THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VI. 255 



About the twentieth of April, 1901, I sowed in this bottom land two 

 tracts of about two or three acres each. I instructed my man to sow 

 twenty pounds of seed per acre, without a nurse crop. One tract was 

 sown on fall plowing, well disced and harrowed just previous to sowing. 

 I did not get a good stand on this tract and the pigeon grass was so 

 thick that the dry season following caused the young alfalfa to die out 

 so that I plowed it up. The other tract was on land less sandy and of 

 better soil; on cornstalk land well disced. The seed was sown thereon 

 and harrowed in. I secured a very good stand, but felt that it would have 

 been better ha 1 I sown twenty-five pounds of seed per acre. This tract 

 was mowed twice that season, securing quite a fair amount of hay that 

 was about half pigeon grass, but as the weather was unfavorable and the 

 hay not good, 1.0 account was kept of it. In the spring of 1902 I con- 

 tracted with the renter on the farm to cut this tract three times and pay 

 me $2 per ton for the hay, by measure, counting seven feet each way, or 

 343 cubic feet for a ton, to be measured as soon as sacked. While this 

 measurement so soon after sacking would not weigh out a ton when 

 fully cured, we supposed we made the price low enough to balance the 

 shrinkage. The tenant cut, sacked and measured the hay himself, and 

 reported as follows: First cutting, June 20th, 2,432 cubic feet; second 

 cutting August 5th, 2,240 cubic feet; third cutting, September 15th, 2,352 

 cubic feet; total, 7,024 cubic feet, or twenty and one-half tons. The 

 ground measured two and two-thirds acres. If one-fourth is deducted 

 from this amount for shrinkage, you still have almost six tons per acre. 



The hay is well liked by all kinds of animals in preference to any 

 other kind of roughness. I think that in the northwestern part of the 

 state, where the rainfall is lighter than farther east, and where the soil 

 is so loose and so well drained that at least twenty-five pounds of seed 

 per acre should be sown, and that better results are obtained by sowing 

 on cornstalk land. The clay sub-soil on the western slope is, in my judg- 

 ment, well adapted to alfalfa, and that it will be profitable on a very 

 large portion of the land. 



ALFALFA GROWING IN IOWA. 



D. B. Nims, Emerson, Iowa. 



I came from Jones county, Iowa, in 1874 to Mills county. When I 

 had been here a year or more I noticed on the farm of one of my neigh- 

 bors (to me) a new forage or hay plant. Upon inquiry I learned that 

 the plant was alfalfa. The man who introduced it into this part of Iowa 

 was a German farmer by the name of William Huelle. He formerly 

 lived in Saxony, Germany. From there he moved, in 1867, to Illinois. Here 

 alfalfa was tried, but the soil conditions not being suitable, it was not a 

 success. From Illinois he moved, in 1873, to near Emerson, in Mills county. 

 Here he sowed on his own farm the alfalfa seed he had brought with him 

 from Germany. This is the Swiss alfalfa. 



