How to Do Things: A Timeless Guide to a Simpler Life

By William Campbell

A useful and entertaining guide to practical skills for homesteaders—or anyone who likes to do things with their own two hands.

For anyone who wants to learn how to make cheese, catch a runaway pig, mend a fence post, milk a cow, or throw an unforgettable barn party, this engaging volume delivers timeless advice on accomplishing tasks big and small around the house, garden, and farm. Featuring original text and illustrations from the 1919 first edition, this volume presents a new generation of readers with expert guidance on every facet of homesteading.

With projects that range from practical (ridding a yard of poison ivy) to downright bemusing (organizing a potato peeling contest), this delightful book is equal parts useful and entertaining. An ode to self-reliance brimming with wit, wisdom, and nostalgia, this is a must-have for anyone who enjoys doing things with their own two hands, on the farm or in the backyard, the kitchen, or the workshop.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781452171746

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

INTERESTING and IMPORTANT MATTERS

In introducing this volume to the millions of readers of Farm Journal—the great family of rural Americans whom we often call with respect and affection Our Folks—only a very few words are necessary.

At intervals for the last forty years we have had friends of Farm Journal come to the editors and say, Why don’t you make a book of the best things out of the paper? It is a shame, they say, to have this wealth of information lost, or to force readers to make scrapbooks to preserve special articles that interest them.

The editors have always agreed that such a book would be a good thing. From their daily contact with subscribers all over the country (via the countless letters and inquiries they receive and answer), they know very closely what folks are interested in and want to know about. On this contact they are accustomed to base the choice of what goes into Farm Journal, and they have always believed that a book containing these important things would be appreciated by many.

It was more a question of finding the time and energy to do the job. Other matters pressed, the family of Our Folks kept getting bigger and bigger, and demanding more and more information and advice, and so on and so on. However, the time came at last, and here finally is the long-desired book, full to overflowing with interesting and important matters.

On the editorial page of Farm Journal you may read under the title the words, Unlike Any Other Paper. This states a truth that is obvious to those who form the habit of reading our journal—and which applies in equal measure to this book.

For one thing, it says a thing and stops after it has said it. For another, it is cheerful and hopeful and wants everybody to have a good time. It is young in spirit if not in years. For another, it is full of snap and ginger and hits the nail squarely on the head. Hence, its columns are perfectly clean and pure; it does not have to be hidden from the children, nor carried out of the house with tongs. For another, it prints no long-winded, tiresome essays and knows what to leave out as well as what to put in.

It is at home in every state, in all latitudes and longitudes, and welcome from the rising to the setting of the sun. It treats every branch of farming and living: gardening, stockbreeding, dairying, poultry raising, bee culture, sheep and swine husbandry, fruit growing, and trucking.

It thinks the humans of the farm are the best stock on it, yet it teaches the kindest, wisest care for every species of animal. Its teachings are practical and therefore profitable. Its purpose has always been, and now is, not how much profit will accrue, but how much good it can do. If our business were a mere matter of dollars and cents, we would quit today.

If we should sum up in a few words our feelings about How To Do Things, we would say something like this: a favorite description of Farm Journal is to say that it is cream, not skim milk. The contents of this book have been selected as the very best of Farm Journal contents. We therefore present it to Our Folks, old and new, as the cream of the cream.

—William Campbell and the editors

PART I DOWN on the FARM

MAILING LISTS that MAKE MONEY

A good way to index customers

Almost every farm can use mailing lists to advantage. In buying, the lists help locate the cheapest and the most suitable article at once. In selling, they drum up trade, add new customers, and help obtain the highest market prices.

SELLING SEED CORN

A farmer who had made a hobby of growing sweet corn—cultivating it for years until he had developed a superior strain—found that the local stores were glad to handle his seed but offered a low price. He compiled a list of nineteen seedsmen operating in his territory, securing the names from farm paper and newspaper advertisements and from personal knowledge. Some of them sold seeds by mail, some through retail stores, and others were city wholesalers.

Using a typewriter, the farmer wrote a businesslike letter to all nineteen seedsmen, telling them what he had to offer and forwarding samples. His results were typical of mailing-list work. Eight businesses did not reply at all, and seven answered that they had adequate supplies arranged for. Four firms offered $1 a bushel more than the grower had been offered at home.

SELLING NUTS

Another farmer with a big crop of hickory nuts used a list of entirely different character. During a trip to town he borrowed several city directories and wrote down the names of professionals, manufacturers, and others that he believed had better-than-average buying power. These were classified in the directories and were easily copied. To every one of the several hundred families on his list, he mailed a printed catalog, with 1-cent postage, describing the superior sort of produce he had to offer and quoting prices in bulk lots. The prices were somewhat below what the city fruit stores were charging. He easily sold his entire crop in this way and had a fine beginning toward a parcel-post trade in other farm products.

SELLING WOOD

A third farmer obtained a list of pulpwood buyers and secured a price 50 cents a cord better than that which he was about to accept for his wood.

Purchasing agents of corporations send form letters to every business manufacturing articles they are in the market for, giving specifications and asking for samples and prices. Farmers who are making purchases of considerable size can follow the same plan. From the local farm newspapers a list of businesses can be readily complied. It is well to get prices from the local dealer, too. Whether the articles to be bought are fence posts or farm implements, it pays to feel out the market thoroughly, and the mailing list is a cheap, effective way of going about it. The fellow who buys without comparison is often the disappointed one.

Mailing lists for most farm purposes can be compiled at home. There are businesses that make a specialty of furnishing lists, their charges running from about $2 for every thousand names with a guarantee of accuracy. If the list written to is a long one, it is oftentimes good business to use a printed form letter. With smaller lists, a typewriter will do. The typewriter lessens the labor in correspondence, and every farmer who does a great deal of writing should have one.

LEADING the BULL SAFELY

Where a bull is kept on the farm great care must be taken that he has no chance to do any one an injury. No chances should be taken. A rope attached to a ring in the nose serves as an extra hitching arrangement in the stall, but the bull should not be led by this alone. He can charge on the one leading him at will. Put an extra ring in the rope near his nose and have a stick with a snap in the end, and then the bull can be led anywhere in safety, the rope and the stick being taken together in the hand.

STOP CHICKEN EATING

Here is a cure for that old hog that eats up all the chickens. Use a piece of stiff leather wide enough to cover the hog’s face within an inch or so of the snout, and secure it with a hog ring to the lower edge of the ears. An old bootleg will do.

ANOTHER HEN DISCOURAGER

Hiram Hogg: At last my owner has solved the hen problem to my entire satisfaction by hinging the door to my sty so that it will always swing shut. When I leave my house to roam in the alfalfa I push it open with my snout and need not worry about any fussy old hen and a host of chirping chickens scratching in my nest. Nor will I again waken from my afternoon nap to find that same fussy old hen hovering her brood on my back.

HOMEMADE HOG SCRATCHER

Here is a device that will take the lice off the farmer’s hogs as they are sound asleep. Drive a stake in the ground, wrap an old rope around the stake, and tack with shingle nails. Saturate the rope with equal parts of coal oil and lard once a week, or use one of the commercial coal-tar dips. Drive the stake near the hogs’ sleeping quarters. This is so effectual that the hogs will stand in line waiting their turn to rub against this homemade hog scratcher.

SIMPLEST KIND of MILK STRAINER

Good butter making begins as far back as the milking, if not further. The process of milking must be clean if sweet butter is to be made. Fit a funnel, with strainer in the bottom, to the milk pail and milk into this. This will keep out much floating dust and will also assist in keeping the milk closed to odors while it has to remain in the stable.

RAISING GUINEA PIGS

The guinea pig is a native of Brazil and comes in three different colors—white, black, and fawn. Some of the white ones have red eyes.

Before starting in the business of raising guinea pigs, you should carefully consider several things:

If you have hay, apples, and similar feed on the home place, it is all right; if not, it may be a mistake to start in the guinea pigs business, as these feeds cost too much. Grain must be purchased, but that is a small expense compared with the other feed.

Then there must be a good place to keep the little animals. They won’t thrive down in the cellar, nor out in the shed, nor up in the garret. They must have a place where a fire can be kept in cold weather.

They must be attended to as regularly as other farm animals. They must be watered once daily, fed two or three times, and have their hutches cleaned out every day.

When you get two hundred or three hundred guinea pigs, which would be necessary to have a steady income, you will find it work—not hard labor, but work you cannot shirk.

SCIENTIFIC HAND MILKING

ITS IMPORTANCE OFTEN OVERLOOKED

Too little attention is paid to the subject of scientific hand milking. A poor milker may easily do enough harm in a herd of cows in one year to equal in loss the amount of his wages. In other words, it would pay to hand him his year’s salary in a lump sum and buy him off instead of allowing him to milk poorly ten or twelve cows each night and morning. Such a milker, if he is rough, cross, noisy, unclean, irregular, or imperfect in his milking, may quickly or gradually dry off the cows.

A SCHOOL WOULD BE GOOD

We know of one case in which a beginner, in two months, completely dried off the milk secretion in the cow upon which he was allowed to practice. In another case a new milker by his roughness and harshness so reduced the milk flow that the owner had to fire him in self-defense. It probably is a fact that in every herd where the milk is not weighed night and morning and close tally kept one or another of the milkers is doing indifferent or disastrous work. In Great Britain, girls who are taking up farm work are learning to milk by practicing on dummy cows until they become sufficiently expert to tackle the living animal safely. It would be well were our would-be hired hands put through such a course of training to make them proficient without spoiling or injuring a cow or two in the process.

THE MILKER OFTEN TO BLAME

Seeking the cause for many mysterious cases of intermittent garget—inflamed udders—experienced in some dairies, it must be suspected that the milker often is to blame. We think that incomplete milking is a possible cause, but one that is little suspected. The way a milker feels at milking time will in many instances determine the amount of milk he obtains. If he quickly extracts it all, it will be well for the cow and the employer. If he is in a hurry, indifferent, tired, or feeling sick and does not strip the cow clean, slight, unexplained garget may result. If such work continues, the cow will soon show a serious shrink in milk, prove profitless, or dry off entirely and have to be discarded.

It would be a good plan for every dairyman, especially in herds where slight cases of garget are prevalent, to have an expert strip the cows 10 minutes after the milkers have finished. By this means some very rich milk will be obtained for use on the farmer’s table and at the same time a check will be kept on the work of each milker and some cases of garget possibly prevented. Knowing that the cows are going to be stripped, the milker will, if conscientious and anxious to please, milk just as well and completely as he knows how, and so all concerned will be benefited. If he is the other sort of a worker, he will be detected and discharged before he has done permanent damage.

FAST MILKING PAYS

The milker who can make the milk fairly boil in the pail and raise a lot of foam usually is getting the maximum flow of milk from each cow, while the slow milker, no matter how particular or faithful, often fails to get all that the cow would let down to the fast milking expert. A change of milkers may have a good or bad effect. In one experiment, two equally proficient milkers changed cows and at once there was an increase in milk yield from each lot of cows. A change of milkers, however, more commonly results in a decrease in milk production, and this sometimes is so noticeable that the accustomed milker has to resume his work with affected cows.

THE STABLE’S FLOOR and OTHER MATTERS

How is the stable’s floor? Has it been pawed out in front and is there a space under the manger? A horse, the most ambitious animal when up, is the most helpless when down. Many a fine animal has lain down naturally enough, and in some manner, when trying to rise, has forced himself forward under the manger, or trough, and been found dead or badly injured in the morning. All our folks know about this danger, but in the multiplicity of things to be looked after it is sometimes forgotten.

Let us consider the manger. To begin with, every horse ought to eat off the ground. If the bottom of the manger is on, or within 2 inches [5 cm] of the earth or floor, no horse can get under it, and where the knee touches the manger when the animal paws it will rarely be continued. Standing upon an earth floor is good for the feet and necessary for some horses, but such a floor must be leveled often.

WATCH THE COAT

A horse’s coat is a good indication of his condition at this season of the year. If it stares, or looks rough and unkempt regardless of the daily brushing, he is not fully nourished and needs a change of feed. A molasses addition to the ration, of say a ¹/2 cup [160 g] or 1 cup [320 g] twice daily, or a small handful of oil meal gradually increased to 2 cups [480 ml] twice a day, or 8 cups [2 L] of potatoes or apples twice daily, will presently work wonders in his appearance and spirits. A warm bran mash once a week is also good.

BEWARE