Spons' Household Manual: A treasury of domestic receipts and a guide for home management
General
Spons' Household Manual: A treasury of domestic receipts and a guide for home management
Home economics
Roots.--The action of frost is not thoroughly understood by farmers
generally. This is shown by the way clamps are covered with manure
on the top and half-way down the sides. The singular fact, however,
is, that the top of a clamp is never injured--that is, unless the
frost is so severe and prolonged that the whole mass is frozen--if
the clamp be fairly covered with straw and earth at starting. The
severity of an attack of frost begins and continues from the outer
soil at the base of a clamp or brick store, as a barn or other
building. Whether this is because a gentle fermentation of the roots
or potatoes goes on, the warmth thus caused rising to the top, or
whether it is because the lowest temperature is nearest the immediate
surface of the earth, has not been decided; but the result invariably
is that, if a body of roots or potatoes be partly injured, the
rotten ones will be found at the bottom. If the clamp be broadside
to the north or east wind, the rotten ones will be found in the form
of a triangle on the side where the wind has blown, the base of
the triangle being at the bottom; if, however, the clamp had been
situated with the end to the wind, the rotten roots will be found
at that end in the form of an inverted M, that is, there will be a
decayed triangle on each side. The length and depth to which this
decay would extend along the clamp would of course depend on the
severity and length of the frost.
The required precaution is therefore shown. In the case of clamps
after several days of severe frost, with a prospect of its
continuing, long manure, straw, hedge-trimming, or whatever may be
at hand, should be packed 1 ft. or more thick, and 1 yd. or so wide
on the surface soil at the base of the clamp, at the side on which
the blast is impinging. It is the same with a brick building. If a
bed or heap of potatoes or mangold be stored in a barn, either all
over a bay or in one or more corners, and the same be well covered
with straw, there will be no fear of the top or outer side of the
heap being frozen. But the part of the heaps which are near to the
wall will be found to have been frozen in the form of a triangle,
as mentioned. The fact is the frost rises, so to express it, from
the foundation of the brickwork being communicated with from the
surface soil outside. This shows the importance of packing a body of
long manure or a quantity of straw on the surface soil outside the
brickwork.
Rowan Berries.--(_a_) Fill a large earthenware jar with strong salt
and water. Put in the berries; tie it down. They will keep in this
way till Christmas, (_b_) Gum them well all over so as to make them
adhere to their stalks, and sealing-wax the ends where cut from the
tree, and keep them in a tin box till required for use.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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