760 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



A Member: Have you had any experience with (he so called alfalfa 

 culture? 



MR. WING : We believe in inoculation. But it does not sound 

 reasonable to me, gentlemen, that if you had a piece of land with 

 all the life out of it that you could inoculate that soil and expect the 

 bacteria to live. What is the best place to make them thrive? 

 Disease bacteria thrive where there is some filth and I believe that if 

 you would thoroughly manure the land where you intend to raise 

 alfalfa the bacteria will ultimately take care of the situation. You 

 will introduce a few with the seed. However, if you want to in- 

 oculate that soil, I do not think you can hurt it at all. I believe 



7 t/ 



that you would get pretty close to the same result without inocula- 

 tion if your soil had been manured. Where it was manured I never 

 failed to And them almost at once, and quantities of them. 



A Member: Did you ever inoculate the soil by introducing soil from 

 other fields? 



MR. WING: No sir, when we commenced growing it out there at 

 the farm there was not much said about inoculation. I think if we 

 had known more about it at that time perhaps we might have been 

 benefited somewhat, but we didn't have the amount of stable manure 

 then that we have now; nor did we realize the importance of it. 



A Member: How T many crops do you usually aim to get without 

 plowing up and reseeding? 



MR. WING: I am trying now to get the farm into a systematic 

 shape. I follow corn with corn. This year I got 72 bushels of corn 

 (144 measured) on the alfalfa side, and 08 bushels on the old ground. 

 So it is two years in corn; and then a year in barley and alfalfa, 

 and then three years more in straight alfalfa. This makes a six-year 

 rotation. 



A Member: Do you cure your hay under caps. 



MR. WING : No, sir, we haven't got that far yet. 



A Member: Tell us how you harvest it. 



MR, WING: It is pretty hard to describe. The weather enters 

 into it so much, the conditions vary so, but I prefer to make it mainly 

 in the swath, that is the first crop. But you might have to let it 

 lie a couple of days if you are having bad weather, and just as soon 

 as it gets dry for half way down, start the rake in there and rake it 

 into small winrows and turn the green side up. When that green 

 side is dried properly, get it into the shock. Putting it into shock 

 depends upon the weather. Sometimes be ten days or two weeks 

 before we get it into the barn. 



A Member: You mean let it wilt and pile it up? 



MR, WING: After you come to throw it out it seems like it gets in 

 a sweat and loses moisture very rapidly. On the second and third 

 days it is a different proposition, about such a proposition as to make 

 clover. We don't use a tedder for the reason that the leaves come 

 off very readily. I believe there is a form of tedder that won't do 



