112 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



niorning a little experience I had in Michigan a few years ago^ 

 I was talking to a large audience on the question of clover and 

 one gentleman in the middle of the hall got up and said, "I move 

 we discontinue this subject. We have raised wheat for a long 

 time, and we all know it is absolutely impossible for us to raise 

 clover." The chairman was somewhat nettled. He did not 

 want to be discourteous to me, and hardly knew what to do, 

 I said to the man, "Do you say that you cannot raise clover 

 here?" He said, "No, sir; there has not been a good catch of 

 clover within fifteen miles of this place for the last fifteen years."" 

 I started in with the discussion and pretty soon that man came 

 up the aisle shaking his fist. I said, "Look here, I want to say 

 to you that if you cannot raise clover right here on any ordinary 

 farm you have, the trouble is not in the soil or the atmosphere^ 

 it is right under your hat." Two years after that the man earner 

 into my office in Buffalo and said that that talk was worth- 

 $20,000 to the men who heard it. He said. "I own two farms 

 outside of that town, one of my boys is on one of them, and 

 another on the other. We followed out what you said about 

 the clover, and we have about as nice a piece of clover as yotr 

 ever saw." Xow, if you do not raise clover, the trouble is with 

 yourselves. In raising clover, to get the most out of it, you 

 should follow a short rotation. Cut the hay as green as pos- 

 sible ; most men let it get too ripe. Did you ever see a man 

 who was raising a calf, and feeding for milk production, that 

 did not like rowen? What is the matter with making rowen 

 out of the whole crop? Begin to cut your clover when not 

 m.ore than half of it is in blossom. You cannot cure it quite 

 as fast, but you can cure it, and then you will get a good second 

 cutting. The next winter, manure that piece and turn it under 

 for corn, and keep that right up, following a short rotation. It 

 is more work, but you will get more for it. You will get a 

 better feed than you can get in any other possible way. And 

 if possible, we want to cut off those feed bills. The farmers- 

 in our state will draw their load of milk up to the creameries 

 and then go over to the feed store and draw back the feed, and 

 when they come to strike a balance at the end of six months or 

 a year, as the case may be, about all of the money they have 

 made the feed store has taken. In my humble opinion, friends. 



