702 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



and take better care of the estate if he had been allowed to help earn it 

 instead of getting it given to him? 



The outside world appeals to a healthy, ambitious young man, and it 

 should, but in a way that comparison between the farm and the city will 

 bring out the advantages of both. While it is true that our country's 

 greatest men have come from the farm, it is also equally true that the 

 farm has use for these bright and energetic young men. 



The time is coming, if indeed it is not already here, when it will take a 

 man of considerable education and business ability to be a farmer, and 

 why not give the young man a chance, from the very first school — the 

 home? There is no more independent and healthful occupation than that 

 of farming, and if this be so it would be to the father's, the boy's and the 

 whole world's benefit to keep the boy on the farm. Give him an opportunity 

 and watch him develop and I am sure he will "do his best and leave the 

 rest to Providence." 



SOIL MANAGEMENT IN RELATION TO THE PERMANENT PASTURE. 

 By W. H. Stevenson, Iowa Agricultural College, in Wallaces' Farmer. 



Within recent years so much has been spoken and written regarding 

 the relation of crop rotation to the maintenance of the fertility of the 

 soil that many farmers who own high-priced land now question the 

 advisability of keeping their permanent pastures. 



Much effort and several years' time are required to secure a first-class 

 blue grass pasture, and therefore it is well worth while to attempt to 

 understand the true relation of the permanent pasture to the other features 

 of the farm befoi-e the plow is permitted to turn over a well-established 

 sod. 



In the first place, there are many farms on which there is land which 

 is well suited to permanent pasture but which is not desirable or profit- 

 able for rotation; such areas, for instance, as hilly land or land that Is 

 broken up by wet spots; land with sandy or gravelly out-crops; land which 

 is subject to periodical overflow and that which is so located with respect 

 to the improvements on the farm that it cannot be economically culti- 

 vated, rt is nearly always a mistake involving financial loss to change 

 areas of this kind from pasture into cultivated fields. On lands of this 

 class the permanent pasture is of special value for the reason that corn, 

 valuable as it is for feeding purposes, is not a complete ration. The 

 breeding stock, the young animals and the dairy cows on our farms must 

 have a variety of feed stuffs if they are to be kept thrifty and in the 

 most profitable condition. And high-priced land, high-priced labor and 

 high-priced feed products of all kinds make it essential that the cost of 

 maintaining this stock in this condition be made cheaper by means of 

 the rations which are used and the methods of handling which are em- 

 ployed. We believe that the permanent pasture affords the most practical 

 means of accomplishing this end; first, because a good pasture furnishes, 

 at a comparatively low cost, the constituents which balance the corn 

 ration, and, secondly, because such a pasture makes it possible to extend 

 the grazing season from two to three months in the year, except for dairy 



