One of our trees taught us this method of its own accord in the summer of 1843. The weight of fruit was so great that we applied a prop to the middle of the branch; in a few days the branch broke short off at the point of the prop. It so happened that the three main limbs on one side of the tree acted in this manner. That same fall a strong growth of new wood shot out, and the next season I had on that side as fine a top as ever I had on any peach-tree.
Every farmer who expects his wife to make good butter, after furnishing her with some good, well-fed milk cows, should provide her with good milk-pans—large and shallow, so as to present a large surface for the cream to rise on, and enough of them to hold all her milk, and allow it to remain undisturbed long enough for all the cream to rise. These pans should be nicely washed every time the milk is emptied out of them, and always be clear and bright when filled.
AN APOLOGUE OR APPLE-LOGUE.
Two men planted out each one hundred apple-trees. In six or seven years they began to bear. One had spared no pains to bring his orchard into the highest condition. He had constantly cultivated the soil about them, scraped off the rough bark, washed them with urinated soap, picked off every worm and nursed them as if they had been children. The other, pursuing a cheaper plan, simply let his trees alone; but the moss, and canker-worms took his place and attended to them every year. When the orchards began to bear, the careful man had the best fruit, and the careless man covered his folly by cursing the nursery-man for selling him poor trees. In a year or two the careful man had two bushels to the other’s one from each tree. Not to be outdone, the latter determined to have as many apples as the former, and set out another hundred trees. By and by, when they bore, the other orchard had so improved that it produced twice as many yet; another hundred trees were therefore planted. In process of time the first orchard of one hundred trees still sent more fruit to market than the three hundred trees of the careless man, who now gave up and declared that he never did have luck, and it was of no use to try on his soil to raise good fruit.
1. When a man is too shiftless to take good care of two horses, he buys two more, and gets from the four what he might get from two.
2. A farmer who picks up a cow simply because it is not an ox, and is, nominally, lactiferous, and then lets the creature work for a living, very soon buys a second, and a third, and a fourth, and gets from them all, what he should have had from one good one.
3. A farmer had one hundred acres. Instead of getting seventy-five bushels of corn to the acre, he gets forty and makes it up by cultivating twice as many acres; instead of thirty bushes of wheat he gets twelve, and puts in acres