GRAYLING INSTITUTE. 337 



long. I like tamarack best. Connect them with pins two inches in 

 diameter about two feet and a half from the ends, so that the logs will lie 

 about two feet apart. Hitch by a chain in the center and drag over the 

 ground as a leveler before sowing crops and follow with the drag. It com- 

 pacts the soil and levels it at the same time. A heavy 20-foot log chain 

 attaclied to the ends of the rear log serves admirably to cover clover, turnip, . 

 Timothy, or other seed. It moves just enough dirt to cover the seed so that 

 it will come up. You can use a light chain by doubling it. It shakes up 

 the sods so as to take the dirt oiit of them and leaves the land so level that it 

 is in nice condition for the mower. 



Mr. Alexander: There is no lack of rainfall here, as I have observed in 

 driving over this country for the last twelve years. The difficulty is due to 

 drifting sands. The sun shining upon the sand makes it hot, and the winds 

 drift it upon the young clover and other crops and it kills them. I have seen 

 the sand drift in this country like snow three or four feet high. As soon as 

 you get more vegetable matter into the soil, it will stop drifting, and then 

 we will be all right. 



Mr. Lounsberry: I have a clay farm, and I have seen my clover in the 

 summer time come up and the sand drift on it sometimes an inch and a 

 half deep from my neighbors' farms, and the young clover be completely 

 covered up. The sand drifts in little waves, as you have noticed the waves 

 on the water, from three to twelve inches wide, and it will huddle around 

 the roots and kill the clover. 



Mr. Evans: I would like to ask Dr. Kedzie if there would be any use in 

 covering our farms with muck. In Oscoda county some farms have muck so 

 near them that they could be covered without extraordinary expense. 



Dr. Kedzie: Muck is valuable because it contains about two per cent of 

 nitrogen. If you can get that nitrogen into the harness you have something 

 as valuable as the best barn-yard manure. The best way to use it is to com- 

 post with barn-yard manure, or to mix marl and muck together, and plow 

 them under. I have seen it tried with good results. 



President Willits: You want to be sure it is muck, and not peat. I have 

 seen a good many farmers make the mistake, supposing they were going to 

 accomplish something wonderful by using muck. I think the most avail- 

 able way to use it is to use it with barn-yard manure, making a compost of 

 the two. I have even seen some very happy results from muck alone, not in 

 Connection with barn-yard manure at all. I lived for twenty-eight years in 

 Monroe county, and through that county is a strip of light land, about six 

 miles wide. Gradually this strip of land has been occupied by German farm- 

 ers, who have brought it up to a condition of productiveness by utilizing the 

 pockets of muck which are found in low spots, taking a scraper full of muck 

 from the bed, emptying it onto the field, and taking back a scraper full of 

 sand to put in the hole, and in that way improving both the muck bed and 

 the sandy land. 



But after all, their success could be measured by the size of their manure 

 piles. I notice that the successful farmers can almost always be told by the 

 fact that they have a good manure pile, and you find that those Germans 

 have the same faculty of taking care of their manure that they have in Bel- 

 gium. The best farms to-day in Monroe county are on that same light 

 sandy soil, which, before the Germans took hold of it, was wholly unsalable. 



Mr. Love: Does any one know where we can get spurry seed? Some 



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