Food and health

Cooking utensils. For good work you need a few wellselected utensils. Enameled ware and aluminum are among the more expensive kinds, but both are serviceable. Steel or iron are materials that wear well and are useful in frying pans especially. There is nothing better than a well-worn iron spider which has become perfectly smooth from years of use. If you have one of these that you think of throwing away because the under part is encrusted with a black covering, give the pan a thorough boiling in a solution of lye, washing soda, or soft soap, and then keep it among your kitchen treasures. Water in the kitchen. John Stark said on another day : " Father, I want to talk to you seriously. What would you think of going without the addition to the barn another year, and having a force pump in the cellar Courtesy of New York State College of Agriculture at CorneU University. Fig. 87. — For good work you need a few well-selected kitchen utensils. SO that mother can have hot and cold running water in the kitchen, and we all can have a bathroom ? " What do you think his father said ? He was a little doubtful about the school where they studied such things ; then he remembered that at the Farmers' Institute he had heard another farmer talk about just this thing. And what did he do ? He wrote to the State University and asked for advice about water on the farm. They gave him some practical help, and now the Stark home has a good water supply. Running water, what a blessing ! If you have a spring of good water on high land and the water can be piped into the house, you are wealthy. Sometimes, several neighbors can do this together. Happy is the small town that has a pure supply and can pipe it into the village ! What are some simpler methods that can be used on the farm ? Here is a drawing (Fig. 88) of what one family did in Pleasant Valley. When crops fail, and business is poor, we cannot put in expensive waterworks. As the water in the Groves' well was a little hard for washing, they always had rain barrels for water from the roof, being careful to let the rain wash off the roof before it was turned into the barrels. This picture shows what Mr. Groves devised one day when the family was talking about saving steps. He ran a short pipe into the kitchen from the barrel, with a spigot on the kitchen end of the pipe. The pipe was arranged so that the barrel could be taken off and down to be cleaned. Also there was a netting over the top of the barrel. Why ? To keep out mosquitoes, of course. This plan Draum by La Mont A. Warner, * , * It^sitv!'^"''^''^''"*^ docs not work m a very dry summer, Fig. 88.— Mr. Groves put but Mrs. Groves fouud it a help, and up a rain barrel to catch i_ i. j i i_ i_ water from the roof, SO She nad another one put by the and ran a short pipe shed where the washing was done in into the kitchen from , _^, the barrel. Warm Weather. The next step was a cemented rain-water cistern, with a pump in the kitchen. A tank in the attic. More convenient still is a water tank in the attic, with a good hand pump that pumps the water from a well or cistern. One tank of this kind needs many strokes a day to keep it full, but the family prefer this exercise to carrying water in and out in pails. A windmill or a steam pump is the next advance in way pf improvement, and electricity is best of all. Perhaps, some day, we all can have it. ,