314 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



and other fall weeds that come up you had better thoroughly work 

 your land. You can grow early oats if you get them off by the 

 first of July, then disc your land every week until your neighbors 

 call you a fool, then disc once more and keep on that way until the 

 middle of August, then sow your field and a nurse crop for the fall 

 of the year and let it alone but it is difficult to get your man to 

 prepare the ground thoroughly; the neighbors come along and 

 laugh at him and he will quit. Prepare the ground long enough 

 to get the weeds that come in the fall and in the spring killed; you 

 want it so your wife can sow radishes or garden truck ; then cover 

 it lightly with seed, harrow it out and absolutely let it alone. Then 

 the next year you can cut three times, but do not cut four times. 

 We put alfalfa on the land south of town here. I told the man in 

 June to put the brood sows in there but not to give them any com. 

 It is absolutely true you can keep sows on alfalfa alone. I said, 

 "Put them on that and let them have alfalfa and put the pigs in 

 this other field, ' 'but he put eighty pigs to the acre on the first field, 

 then eighty pigs to the acre on the other field, and they left it as 

 bare as a barn floor and of course about half that alfalfa died. 

 You can grow alfalfa on any ground fairly well drained in the 

 state of Iowa. You can do that but the main thing is to have your 

 ground prepared. The greatest trouble we have had is with blue 

 grass white clover and I do not know whether we can overcome 

 that or not. At North Platte we had a field of alfalfa of poor 

 stand. "We resowed it; when two years old I told the man to go 

 and disc that until he could not see any alfalfa and he did so. 

 My son was out there afterwards and he said I have ruined that 

 alfalfa field. My son said, ' ' I believe you have, ' ' but that was the 

 best alfalfa we ever had. After it once get started you cannot 

 Mil it. 



I am not an alfalfa crank and do not want you to be. You are 

 going to have trouble and there are reasons why you should be a 

 little careful and go slow. You will have trouble with curing it 

 and you will have to adopt the governor's method of putting it up 

 and sometimes you cannot do it that way, so go slow and use it for 

 hog pasture. Put in enough brood sows to keep it nibbled back. 

 Sow it and keep it mowed, then cut that up and let your brood sows 

 have it in the winter ; let your hens have it and then when you find 

 you can do more, do more, but go slowly. 



Mr. Shoemaker : I would like to say a few words on a subject 

 besides alfalfa. While it is not in keeping with the custom of this 

 organization to decide at this time where you mil hold your next 



