314 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



and my market requires. I would not confine myself to any- 

 thing, whether it was soil exhausting crop or not, and I would 

 provide to maintain my soil after it. Live stock husbandry is the 

 best type of farming for us now, and will be for a long time. 

 We can plan to make our crop rotation attend to this. It seems 

 to me that the use of the plow, plowing deep, should form the 

 foundation of our business in this direction first, with a larger 

 rotation of crops, those crops adapted to our soil and climate. 



I think, also, we must have a money producing crop in our 

 rotation ; something that will grow and bring us money. Sweet 

 corn has been for some years that crop in some sections. Just 

 how long it will be, we do not know. It matters not what the 

 crop may be, if we adapt the rotation to it in such a waj' that 

 there is no lack of the necessary nutrition: then it will produce 

 us something. I am very much interested in the use of some 

 crop that will give us a cover crop to go into the soil. I wish 

 this might be studied by our Experiment Stations. Of course 

 the cover crop is not as necessary in this climate as in the South, 

 although in the years past we find that we have less and less 

 snow, and our lands are exposed more to the weather than in 

 former years. 



Perhaps a little personal experience in the direction of soil 

 building and crop rotation may be of interest to some of our 

 hearers. Some years ago we started to build up the resources of 

 our farm. On that farm was an old pasture, which had fur- 

 nished pasturage for our cows for a good many years, and was 

 rapidly growing up and becoming practically useless as a pas- 

 ture, when the matter of improvement of our pastures was very 

 much discussed under Secretary Gilbert. After looking over 

 our pastures, planning how to benefit them, we decided that the 

 land should be allowed to grow up to woods, and the amount 

 of food supply for our cows be obtained in some other way. 

 Today, that pasture contains one hundred thousand of good 

 pine ; that amount has been cut once before, and it is really the 

 most valuable land we have. We use a five-year rotation in our 

 fields : First, hoed crop, with manure applied to the land ; 

 second, grain sowed to grass and clover; third and fourth, 

 clover and grasses; fifth year, pasture. This land is supplied 

 with plenty of Avater from a well. All that is necessary is to 

 change the fences. There is no waste in the fertilizing materials. 



