176 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE, 



than to find on most farms in Aroostoolc county, barns or 

 cattle slieds in which roots would freeze as hard as a rock in 

 less than an liour after they were put in, in winter? What 

 wonder to find these barns entirely too small to contain suffi- 

 cient cattle for the proportion of acres under tillage? What 

 wonder to find the manure piles not only of the poorest 

 quality, but also of the smallest dimensions ? and what won- 

 der, finally, to find plenty of land in Aroostook county which 

 will hardly produce a crop of buckwheat, or a crop of pota- 

 toes, which is worth gathering? It is all very well to say 

 build warm barns, keep plenty of cattle, raise roots to feed 

 to 3'Our cattle with other feed which is generally wasted on 

 the farm, in order to produce plenty and cheap manure to 

 enrich your land with, to bring it to a high state of fertility. 

 All this is very easily said, but not so easily inaugurated; 

 and here it is where the production of sugar beets for the 

 manufacture of sugar comes in to help the start in the right 

 direction, by first of all giving the farmer a cash crop on 

 which he can rely as an income as soon as he takes it from 

 the field to the factory, and secondly, by introducing on our 

 farms a crop which leads to better and deeper cultivation ; 

 while being a feed crop, will furnish to the cattle the kind of 

 feed so much needed on our farms in order to utilize much 

 which goes to waste now. Of all the straw grown in the State 

 of Maine, not 10 per cent, is utilized, while combined with 

 the beet pomace it would fatten many thousands of cattle, 

 doubling and trebling the manure at present produced on our 

 farms. But the farmers in Aroostook county have found out 

 by this time that the cultivation of sugar beets means high 

 farming, means rational forming, it means the reverse from 

 surface farming, which we have so long pursued. Root farm- 

 ing means subsoil farming, bringing into play a strata which 

 has so far never been exposed to either sunlight, warmth or 

 air ; which, though it has received for years the leachings of 

 the upper strata of soil, yet has so far contributed very little, 

 if any, towards the growth of crops which were grown on the 

 surface. The result of some of our farmers has shown most 



