetrate deep into the soil. The air, of course, i3 the great disintegrator, acting chemically on the soils, rendering soluble the plant food locked uj in rrjed combinations. On light soils this loosening up process is unnecessary, and a light plowing is all that is necessary. The work of a good cutaway harrow will bo quite sufficient. Certainly that of a single horse plow will answer. After the breaking the grain should be sowed. If best results are sought for, then the land should be treated rith commercial fertilizer, to give the crop a good start and enable it to get deep rooted before cold weather :-its in. If the whole crop of peas-, or of clover was turned under, then the application of nitrogen in the fertilizer will be unnecessary. Nitrogen costs this year just three times as much as the potash or the phosphoric acid. So if possible, this expense should be saved. If the legume crop was light, I would certainly make up a com plete fertilizer. For this I would ns8 the following formula, provided the cotton seed meal can be obtained rheaply : Gotton'seed meal, 700 pounds Acid phosphate, 1,000 Kainit, 300 " 2,000 Where the soil is rich already in nitrogen from the peas, then I should use the following : Phosphoric acid, 1,400 pounds Kainit, 600 2,000 A ton of the latter mixture will be much cheaper than the former. Ap ply 400 to 500 pounds per acre, broad cast just after plowing and then sow the seed, putting on about two or three bushels. Some call this amount hxy much, but we are sowing for forage and not for grain. Next run over the land with an or dinary cutaway harrow or with a spring-tooth harrow. This covers the oats and fertilizer, and levels off the land. Then the smoothing har row should follow, and a drag or a roller should follow next. If the land is sandy, the roller is especially jood, but if a heavy clay, then it is ot necessary. If desired, crimson clover or hairy vetch could be sown with the oats, as both come off about the same time. Cut about one week before the crop matures, and the loss in grain will be more than made up by the gain in a fine quality of hay. Cut with a mowing machine, and treat as you would any hay crop. Curing with as little exposure to weather as pos sible is best. Cut one day, after dew is off, allow to lie on ground until the next day, then rake up in wind rows after the dew is off. Third day rake heaps on the windows in the morning, and put up in cocks in the afternoon, being careful to put up in good snug piles and cap off to prevent rain from getting in the crown. Flat piles will ruin if it rains much before it is hauled into the barn. Hay caps are quite helpful in cur ing hay, and no well-equipped farm should be without them. If those who are disgusted with the oat crop for grain will try the above plan, I am sure they wTill bo pleased. B. Irby, Agriculturist N. C. Exp't Stat'n. AGRICULTURAL INTERESTS AT THE CAPITAL. Interesting Matter From the Department of Agriculture The Grout Bill Sural Free Delivery. Correspondence of The Progressive Farmer. Rural free delivery of mails is proving a great success. Postmaster-General Emory Smith has framod his estimates to be submitted to Con gress and will ask an aggregate of about $3,500,000 for the rural free delivery service. By the close of this fiscal year, 4,300 rural free de livery routes throughout the United States will have leen established and the general extension contem plated for next year will involve about 4,500 additional routes. ' The preliminary estimates of the average yield per acre of corn in 1900 as published in the monthly re port of the statistician of the De partment of Agriculture, is 25.3 bushels as compared with an aver ago yield of 25.31 bushels in 1899 of 21.7G bushels in 1898, and a ten year average of 24.1 bushels. The following figures I have com piled for The Progressive Farmer from those given out : Average 1900 corn yield per acre in bushels : Virginia 1G, North Caro lina 12, South Carolina, 7 ; Tennes see 19, Georgia 10. Average for the United States, 25.3. Average quality of 1900 corn : Vir ginia 80, North Carolina 86, South Carolina 75, Tennessee 83. Average 1900 yield of Irish pota toes per acre in bushels : Virginia 58, North Carolina 61, South Caro lina, 78, Georgia 68, Tennessee 54. Averago for United States 80.8 bushels. Average 1900 yield of sweet pota toes per acre ii bushels : Virginia 83, North Carolina 88, Georgia 85, South Carolina Gl, Tennessee 76. In quality North Carolina and Tennes see stand head, each having 89. Average 1900 yield of tobacco per acre in pounds : Virginia 545, North Carolina 490, South Carolina 750, Tennessee G60, Georgia 475. While the average yield of - 1900 hay in the United States was only 1.28 tons, the average in North Caro lina was 1.41, Virginia 1.16, South Carolina 1.32, Georgia 1.69, Tennes see 1.18. The average quality was in United States 89.7, in North Caro lina 92, Virginia 84, South Carolina 84, Georgia 96, Tennessee 86. With such an excellent showing, the people of these States, especially the Geor gians and Tar Heels, ought to pon der on the advisability of growing more hay. Of the States named above, North Carolina had the best apple and grape crops. The preliminary estimate of the cotton crop based upon reports from the Department's regular corre spondents from ginners and individ ual planters will bo issued this month. Much interest is shown in the Grout bill which will come up in Congress Dec. 6th. In the Fourth North Carolina District during 1898 and 1899 the internal revenue collec tions from oleomargarine sales amounted to $218; in the Fourth, $212. Several North Carolina Con gressmen voted against the Grout bill last spring. B. Washington, D. C. HARRY FARMER'S TALKS. V. Correspondence of The Progressive Farmer. Make a shelter for the sows and pigs. Wall it up on three sides, north, east and west. A farmer built a house and placed one sow and pigs in it. He had another sow and pigs as near equal to the first named as he could get them, which he let run out and make their beds where they could. He gave the first lot lust half the feed given to the latter, with the result a decided advantage in favor of the housed hogs. Be careful not to save all your eggs to sell on Christmas Eve. The mar ket is apt to be lower then than it is a week or ten days before Christmas. Don't forget Santa Claus. The little ones always should be made as happy as possible. When you go to purchase something for the small boy, a few useful little tools will often give more pleasure than any thing you can buy. For instance, a hatchet, saw, drawing knife, &c. Do you buy meat for your farm? If you do, plan this winter to stop it. Meat can be raised in this State as cheaply as in the West. Sow some oats or rye, about 1 acre for 8 or 10 pigs, or about an average of that. As soon as it begins to ripen turn the pigs on it. Plant another piece of land in cow peas about the same as that sown in oats or rye some time in late spring or early summer. Use an early variety. About the 10th of July you can put your hogs on the peas. Now plow the field first pastured in small beds about 3 feet apart and plant it in cow peas. Yon may let the pigs run in this field again three or four weeks from time of -planting and they will keep the grass and weeds down so that the peas can grow. You can feed your pigs three or four months this way and make meat at a cost of 2 or 3 cents per pound. The pigs can be finished on sweet po tatoes or corn. Your land will steadily improve used in this manner. Harry Farmer. Columbus Co., N. C. HOKE SMITH TO THE COTTON GROWERS. No speech delivered before the re cent meeting of .Cotton Growers at Macon, Ga., has attracted so much attention as that of Hoke Smith. In part, he said : "While cotton today brings 10 cents a pound, it has only been three years since the crop was selling at 5 cents. What are the elements which have caused this variance in prices? Recognizing the laws of demand and supply, we must seo that the depre ciation in the price of cotton has been due to a production of the staple in excess of the demand for manufactured goods. A knowledge of the supply of cotton and of the demand for cotton goods for con sumption will enable the producer to tell at the time of the year when cotton is picked and price at which lint cotton should sell. Another cause which has facilitated the dep reciations of prices at the time cotton left the hands of the planter has been the unbusiness-like plan of sell ing it. "More than 70 per cent, of the cot ton which is used in the great cotton mills cT the world is raised in our section. The mills run during twelve months. They need the cotton as much in July as they do in December. The plan of selling has disregarded the time of consumption. Instead of handling the crop so that it would be sold from month to month during the year, as the mills required it for use, it has been the practice of the planters in the South to rush their cotton on to the market during the period limited almost to two months, forcing its purchase by speculators, rather than holding the crop until the consumer or mill owner came after it. I am thankful to say that east of the Mississippi during the present year the planters have been informed as to the extent of the crop and as -to the world's demand for their cotton. Realizing that it was worth at least 10 cents a pound, or more, they have declined to sell it for less. They have received 10 cents for all they have sold. By the co operation of the merchants and the bankers they have been enabled, so soon as the buyers succeeded in de pressing the price, to take their cot ton off the market, and as a result they today see the price of cotton go ing back to the figures at which it sold during the month of September,, and I have no doubt the balance of the cotton crop thus cared for by oux farmers will bring them over 10 cents a pound. This price, however, could hardly have been realized had the farmers raised 1,000,000 bales nnre of cotton. Thero are three questions of vital importance which affect the price of next year's cotton crop. They are : How much will the mills of the world consume in 1902? How much lint cotton will the balance of the world produce for other than domes tic consumption in 1901 ? How much will we produce in the South in 1901 ? Fifty, years have shown an in creased demand for cotton goods, causing an incretised demand f (jr lint cotton of about 700 per cent. While the next decade may not show a pro portionate increased demand, I have no? doubt that by the end of 25 years the manufacturing of the world will consume over 30,000,000 bales of cot ton annually. 'While the Southern planter should aim at receiving for his lint cotton its full market value, care must be taken that the Soutll shall maintain her supremacy as the cotton-producing section of the world. England, Russia and Germany have devoted and are devoting great at tention as nations to cotton culture. The United States, through the Ag ricultural Department at Washing ton, should give cotton culture a full proportion of attention and should fiunish reliable information of the progress which is being made abroad in this great American staple. "Accurate information should also be prepared by the Agricultural De partments of the States which are engaged in producing lint cotton, to the end that the planters may obtain before planting their crops the prob able world's . supply, and later on in the season when the time for begin ning to sell cotton arrives, the plant ers should be reliably acquainted from these and other sources, with the probable product of our own cotton-raising section. ' ' CURING MEAT AGAIN. A Forsyth County Farmers' Plan. Correspondence of The Progressive Farmer. I have trijd all the plans reported by Mr. Jones in The Progressive Farmer and discarded them long ago. Here is my plan : Kill, cut up and lay out. Add salt while warm. Let hiy over night, then salt down hams and shoulders in box. Let lay four or five weeks. Then take out and hang up in a good dry place, and let hang and dry till last of Februaay or first of March. Then I take down and dust on or rub on, on end of hock and flesh part,black pepper and powdered borax. No need to apply on skin part. Do this well and you will have no skippers, no dust, no rust, but nice, clean sweet hams and shoulders. nOW TO KEEP SAUSAGE FRESH THE YEAR ROUND. Stuff in casing. Hang up and let dry six or eight days. Take down, cut in pieces for table. Put in good deep frying pan and fry slowly until done. Then pack them down in tin can closely. Let set till cold and then pour over, hot lard till covered. Be sure to get all the water out and they will keep the year round nice, sweet and fresh. S. A. Hauser. Forsyth Co., N. C. North Carolina stands third on the list of States producing the largest quanties of chewing and smoking to baccos 31,952,401 pounds and is only surpassed by Missouri and Ken tucky. North Carolina has 29 manu factories producing cigars and the output last year was 10,838,794. She also produced 994,396,500 cigarettes, using for that purpose more than 5,000,000 pounds of tobacco. In all she has 155 factories which last year turned into the finished product 46, 290,962 pounds of raw tobacco. SHREDDING CORN. . A Scotland Farmer's Interesting Experience. Correspondence of The Progressive Farmer. Noticing several articles in The Progressive Farmer advising the farmers to make arrangements to shred their corn, I thought perhaps I could interest your readers by giv ing the result of my experiment in that direction this season. To begin with, I bought one of the smallest shredders on the market. It weighs 500 pounds, and cost $50. The manufacturers claimed that it could be run by a two-horse tread or a four-horse sweep power, but I had a six-horse engine and so proceeded to run it with that. (And brother farmers let me advise you, in buying machinery, always buy what is claimed to run with less xower than you have ; too much power is all right, but too little is all wrong). Some shredders shuck the corn but this only claims to snap it off . the stalk and shred the stalk. It really shucks from one-third to one-half the corn and slip-shucks the balance. The stalk is shredded in little bits more nearly resembling pea hulls than anything I can think of and is eaten readily by both horses and mules, the only waste being the hard pieces of stalk near, the bottom, com posing probably 10 or 15 per centum of the whole bulk. From this it is easy to seo that shredding completely solves the rough food problem. The average one-horse farmer who raises ten acres of corn and "pulls" from two to three thousand pounds, of fodder at a cost of 75 cents per hundred, can cut and shock the corn with the same labor that is required to pull the fodder, he can get it hauled to the shredder in less time than he oan pull down and haul the corn, get it shredded for $1 per acre, and have ten thousand pounds of feed instead of two thousand. These facts should teach North Carolina farmers that it is high time to quit buying West ern hay. Besides being the cheapest feed available, corn stover is a great improvement on hay, either shipped or home-made in one particular, to wit : dust. It is quite the cleanest feed we can have in this sandy coun try as all hay is more or less dusty. I have also invested in a corn and cob mill, which I regard as a greater feed saver than even the shredder. I will give you my experience with that later. E. F. Murray. Scotland Co., N. C. BURKE STOCKMEN ORGANIZE. The Burke County Stock Associa tion was recently organized at a meeting held in Morganton. The following officers were elected : Walter Forney, President. C. B. Kincaid, Vice-President. J. W. Avery, Secretary. C. A. Edmondson, Treasurer. Robert Winkler, D. C. Beck, J. D. Alexander, W. C. Gibbs and Vance Powell were elected a committee to look after the general interests of the Association and report any vio lations of quarantine laws, &o., at the meetings of the Association. The nest meeting will be held in the court house on Saturday, the 8th inst. A reader asks how he may obtain the bulletins of the Department of Agriculture, the publication of which is noted from time to time in these columns. All Department bulletins or reports intended for free general distribution may be had on applica tion to Hon. James Wilson, Secre tary of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. The title of the bulletin and its number if possible should be men tioned in the request. The shredder grows in popularity. Here's an item from the Laurinburg Exchange: Every one should see the new corn cutter and shredder of Messrs. Blue & Fairly which is man aged by Mr. J. R. Jordan. The cut ter is driven through the fields, cut ting down corn, stalk, fodder and all, and bundling it. The bundles are then carried to the shredder which removes the ear and shucks it completely and cuts the stalk and fodder into good stock feed. Horticulture. NEW VARIETIES OF GRAPES. Correspondence of The Progressive Farmer. Mention is constantly being made of new varieties of grapes which have equal if not superior virtiies to the old ones, but in my opinion it does not pay to raise these commer cially on a large scale until then market value has been thoroughly tested. The fact is the grapes most in demand are the Concords, Dela wares, Niagaras and Catawbas, with some call tor the Isabella, Vincennes, and occasionally a few other varie ties. When is there actually a de mand for any of the so-called new varieties? The eating public has not yet cultivated any taste for them, and it seems satisfied with the four or five varieties now in general uso. Of course if some of these new grapes should prove far superior to any of the old varieties there would be a call for them, and they would soon find an outlet. But at present they are sold to the wine merchant in trays at less than two cents a pound, sometimes as low as one cent. It is not because they do not possess good qualities, but because they have not proved themselves superior to the old established varieties, and lack the reputation of the 'former . It is possible to find new varieties, I suppose, that will in time make their reputation. Moore's Eurly, for instance, is raised in the South for the early markets, and a good sale. This is due to the fact that the grape can be raised at such an early period that it reaches market wHilo there is little or no competition. The quality which sells it is that of earli ness. When a grape is found that will ripen a week or two earlier than this, it will pay to raise it for mar ket, or if one can find a grape that keeps better through the winter than any raised at present, there will be commercial demand for it that will make it profitable to raise. We have too many grapes recom mended now. They are recommended because somebody has found pleas ure in "raising a few. They are ex cellent for househpld use, and I would advise every grower to raise a few of every good variety known. But do not plant them for commer cial purposes. As good as or a little superior to Concords or Niagaras will not do. They must be away and above superior to these to com mand commercial attention. Until we find a grape that can command this enviable position, my advice would be to stick to the old, well known reliables. They will make more profits for you in the end vhan all the so-called new varieties. S. W. Chambers. FALL PLANTED TREES. Correspondence of The Progressive Farmer. This seems to me a very timely subject and a few things experience has taught me regarding it may not be oilt of place in The Progressive Farmer. Where one can oversee the digging and transplanting of fruit trees in the fall there is less likelihood of their being set back by the change. It is a crying shame in many parts of the country to see the utter indif ference with which nurserymen'tiike up trees sold to farmers and ship them to their destination in a condi tion that will cause total or partial failure. The only way to make them more careful is to have inserted iz. the purchasing contract a clause re quiring the nurseryman to make good any trees that die from expos ure of roots or poor packing when shipped. As a rule it is safer to get your trees as near home as possible. In some localities it is not wise to do this on account of lack of any nur sery where good trees can bo f oun$.. It is the only absolutely safe way to drive your team to the nursery and have the trees dug up as you buy them, insisting that the roots shall not be disturbed, and that a good ball of f rozen earth be taken up with each one. There are plenty who will tell you that it does not hurt young trees to be dug up in the lata fall, and even if the roots are dis turbed it matters little. That sort CONTINUED ON PAGE 8.