270 



August. 1914. 



American Hee Journal 



A View of Ziig. 



only teams of cows drawing loads on 

 the public road, but a single cow 

 hitched to a wagon tongue intended for 

 a team. We saw a bull and a horse 

 hitched together and making a very 

 fine team indeed. This was more in- 

 teresting to us than all the grottoes. 

 Everything is so pretty and neat, in 

 those Swiss villages! Even the manure 

 piles are squared and trimmed as if 

 they had been built with a plumb and 

 square. Apples, pears and plums are 

 the principal crop. The fruit trees dot 

 the fields in every direction, without 

 any particular order, for they are 

 hardly ever in rows. The pear crop is 

 immense, and they make both apple 

 cider and pear cider. The pomace is 

 afterwards put into big casks or vats 

 to ferment and make "schnapps" or 

 apple-jack. Then in order that noth- 

 ing be wasted, they press the cast-oflf 

 pomace into round cakes that look like 



(i-inch sausages. These are put upon 

 racks to dry in the sun and are used 

 for fuel. 



They have the finest cattle in the 

 world, large brown cows, that are kept 

 in the barn and curried daily. The 

 wages of a cow-boy are $2.00 per week 

 and board. The young cattle and those 

 of the cows that do not give milk are 

 sent to the mountains for the summer. 

 Nothing is wasted, and every inch of 

 tillable ground is used. But what beau- 

 tiful roads, and what a pleasure it is to 

 travel upon them ! We spent an entire 

 day traveling through the country with 

 our hospitable friend. 



I proposed to take you as far as 

 Zurich on this trip, but I have exceeded 

 the limits and must put it off until next 

 month. We took our leave of Mr. 

 Ruber, his son and his pretty daugh- 

 ters, and reached Zurich on the eve- 

 ning of Aug. 23. 



Convention ^ Proceedings 



The Iowa Field Meet at Delmar 



Some 70 persons gathered at the 

 Coverdale farm, near Delmar, on the 

 morning of July 7. Tlie automobile, 

 which is becoming a farmer's vehicle, 

 renders such meetings much more 

 successful than formerly. There were 

 about ten of these gathered in the yard 

 by II o'clock a.m. I had myself ar- 

 rived by rail at Maquoketa, 10 miles 

 away, the previous evening, and through 

 thekindness of Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher, 

 with their son Clinton as chauffeur, I 

 had a fine ride from Maquoketa 

 through the rich Iowa rolling plains to 

 the place of meeting and back again. 

 A plentiful supply of moisture had 

 made the landscape particularly attrac- 

 tive, for everything was green except 

 the harvested wheat. 



Mr. Coverdale is a large farmer as 



well as an extensive beekeeper. He is 

 one of the champions of the long ill- 

 judged sweet clover. He considers it 

 as the most profitable of all legumes, 

 and his horses, hogs and cattle grow 

 fat upon it. The accompanying picture 

 of four clover leaves shows his pre- 

 ferred variety of sweet clover, which 

 is lighter in the stalk and in the leaves 

 than the ordinary highway sweet 

 clover. He asserts that it is also less 

 bitter. But there is little doubt that 

 all hay-consuming domestic animals 

 may be readily trained to like sweet 

 clover. 



As a supporting testimony to his own 

 experience, Mr. Coverdale gave his 

 hearers some quotations from an arti- 

 cle in the Prairie Farmer of July 1. We 

 reproduce the main passages of this. It 

 is an account of the visit of over 100 

 Illinois farmers to the sweet clover 



farm of W, P. Graham, of Ro chelle : 



" Mr. Graham owns several farms, 

 and the combined acreage of sweet 

 clover on all of them totals about 500 

 acres. Although born and reared a 

 country boy, Mr. Graham is one of 

 those who returned to the soil upon 

 finding that town life was shortening 

 their days too rapidly. As he was about 

 to embark in the farming business he 

 became interested in Dr. Hopkins, 

 methods of improving run-down land, 

 and as that was the kind of land he 

 had to deal with, he set the Doctor's 

 theories to work. He also set one of 

 his own ideas to work, that of employ- 

 ing the rankest sweet clover, instead of 

 some of the smaller legumes, to turn 

 under for organic matter and nitrogen. 

 By its judicious use in carefully ar- 

 ranged rotations, Mr. Graham has ma- 

 terially increased the productiveness of 

 his land. Seeing his results, a number 

 of his neighbors who laughed at ' Gra- 

 ham's weeds' a few years ago, have 

 now come to grow sweet clover as a 

 matter of course. 



" Mr. Graham sows his sweet clover 

 with oats, barley, and winter or spring 

 wheat. A drill with seeder attachment 

 is used, the sweet clover being sown 

 directly in the rows with the grain. In 

 this manner 15 pounds of sweet clover 

 seed per acre was included with some 

 wheat Sown last spring, and the stand 

 seemed all that could be desired. Sweet 

 clover was originally put to use as a 

 soil improver on this farm, and in tell- 

 ing his experience with it, Mr. Graham 

 advised farmers who engaged in build- 

 ing up worn-out soils to first apply 

 limestone so as to grow clover and turn 

 the leguminous crop under and to ap- 

 ply the phosphorus when one finds 

 that it is necessary for larger crops; 

 but first of all get an abundance of or- 

 ganic matter into the soil. 



" In addition to being a soil improver 

 sweet clover is Mr. Graham's trump 

 card in the beef producing game. In 

 summer it is pastured and it is made 

 into silage for winter feeding. At the 

 time of this visit 63 head of cattle had 

 been feeding on a 40-acre field of sweet 

 clover since April I'J, and it was being 

 cut June 10, because it had grown 

 faster than the animals could eat it 

 down. It was yielding at this cutting 

 at the rate of about three-fourths of a 

 ton per acre. This field was sown a 

 year ago last spring with barley. It 

 made growth 18 inches tall by Sept. 7, 

 and was pastured 55 days, or until Nov. 

 1, 1913. During this 55 days 29 feeders 

 weighing about 870 pounds at the be- 

 ginning, grazed on this pasture and 

 gained an average of 154 pounds apiece, 

 or nearly 3 pounds per day. Besides 

 the pasture these cattle had only salt 

 and water and what straw they con- 

 sumed from having access to a straw 

 stack. Twenty-eight of these steers 

 from Dec. 11 to Jan. 11 ah o made an 

 average gain of 91 pounds per head on 

 sweet clover silage, and ".315 pounds of 

 ground ear corn for the lot per day. 



"'I wouldn't have missed that trip 

 for a hundred dollars,' said one of the 

 Livingston county farmers as he left 

 Rochelle on the return trip." 



Mr. Coverdale has been a grower of 

 sweet clover for 17 years. He found 

 that it will grow where alfalfa turned 

 yellow and died. But in order to secure 



