Do you really know what a delicious beverage can be made from the juice of rhubarb mixed in cool water?  Take it along in the hayfield a hot summer day.  And even if you can not keep it cool the acid contained in the juice still makes it a delicious and stimulating drink where you would loathe the taste of a stale beer.  There are about a hundred other ways to prepare rhubarb, not forgetting a well cooled rhubarb mush served with cool milk in the evening or for that matter three times a day; nothing cheaper, nor healthier.  The fresh acid contained in the rhubarb purifies the blood and puts new vigor in your body and soul, is better and cheaper than any patent medicines, and from the growth of 50 to 100 plants you can eat every day for six months and preserve enough in fresh, cool water in airtight jars to last you all winter.  But you can do still better with your rhubarb.  You can add three months more and make it nine months of the year for fresh, crisp, delicious fruit.  I will tell you how.

When your rhubarb gets 3-4 years old and very big and strong clumps of roots, divide some of the best and make a new planting and dig some of the balance before frost in the fall.  Leave them on top of the ground until they have had a good freeze—­this is very essential to success—­then place the roots as you dug them in a dark corner in your cellar or in a barrel in your cellar, exclude all light, keep the soil moderately wet and after Christmas and until spring you will have an abundance of brittle, fine flavored stalks that are fully equal to and perhaps more tender than the outdoor grown.  Years ago in Chicago I grew rhubarb in a dark house 36x80 ft., built for that purpose, and the stalks generally commanded a price of 12 to 15c a pound in the right market in January, February and March.

It is better not to pull any stalks the summer you transplant, at least not until September.  Next year in May and June you can have stalks from 1/2 to 1 pound and over.  When you pull stalks don’t take the outer two or three leaves but only the tender ones, and strip them off in succession so you do not come back to the same plants to pull for four to six weeks or more.  Just as quick as the plant shows flower stems cut them off close to the ground and keep them off, never allow them to show their heads.

I have grown rhubarb for market and for domestic use for about forty years, having one time as much as five acres, and I will assure you if you will follow directions you will appreciate rhubarb more than before and get out of it all it is worth.

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TREES PLANTED BY MACHINE.—­A machine which plants from ten to fifteen thousand forest trees seedlings a day is now being used at the Letchworth Park Forest and Arboretum, in Wyoming County, N. Y., according to officials of the Forest Service who are acting as advisers in the work.  Previously the planting had been done by hand at the rate of 1,200 to 1,500 trees each day per man.