720 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Pastures are just like farmers and other people. They rest best not 

 by idleness or doing little, but by change of work; and if a field is resting 

 by growing grass instead of grain, it should work just as hard as when 

 growing grain, and will work quite as effectively if properly managed. 



You ask how to manage it? First, no field ought to be turned out to rest 

 without a good stand of grass. To ask a field to produce a large crop 

 of grass without the tools to work with. How much we would sow 

 depends altogether on the thickness or thinness of the stand. 



The first thing to do is to cover it over this winter with a coat of 

 manure put on with a spreader. Five or six loads per acre will be 

 enough. That manure will grow on the ground and will double itself 

 in the next year. We do not want the above statement to be taken in 

 all its literality. There will be no more loads on top of the ground than 

 there was before; but manure being vegetable matter and grass being 

 vegetable matter, the increase in the grass roots from the added fertilitj'- 

 will actually double the amount of vegetable matter applied in the 

 manure. 



Don't turn your cattle out on the average pasture as soon as they 

 can see anything green. If you have a blue grass pasture that has 

 been allowed to grow along in the fall and has been covered with snow 

 you can turn on your cattle as soon as the grass begins to grow. They 

 will take the old grass and the young together and be ready to shed 

 off from two to four weeks earlier than cattle that are kept in a dry lot 

 and fed on dry food. But if you have no old grass on the pasture, let the 

 grass have a chance to furnish a full bite before you turn on your 

 cattle. If you keep your pastures gnawed down from the time the first 

 grass begins to show until June you must not expect very much pasture 

 the rest of the year. Let your crop have time to grow before you harvest 

 it with your cattle. 



Next, don't overpasture. That is a besetting sin of farmers. In a 

 visit to our old home we passed through a pasture that had been leased 

 to a couple of sons of a pretty wise old farmer. Meeting us one day, 

 he asked how the grass was on the pasture. We told him that con- 

 sidering the acreage, the number of cattle, and the condition of the 

 grass, the steers would not be fit for market very soon. The old gentle- 

 man studied a little, and then replied: "If my b-oys s-see a s-stalk of 

 t-timothy g-growing, t-think t-they must g-go to the b-bank and b-borrow 

 a hundred d-dollars to g-get a car load of c-cattle to eat it!" 



Give the pasture tools to work with in the shape of a full stand. 

 Give it manure with which to feed the grass roots. Don't harvest it 

 too soon, and don't pasture it too short during the dry summer season, 

 and you will get about twice as much value from your pasture as the 

 ordinary farmer does 



WASTE ON THE FARM. 



D. C. Hall. 



How to prevent waste on the farm is the constant aim and en- 

 deavor of every conscientious farmer, who farms not merely because 



