Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/605

 Popular Scicn

A Sweet Potato Digger That Lifts ^ the Potatoes and Cuts the Vine

��A NOVEL potato digger for sweet potatoes, invented by Oliver Cord- rey, of Laurel, Delaware, digs deep under the potatoes and lifts them out, leaving the ground level with the vines on top for a cover through the winter, instead of turning the vines under a furrow as a plow would do. The ground is left in condition for raising better corn the next season where that crop is used in rotation with sweet potatoes.

The machine has a pair of runners ar- ranged at opposite sides of the beam, which each carry a small cultivator disk. These runners are adjustable vertically. Back of the runners is a scoop, having up- wardly extending rear arms. This scoop is adjustably mounted so that it may be tilted relatively to the beam.

So long as farmers used the old plow for turning out their sweet potatoes they could not raise corn the next year. The vines were covered at the bottom of the furrow and the subsoil turned up to the winds of winter, since it was necessary to plow deep to avoid cutting the potatoes. The new digger obviates this and cuts the vines as it digs, thus performing what formerly were separate operations. The resulting sa\ing in labor is from $5 to $10 per acre — figured on pre-war prices. The machine is of light draft, simple in con- struction as compared with most ma- chines designed for potato digging, and is self guiding after being started in a row.

As the dig- ger is com- paratively inexpensive, and the sav- ing effected is very con- siderablethis should prove very popu- lar, particu- larly with small truck farmers. The fact that the machine can be run by un- skilled labor counts.

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����A potato-digger constructed to lift out the potatoes without turning over the earth like the old plow

��The little apparatus shown weans a calf without separating him from his mother

An Effective and Humane Method of Weaning a Calf

RUSTIC ingenuity has devised a num- . ber of contrivances to prevent calves from nursing while they are in the same stable or the same pasture with their mothers, but most of these devices are extremely clumsy and awkward. The device shown in the picture avoids most of the objectionable features of the older ap- pliances. The upper part is fastened to the nose of the calf by a hinged clamp and causes neither pain nor injury to the

animal. The lower part, which is hinged to the nose part and swings freely, makes it impossible for the calf to nurse, al- though it does not pre- vent it from grazing.

This ob- viates the necessity for keeping the calf confined.

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