490 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



carefully and without dropping any of its seed carry it to a place where it 

 can be burned. 



For several years past I have had a place expressly for burning these late 

 weeds and it has been a yearly surprise to me, how soon I got a large pile, 

 and when that pile was burned how soon another equally large pile stood in 

 its place. 



It will be said in reply to what I have written, "It is all very well to write 

 such things but no one does or can do them." 



To this I reply that you can, and must, do all this and more. Present 

 conditions are such that every tiller of the soil must take up the fight with 

 the weeds, and the result of the battle determines whether or not you stay 

 on your farm. It amounts to a struggle for the possession of the land and 

 if the weeds win you will have to move off. 



As to the further question of exposure from careless neighbors I am really 

 unable to say much. I have had a crop of velvet weeds grow to maturity 

 with only a wire fence to protect me from their seed and the extra expense 

 caused by such exposure has been as great as the taxes I pay to the county 

 treasurer, yet to lodge a power anywhere to control and prevent such things, 

 seems impossible under our present ideas of proper government. The 

 Socialistic panacea for all ills, viz: Governmental ownership and control 

 might do it, but it is doubtful at best, and it is to be hoped it may never be 

 tried. So the question, "How may a man protect himself from his thriftless 

 neighbor," is left with the interrogation point at its end a little larger and 

 more prominent than before. 



PRESERVATION OF SOIL FERTILITY. 



Lewis McDowell, Route No. 2, Forest City, Iowa, Before the Buena Vista 

 County Far?n€rs' Institute. 



In its natural state this land was covered with grass. When we broke 

 the sod and began to farm we found the soil filled with grass roots and par- 

 tially decayed vegetable matter which made the land mellow and easy to 

 work. By growing grain year after year we have changed the condition of 

 the soil. In time the vegetable matter is completely decayed and there is 

 nothing to hold the soil grains apart. When it rains they run together like 

 mortar. When we plow it breaks up into chunks. After a few days of dry 

 weather we have a mass of hard dry lumps instead of the nice mellow, moist 

 seed bed we had when the land was new. We have changed the condition 

 of the soil. If we could restore these conditions we could increase our yield 

 of grain. 



My observation and experience leads me to believe that we can improve 

 on the natural capacity of the soil to produce corn by a proper rotation of 

 crops whereby we will grow clover once in three or four years to be followed 

 by corn. I have watched the growing of clover for over twenty years but I 

 gained my first accurate knowledge of the value of clover in 1890. 



