9 



usually get a fair stand of clover. After turning the clover under 

 and following with one hoed crop before seeding to clover again, I 

 feel that I have ahout reached the top of the divide between restora- 

 tion and maintenance. 



" I suppose a man who insists on exact use of words would object 

 to the expression of a ' dead ' soil, but it means much to a farmer 

 who has stood between the plow handles for many years. By ' dead ' 

 I mean an absence of mealiness. It is a bad case when two to three 

 crops of humus-makers will not make the soil mealy — I suppose 

 you would say put in a friable condition. As I think of it, this 

 friable condition is but another way of saying that the laboratory 

 has been put in repair so that chemical activities can have full swing. 

 "No doubt the humus may have of itself some chemical action, but 

 the repair of the laboratory is the main point with me. 



" What time of the year would I begin restoration experiments ? 

 I think that spring is the ideal time, but as a matter of practice I 

 have begun mine mostly in the fall. It has come about this way. 

 In the springtime I am hopeful, and I am inclined to excuse some 

 of the past failures of a doubtful field as being due to unfavorable 

 seasons. I think I will chance one more crop. But when harvest 

 time comes, the results are the old story, and I find that there is no 

 way but to begin the improvement of the condition of the soil 

 laboratories at once. If the land has had a grain crop, I sow Canada 

 peas and oats or barley immediately after harvest, using for kindling 

 wood some commercial fertilizer. The peas and oats will grow 

 until after frost, and perhaps remain green until it is too late for 

 fall plowing ; so I allow the vines to mat down under the snow and 

 plow them under in the spring. If the land has had a hoed crop, I 

 use my stand-by — rye; not because I think it the best, but because 

 I can often find nothing else which will fit into the place and season. 

 When my soil has got to the maintenance stage, I begin to feel as if 

 I can think about using more freely of fertilizers." 



We have given Peter's story because we believe it contains in 



simple form three of the first principles of successful farming — 



good tillage, rotation, humus-producing manures. We want to start 



a movement for letter tillage. Try an acre, or a few rows of a 



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