62 FOR BETTER CROPS 



earlier stockmen there, Henry Miller, killed cattle in San Fran- 

 cisco. In order to have always at hand a supply of available 

 beef steaks, he bought land in the San Joaquin valley, and tried 

 tog-row forage crops there. In 1873 he began to make serious 

 attempts to grow alfalfa, importing the seed from Chili. It was 

 a plant that many voyagers from eastern America had noticed 

 growing luxuriantly on the plains of South America. Henry 

 Miller succeeded in making his alfalfa grow. He fed it to cattle, 

 and with the profits bought more land to sow more alfalfa. 

 When the writer some years ago visited the ranches of Lux and 

 Miller, he found feeding there on green alfalfa, more than a hun- 

 dred thousand cattle, with very many sheep. Thus had the 

 alfalfa plant heaped up wealth for these far sighted ranchers! 

 Doubtless there were other men experimenting with alfalfa 

 growing in California as early as this or perhaps earlier, but 

 Henry Miller is perhaps the first man to exploit the plant on a 

 large scale. 



From California the plant spread eastward to Utah, to Colo- 

 rado, to Idaho and Montana, to Kansas, Nebraska, and, later, to 

 Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and New York; and now in 

 these blessed days of prosperity it has gone to nearly every 

 state in the Union, is grown in Alberta, Canada, and many of 

 the islands of the sea. 



Alfalfa Growing in its Infancy — And yet, with all its 

 spread, alfalfa growing has only just begun in the eastern states. 

 One farmer in ten in favored regions is growing it, and he is 

 growing only half or maybe a tenth of what he will some day. 

 The other nine farmers will learn — they must — or else be 

 crowded out by their more favored competitors. It was held for 

 a long time that alfalfa growing must be confined to certain 

 climatic belts. Now it is known that it thrives, so far as climate 

 is concerned, almost equally well from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 

 from the Lakes to the Gulf. Certainly, it gives more crops in 

 warm climates where it has a longer growing season, but any 

 part of America, saving the high mountain plateaus, is warm 

 enough for tw o crops a year. 



Later, it was thought that only certain soils would grow 

 alfalfa. Now it is known that, while it prefers rich, loose lime- 

 stone soils, it will grow luxuriantly on strong, stiff, limestone 

 clays, once they are made dry with tiles and fed with manure. 

 It grows on sand, when the sand is made rich. It grows away 

 from limestone, when the land has been sweetened with lime. 

 In truth there is hardly a type of soils in the Union that is not 

 now growing alfalfa, under enthusiastic culturists, who persist 

 in giving the conditions that it needs and deserves. 



Easily the queen of all clovers, and of all the plants of the 

 meadow, is alfalfa. It is the hardiest of them all, the most 



