TENTH ANNUAL YEAK BOOK— PART V icr, 



Not only is your school of benefit to Iowa alone, but we in Nebraska 

 participate in its advantages as many of our fathers and grandfathers have 

 secured the basic principles of their success during their earlier citizen- 

 ship in Iowa, and the strict application of your teachings applies to our 

 welfare in Nebraska as truly as it does in Iowa, therefore, your experi- 

 ments and findings are valuable to your neighbors. 



Some of you may have read the article which appeared a few weeks 

 ago in a farm publication, relating how Arnold Martin, a young Swiss 

 farmer, has succeeded in converting twenty acres of barren land in Paw- 

 nee county, Nebraska, into a highly profitable farm, in a little more than 

 ten years, through a practical application of intensive farming. The land 

 he purchased in 189S, with land all about it selling at $70 and $80 per 

 acre, for $12.50 per acre, it being considered as practically worthless. In 

 his earlier years he studied agriculture in the public schools and with 

 the education thus secured, together with the practical experience he had 

 in subduing his little patch of ground into a fertile acreage, he came 

 to have a clear knowledge of intensive farming. In 1903, for several 

 months, he assisted in the Agricultural Department of Union College, at 

 Lincoln, and since has several times been called out upon Farmers' Insti- 

 tute work. 



What Mr. Martin considers one of the important branches of his work 

 is exposition and a fair exhibiting. He secured awards at the Nebraska 

 state fair during the past season amounting to $410.25, and from the 

 Kansas City fair the amount of $593.50, making a total of $1,003.75 from 

 the two fairs, and which amount, in itself, would have been a profitable 

 income from his twenty acres for the year. Mr. Martin's farm is a good 

 example of what is being attempted and what is being done in the way of 

 modernizing agriculture. As our civilization progresses and increases 

 every phase of our earthly labors, with agriculture among the number, 

 will be brought up to the same basis, and the change from extensive farm- 

 ing to intensive farming will be only a step in our onward march and 

 our upward climb. 



But, as to the successful working out of the principles by Arnold Mar- 

 tin, the story of how he does his work and what he thinks of intensive 

 farming is best told in his own words. He says: 



"It is always a great pleasure to me to be called upon to write about 

 my 20-acre farm and the crops I have grown upon it. It is another one of 

 my pleasures to be able to exhibit those crops, as this year they brought 

 in, through exhibits, $1,000 from two fairs alone, Lincoln and Kansas 

 City, and at the Chicago National Corn Show I was the heaviest winner 

 from the southwestern corn belt, taking $325. 



"The farm this year is divided as follows: Eight acres in field corn. 

 one acre in popcorn, one-half acre in small grain of forty varieties, twn 

 acres in potatoes, one acre in vegetables, two acres in alfalfa, two acres 

 in grasses, two and one-half acres in pasture (one-half timber), three 

 acres orchard, one-half acre onions and one-half acre in millet. Total 23 

 acres. 



"I will explain where the three extra acres come in: Two iu alfalfa; 

 the first cutting from one acre of alfalfa was harvested May 24th and 

 lilowed and planted to white rice popcorn, pumpkins, squashes, beans an;1 



