paying four to five dollars an acre for alfalfa seed, I figured he'd 

 have to get some alfalfa yields to make it pay. But it's paid well. 

 Alfalfa costs extra, but pays double extra. And do you know that 

 after a field has once grown alfalfa it is much less expensive to get a 

 stand than it is with a new field that has never grown it before? 

 "As my son argued with me when he first started out, 'If my al- 

 falfa will last me for three years or five years the first cost of getting 

 a stand does not amount to much when distributed over this period 

 of years. With corn you have the expense of plowing and planting 

 every year.' 



The Hustler's Hay 



"If you want to know what our greatest trouble with alfalfa is 

 I'll say it's labor. When I grew a mixture of timothy and clover 

 I cut it once for hay and in some years I got a crop of clover seed. 

 But alfalfa gives you three jobs of haying every year. It's no lazy 

 man's crop. You've got to be a hustler, like the plant itself. 



Fig. 2. Proper soil treatment may double the yields. 



"The boy now has fifty acres and he has his hands full. But he's 

 a good manager and he keeps those barns 'full, too, and full of the 

 finest hay in the world." 



The elderly man grew enthusiastic; that he was proud of his son 

 was very evident. 



"Oh, yes, we have our alfalfa troubles. Two years ago we lost 

 our first cutting on twenty acres. It rained so much that it just 

 rotted. But the boy doesn't worry about curing alfalfa. It's no 

 harder than curing clover, and alfalfa hay will stand more rain than 

 either clover or timothy. If he loses the first crop he has two ad- 

 ditional crops to bank on. And then he always hires extra help. 

 It pays him. Look at the extra feed he gets. 



"I know alfalfa doubles up the farm work round corn-cultivating 

 time. It takes extra help, but the extra profits will take care of that. 



Blue-Grass Troubles 



"Many of the farmers in our section complain about blue-grass' 

 crowding out alfalfa. But I've noticed that it's always those fellows 

 who cut their alfalfa late in the fall or pasture it who complain the 

 most. They expect too much from their alfalfa when they take a 

 cutting in October or pasture in the fall. That causes winterkilling. 



