Farm and home mechanics : some things that every boy should know how to do and hence should learn to do in school.

Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Farm and home mechanics : some things that every boy should know how to do and hence should learn to do in school. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/62 (page 12)
    1. SETTING POSTS. Posts should be set 24 feet in the ground and tamped solidly into place. For barbed wire fences they should be 164 feet apart. For inclosing large fields or pastures they are frequently set: at twice that distance. For board or rail fences the distances betweeen posts is controlled by the length of material used, but should never exceed 8 feet. Always set posts in a straight line and when practicable conforming to the cardinal points of the compass. Corner posts should be larger and longer than other posts and should be set 34 or 4 feet in the ground and braced from two sides. Posts in low places should be set at least 3 feet in the ground. 2. BUILDING FENCE. Cedar posts should always be used when obtainable. Posts of other material should be treated with creosote or coal tar or should be charred before being set. In building barbed wire fences the wire should be stretched very tight, using a wagon for the stretching. A wire stretcher does very well for small fields, but is not so satisfactory for large ones. If the fence is of boards, they should be nailed to the posts with three nails in each post. Care should be taken to have boards or wires equal distances apart. 3. PLANTING TREES. The land where the trees are to be planted should first be carefully plowed and leveled as for any other crop. The hole for the tree should be dug wide and deep. The harder the soil the larger the hole should be, because in such case the tree must start in the loose dirt that is cut up in the bottom or thrown into the hole. In a loose, deep soil the hole need not be larger than the spread of the roots. Trees should be set an inch or two deeper than they stood before transplanting. The roots that are broken should be trimmed off at the ends and should be spread out in planting to their normal position. If there are extra long roots, they should be cut back to correspond to the rest. The soil must be put in firmly about the roots, especially under the fork, so that there may be no air spaces left. This can best be done with the fingers, moving the tree up and down a little at the same time. The earth should be stamped down once or twice as the hole is being filled. The hole should be a httle more than full of earth, sothat the surface water can be carried off, being specially careful not to leave holes near the tree where the water will settle. Stamp the earth thoroughly before leaving it, to hold the moisture and enable the tree to stand up against the winds. A good plan to conserve moisture in planting a tree is to put a muleh of straw or manure around it.