310 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Mr. Shilling : Governor Hoard, what do you do to get alfalfa — 

 how do you get it started ? 



Gov. Hoard : I hung like a dog to the roots until I found out how. 

 Every mistake I made was worth just as much to me as a success, 

 but with my neighbors, if they lost one crop it set them back about 

 five or six years and they were only encouraged to renew their ex- 

 perimental work by seeing the success that I was having. One Ger- 

 man had four acres of as beautiful stand of alfalfa as I have ever 

 seen. About the first of September it was dry pasture, green and 

 beautiful, and he turned his herd of cows on it. I came by about 

 two hours after he had done that and said, "Chris, for God's sake, 

 what do you do that for? Why do you turn your cows on this 

 alfalfa?" "Oh," he said, "Mr. Hoard, what does a newspaper 

 man know about farming?" "Well," I said, "you fry in your 

 own fat and you will know how much it takes. You go ahead, 

 Chris, and next spring you wdll see no alfalfa." "Oh, I know 

 better than that," but next spring, as I told him, the alfalfa was 

 gone and the neighbors began to joke him, "Chris, why don't you 

 raise alfalfa?" "Oh, you cannot grow dat alfalfa in this county. 

 No. " " Well, but Hoard grows it. Why don 't you grow it ? You 

 ought to know as much as a newspaper man. ' ' I had told some of 

 them his answer to me. Finally, after he had followed this thing 

 down (don't you see that it is the only way we learn) he came 

 down to me one day and said, "I want to talk mit you on dat 

 alfalfa. " " Well, Chris, have you concluded you would like to talk 

 a little ? " " Sure. ' ' I said, ' ' I tried to have you stop. I had learned 

 by hard experience that you must not cut alfalfa but must let it 

 have its full growth. Indeed you must not cut it late; you must 

 always cut it early so the next crop will come on early and the next 

 crop and never cut the fourth crop. You put the cows on when it 

 was tender and young, and you killed it. That was one point that 

 was wrong; the other was the preparation of the soil. The soil 

 must be prepared nicely." I think the ideal way as we found it 

 in Wisconsin, if you are going to sow a piece of alfalfa and you can 

 get at it early enough in the fall to prepare the ground give it a 

 heavy dressing of manure, turn that manure under and let the 

 land alone. Next spring go on it with the disc harrow and work it 

 three or four times, as much as with a grain crop ; get the soil in 

 nice condition. The object of letting it stay in the winter is it 

 firms the land and alfalfa delights very much in a firm soil, a good 

 deal like wheat. Then go on and sow the alfalfa, about twenty 

 pounds of good seed to the acre, with three peeks of barley if you 



