/8 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



when they are not out sometime, rooting around and getting a 

 little green grass which is beneficial. What we want in this 

 country is fewer pig pens and more pig pastures. We have a 

 permanent pasture that has been seeded down twenty-five years 

 which we use for early spring and late fall pasturing. We 

 depend largely on clover for pasture, and would not care to turn 

 them into our clover fields very early in the spring while it is still 

 wet, so we keep them in the permanent pasture until the clover 

 gets well up and the ground settled, then turn them into the 

 clover pasture. The trouble with clover is that, while it is the 

 best and the cheapest feed ever fed to a hog, it is a biennial. We 

 sow it one year, it gets a good start, and the second year it is 

 used for hay or pasture, and then its life work is done. You 

 may get a little the third year, but not enough to make it profit- 

 able. So we reseed every year. We have two pastures and 

 while the pigs are in one we are preparing the other for another 

 year. We plant it to corn and cultivate in the usual way until 

 about the last of June, and then sow June clover at the rate of 

 eight quarts to the acre. We also mix in a little Mammoth 

 clover. In the fall we pick the corn off and leave the stalks 

 standing. We have but very little snow but all that comes stays, 

 and we never yet have failed in wintering a stand of clover with 

 this method. The next season this will be our hog pasture, and 

 the next year it will be broken up and planted to corn and treated 

 the same as before. In other words, we are rotating with clover 

 and corn. 



I have said that clover makes the best pasture for hogs, but 

 we have found that dwarf Essex rape is nearly as good. One 

 trouble is that it does not come as early in the season. In feed- 

 ing hogs, as in feeding other animals,' the greater the variety 

 the better they will do. So we wanted both the clover and the 

 rape. For a good many years we sowed rape in a field by itself, 

 but we found that where the hills of corn stood there would be 

 vacant places, and of late years we have been sowing dwarf 

 Essex rape right on the corn ground. That will fill in every 

 inch of space not occupied by the clover. You will not see much 

 of it until about July. W 7 hen the clover begins to get tough the 

 rape springs up, and we have a good feed of rape from this on 

 to cold weather. It may be necessary, in a wet season especially, 

 to mow the field once or twice. The clover and rape will get 



