200 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



more than some of his large fields and is rigM at his barn, with half 

 of his farm is paying off the mortgage. 



The reason we have impoverished land, is that the humus is ex- 

 hausted. Phosphorus is present but not in available form for plant 



food. 



Timothy is a strong feeder and imipoverishes the soil. Clover 

 hay is an ideal food. When cured in cock, it is free from dust and 

 has made its fermentation in the field. There is no profit in rely- 

 ing upon fertilizers for a crop. It is expensive and exhausts the 

 soil. The farmer's fertilizers is his barnyard manure, enriched by 

 passing through his stock with grain food. It is the farmers' bank, 

 and when leached by the rains and burnt in th^e yard, it is merely 

 vegetables decomposed and of little value, the ammonia being both 

 volatile and soluble. 



It is a good plan when the fields are reasonably level, to place 

 the manure upon it as fast as it is made, not in heaps, but broad-cast. 

 There would be a certain loss by evaporation, but if mixed with 

 plaster in the barn, it would fix the ammonia. 



The first point in intensive farming is to have your ground in 

 a proper state of cultivation with a surplus of plant food. Stable 

 manure is the sheet anchor, and stock is the manure maker. The 

 nearer the fields are enriched like the garden, the more intense can 

 by your farming. 



On my experimental grounds I had a short crop of hay, plowed 

 the timothy sod, planted the eight row yellow corn on the third and 

 fourth of July. It made a good crop of ears, but the premature 

 frost w'as about ten days too soon. jS'ext year I will plant a couple 

 of acres of timothy sod, after curing the hay ten days earlier and ex- 

 pect to have a fully developed crop of corn and fodder, two crops in 

 one season. In its cultivation, the season being unusually dry, I 

 followed each shower with the cultivator, forming a dust blanket, 

 preventing evaporation. I estimated to have between two and 

 three acres, upon a hill. It never suffered from the drought and 

 yielded 175 bushels with a fine lot of corn stover. A large amount 

 of this corn was soft, but by late husking will make good cow feed. 

 A clover sod, after yielding a crop of hay, will furnish a corn crop 

 annually of the early maturing varieties, or would make excellent 

 silo corn. 



The necessity of the farm is the caring of stock with ample food 

 supply. The preservation of the animal excreta, the feeding of the 

 roughage to high grade animals with the grain your farm produces, 

 whether cows, pigs and poultry, or more profitably, all combined, 

 selling the concentrated products, not the crude material, in this 

 way securing the highest returns for your labor. This cannot be ac- 

 complished unless you provide ample, comfortable shelter for your 



