Missouri Farm Management Association. 285 



them. Some one may ask, what do you drive? Well, when 

 the roads are so I can't use a car I drive a pair of good black 

 mules. I have two little girls and they wanted me to buy them 

 a burro to ride to school. To satisfy them I bought each of 

 them a good jennet colt. I expect these jennets to raise enough 

 jacks to send these girls to college. I have good reason to believe 

 they will do it, because I have sold $800 worth of produce from 

 one of them this year. 



The poultry business belongs to my wife. Just here let me 

 say that I attribute much of our success in business to her. I 

 think that every good farmer's wife, who does her share of the 

 work without complaint, will surely receive a high seat in the 

 next world. As Mrs. Redford is not here I will tell you how she 

 happened to go into the fine chicken and turkey business. 

 Several years ago we were attending the State Fair, and while 

 there I bought some imported Shropshire rams for which I paid 

 what she said was an extravagant price. So she said, 'T am 

 going to the poultry show at Kansas City and get me some 

 chickens and turkeys that are just as good as you think your 

 sheep are." I replied, "I am perfectly willing." When the 

 time came to go to Kansas City she asked me if I would go with 

 her. I said, "Certainly, if you will pay my expenses as I did 

 yours at Sedalia." She agreed, but I had been to the city with 

 her before, so I slipped some money into my pocket. We had 

 to pass the shops before we got to the poultry show in Conven- 

 tion Hall. She was broke. I had to buy the poultry. 



No farm can be an entire success without a well-managed 

 farm home. The cultivated portion of our farm comprises 

 about 500 acres, upon which we practice a grain rotation of corn, 

 wheat or oats and clover. It is our aim to have about 160 

 acres of each of these three grains each year. We sow 80 acres 

 of clover each year, and as it lasts two years we have 160 acres 

 either for hay or pasture, or both. This clover is cut and put 

 into five large barns on the place and fed to the stock during the 

 winter. The second crop is cut for seed, which usually pays 

 very well for the handling. You will pardon my telling that 

 our clover seed won the blue ribbon here at Columbia this week. 

 This was a very favorable season for the growth of clover seed. 

 Eighty acres of clover sod are plowed each fall for corn the next 

 year. This gives 80 acres sod and 80 acres of second-year-out- 

 of-sod for corn each year. The corn in field of the second year 

 out of sod is cut and shocked and this ground sowed in wheat. 



