38 Bureau of Farmers' Txstitutes. 



corn. Keep stock enoup:h to eat the clover, and corn, oats and 

 some purchased food, and use the straw for bedding. Save all the 

 manure, liquid and solid; not sort of half way, but actually all of 

 it. That is the way we do. Have cement floors under all live- 

 stock, manure shed, etc. These last points are of great import- 

 ance to you. I'll tell you why. The large western farmer won't 

 get to this point for some years to come. You get right at it and 

 you can increase your crop, in connection with other good meth- 

 ods, so as to compete with him. You may say you can't make the 

 clover grow now. But you must. Where there is a will there is 

 a way. I saw on an old " worn out " (?) farm in Vermont, last 

 summer, as fine clover as ever grew on earth, many acres of it, on 

 the farm of C. F. Smith. This man's neighbors said clover would 

 not grow. Well, Mr. S. made it. You can. With him it came 

 from the use of lime and potash, and an increase of vegetable 

 matter in the soil to decay, and persistent sticking to it. The 

 clover grew better and better each time it came around in the 

 rotation. In the northern part of the State you may grow good 

 feed and increase fertility by raising field peas, in connection with 

 oats, to hold them up. I do not need to tell you that hay made 

 from peas, oats and clover, nicely cured and early cut, is worth 

 nearly as much again per ton as timothy for cows, young growing 

 animals, sheep, etc. You get this in addition to the fertility. 



The Best Tillage. 



One can hardly expect the western farmer, with his great fields, 

 to be very thorough in his tillage. The tendency there is to get 

 an income from the number of acres, rather than from 'the yield 

 per acre. Here is a chance for the New York farmer. Till thor- 

 oughly from beginning to end. Do the best that is known now 

 along this line. There are probably fifteen or twenty tons of 

 nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash in one acre of your potato 

 land, within one foot of the surface. But it is locked up by nature 

 and only a very little becomes unlocked and available for crops 

 each year, with ordinary tillage. More tillage of the right kind 

 will make more of it available. This will be particularly true 

 when you supply your soil with plenty of vegetable matter to de- 



