The Old Time Farm Magazine: Repairing Farm Buildings, Blanching Celery, and Preparing Plants for Winter

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Need a tip on how to blanch celery?  Read these old-time farm magazines for that and other tips. PHOTO: FOTLOIA/JOVAN NIKOLIC

A Cornucopia Watch Pocket

To make the watch pocket shown in Image A requires a piece of cardboard four inches long and five and one-half inches wide. (Click on the "Image Gallery" to see this and accompanying images.) Shape this according to the diagram, Image B, which represents the pattern reduced to one-quarter of the actual size. The inside of the pocket is covered with pale pink and the outside with deep red satin fit, after it has been decorated with embroidery, of which Image C gives the design in full size. The flowers are worked with fine chenille, in different colors, and the leaves with embroidery silk, in two or three shades of olive color. It is then sewed together, and its seam and edge finished with a red silk cord, which forms three loops, at each end. A small gilt ornament with a hook to hold the watch, fastened just below the upper corner, completes the cornucopia.

Repair the Farm Buildings

This is not so good a time as the the month of May for the repair of the barns and the other out-building but it is better to do all the necessary "fixing up" before winter sets in. There are many things that only need to be done in the fall, such as making the division fences and gates for the flocks of sheep, the young stock, etc.; in short, do all those things that may be called labors of preparation, for the incoming or housing of the stock before the day comes for them to go into their places for the winter. It is much easier to repair a floor or manger of the stable before the animals have come to their stalls. It may be that a shed will be needed and It should be built now. The same may be said of an ice house. Prepare early and prepare well for the severe months of the coming winter.

Late Sown Rye for Spring Fodder

There are differences of opinion as to the value of late sown rye as a crop for early spring feeding. These differences are almost entirely due to the circumstances of soil and season. Should the soil be poor the rye crop, like any other, will be poor, and should the season close in with hard freezing soon after sowing, the plants will not have made sufficient roots to save them from injury. If, on the other hand, the soil is rich and mellow, and the sowing is done so early that strong, well rooted plants may form, then a profitable crop may be expected. The writer has seen most satisfactory results obtained by plowing under a sod — previously well manured — in late autumn, and the ground sown to rye. In the spring this field yielded a heavy growth of fine green fodder, which was used to feed a flock of sheep and other small stock. After this pasturage was over the rye " stubble " was turned under with a heavy coat of manure, and the field planted to corn. In this case the rye was what Is termed a stolen crop, put in between the old meadow and the corn, Instead of the land lying idle from the time the grass was cut until plowed for corn, there had been an extra manuring, plowing, and a fodder crop. Some portion of the field was clay and the additional tillage had a good effect upon the mechanical conditions of the soil. The green crop thus produced came In at just that time In the spring when a supply of fodder of this kind is of special value — the pastures not having fully started and the dry stored food being limited In quantity and of high price.