Soil Culture: Containing a Comprehensive View of Agriculture, Horticulture, Pomology, Domestic Animals, Rural Economy, and Agricultural LiteratureWalden, J. H.
Science
Soil Culture: Containing a Comprehensive View of Agriculture, Horticulture, Pomology, Domestic Animals, Rural Economy, and Agricultural Literature
Walden, J. H.
Agriculture -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.
One of the greatest errors of American farmers is their neglect to
cultivate groves of trees for woodlands, in all suitable places. Our
primeval forests have been wantonly destroyed, and the country is not
yet old enough to feel the full force of neglecting to replenish them,
by new groves, in suitable localities. On the points of hills, rough
stony places, sides of steep hills, ravines that can not be cultivated,
and by the side of all the highways of the land, trees should be
cultivated: in some places fruit-trees, but in most places forest-trees.
The advantages would be manifold; they would afford shade for cattle,
groves for birds, which would destroy the worms; they would break off
the cold winds from crops, cattle, fruit-orchards, and dwellings; would
greatly enrich the soil by their annual foliage, afford abundance of
fuel at the cheapest rates, give much good timber, provide for fine
maple-sugar, and be the greatest ornaments of the rural districts. Only
think of the comfort and beauty of fifty miles square, in which not a
street could be found which had not trees on each side, not more than
twelve feet apart. When such trees should become twenty years old, the
pedestrian or the carriage could move all day in the shade, listening to
the music of the birds, and inhaling the aroma of the foliage or
flowers. To every owner or occupant of the soil we say, plant trees.
POULTRY.
Fattening and preparing poultry for the market are important items in
rural economy. Plenty of sweet food and pure water given at regular
times, and the fowls not allowed to wander, are the requisites of
successful fattening. The best feed for fattening fowls is oat-meal.
Next to this is corn-meal. Three things are essential in food for
fattening animals, flesh-forming, fat-forming, and heat-producing
substances. Of all the grains ordinarily fed, oat-meal contains these in
the best proportions, and next to this comes yellow Indian corn meal.
Fat is good, but must be given in a hard form as in mutton or beef
suet. Rice boiled in sweet milk, fed for a day or two before killing
fowls is said to render the flesh of a white delicate color.
At least one third of the value of poultry in the market depends upon
properly preparing and transporting it.
1. Do not feed fowls at all for twenty-four hours before killing them.
2. Kill by cutting the jugular vein with a sharp pen-knife, just under
the sides of the head, and hang them up to bleed.
3. Pick carefully and very clean, without tearing the skin, and without
scalding. Singe slightly if need be. Dip in hot water for three or four
seconds and in cold water half a minute.
4. Do not open the breast at all, but remove the entrails from the hind
opening, leaving the gizzard in its place. Put no water in but wipe out
the blood with a dry cloth. Leaving the entrails in is injurious,
tending to sour the meat and taint it with their flavor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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