494 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



be plowed uuder in ilie fall. Imagine my surpi-ise when he came 

 back after a little while and asked nie if I meant him to plow under 

 the clover. I had forgotten all about the clover and never sup- 

 posed that it could make a stand in such a droughth. I went over 

 at once and there found a wonderful even stand of thrifty red clover, 

 the first on that farm in tweotj five years; last fall, which of course 

 was late, some time before winter set in a friend of mine walking 

 over the field with me, called me extravagant because I did not cut 

 the clover for hay. It w^as then a solid mass almost knee high. 



Now this is the simple story of a method wliich anybody can use. 

 Some labor, a little seed and, if time is more valuable tha-n money, 

 some fertilizer to start with will make a rich field out of the poorest 

 land in a few years time. Any owner of a worn out farm, oot being 

 obliged, as I w^as, to crop his fields every year, ought by this method 

 to be able to restore his entire farm to paying fertility. If this pro- 

 cess of returning a pleiitiful supply of humus to the soil after taking 

 off crops were generally employed by our farmers we should never 

 hear of abandoned farms and but little of exhausted or worn out 

 soils iii Pennsylvania. 



