Live Stock Breeders' Association. 277 



cows, except for fattening off the very few that are winter fat- 

 tened. Some corn is fed horses. Roughly stated, a ton of bran 

 is worth two tons of corn meal for manuring, and a ton of linseed 

 is worth something over three times, and cotton seed meal four 

 times as much as corn meal as a manure. Among other rich 

 manure-makers are gluten feed, brewers' grains, distillers' grains 

 and middlings. Take the long look ahead, and fat your farm 

 through your stock and the sale crops of the farm of the other 

 fellow. 



Sixthly. I probably should have hesitated to place the for- 

 tune of the family on land that gives back but little of annually 

 available fertility, unless I felt sure that an abundant supply of 

 plant food could be secured in unlimited supply. I had the love 

 of breadth of operation and a large opportunity for the future of 

 the family on the old farm home. As my years were passing, be- 

 ing then 47, I desired to do, and had to do, what I desired to do 

 quickly. This supply I looked for in chemical fertilizers. I, on 

 the basis of scientific inquiries and personal experience, and Law's 

 and Gilbert's half century of successful and continuous field use of 

 chemical fertilizers against yard manure, held chemicals to be real 

 plant food, and not as they were held by farmers, to be mere stimu- 

 lants, operating at the expense of the soil. I believed they could 

 be used profitably for staple crops as substitutes for manure. In 

 this position, I was out of accord with the farmers in New England 

 and of the country generally. On this belief, as a corner-stone, I 

 swung loose from traditional farming in the east and started on 

 an extensive, intensive farming, borrowed money being involved. 

 This year, some one hundred tons, or over three thousand dollars, 

 will be used in chemical fertilization. These chemicals are being 

 successfully used, one field having had no other fertilizer for 30 

 years, and shows a favorable balance sheet. 



This means that the knot that binds us to petite farming in 

 the east has been cut, and that there is no limit to the area that we 

 can till but that of our ambition and capacity. It has taken some 

 care to prevent the former from outrunning the latter. 



I use the original sources of plant food rather than the mixed 

 foods; that is, buy nitrate of soda, blood, tankage, the potashes 

 and various sources of phosphorous and mix them to meet the 

 needs of my land, and the crops grown. To the latter directions, 

 as determined by the Ville scheme of plant analysis of soils, I 

 ascribe much of the successful use of artificial fertilizers. 



The time has not arrived when you can afford the indiscrimi- 



