254 agriculture: of MAINE. 



the first thing in the morning, and those cows are just as anx- 

 ious, and will make just as much demonstration for those pods 

 as for ensilage. Cows will almost always leave their grain to 

 eat ensilage, and they will do that to eat bean pods. 



As to the variety of beans to raise, what might be best for me, 

 may not be the best variety for you. The last few years we 

 have raised the old fashioned yellow eyes, and have a special 

 market for a certain amount. I have one customer who takes 

 100 bushels a year. At the present we get double the quotations 

 in Boston. I do not mean that we get double what they are 

 quoted, but double what the net results would be to us. 



We have found, one year with another, that the bean crop 

 has been a profitable one with us, more profitable than sweet 

 corn. I think our land is sweet corn sick. We have raised it 

 so long that the land does not respond. I really think that beans 

 improve the land. I suppose it is on the same principle that al- 

 falfa and some other crops improve the land. When 'we pulled 

 the beans this year the roots were covered with those little nitro- 

 gen gathering nodules. We have grown them because we 

 thought we were planting something that would not sap the 

 ground, and they have partially helped the soil. It seems to 

 me that the bean crop prepares the ground for corn perhaps as 

 well as to sow it to clover. 



Ques. What is your rotation? 



Ans. Up our way, two years ago, the winter and the dry 

 summer following killed the clover. The rotation we followed 

 up to that time had been corn one or two years, according to the 

 land we planted it on, then beans, seeding with clover in the 

 beans. Then we cut two crops of clover the first year, one the 

 second year, and plowed in the second crop and planted to corn 

 the following year. In using the bean harvester we cannot seed 

 down in the beans, so I do not know what we shall do next. We 

 have a piece that we raised beans on this year, and it is all ready 

 for seed, and I shall sow it next spring as soon as the snow goes 

 ofif, and apply a little chemical fertilizer with nitrate of soda, 

 and see if I cannot get a hay crop next year. If that works 

 well that is the plan we shall follow. 



Q. With the old fashioned yellow eyes what do you find the 

 yield per acre to be? 



A. I do not think you could raise as many as you could of 



