FARMERS' MONTHLY OF HAMPSHIRE COUNTY 



FARMERS' MONTHLY 



PUBLISHED BY THE 



Hampshire County Trustees for Aid to 

 Agriculture 



STAFF 

 Rolnnd A. I'ajne, County Agent 

 Mildred W. IJoicc, 



Home Demonstration Agent 

 Normnn F. Wliiiipen, County Cliili Agent 

 Mary Diinond, Clerk 

 Mary Sullivan, Asst. Clerk 



Office First National Bank Building 



Northampton, Mass. 

 Entered as second class matter Nov. 9, 

 1915, at the Post Office at Northampton, 

 Massachusetts, under the Act of March 

 8, 1879. 



"Notice of Entry" 

 "Acceptance for mailing at special rate 

 of postage provided for in section 1103, 

 Act of October 3, 1917. Authorized Oc- 

 tober 31, 1917. 



Price, 50 cent.s :i year 



Officers of the Trustees 



Charles E. Clark, President 

 Charles W. Wade, Vice-President 

 Warren M. King, Treasurer 

 Roland A. Payne, Secretary 



Trustees for County Aid to Agriculture 



Edwin B. Clapp, Easthampton 



Charles E. Clark, Leeds 



Clarence E. Hodgkins, Northampton 



Milton S. Howes, Cummington 



Mrs. Clifton Johnson, Hadley 



Warren M. King, Northampton 



Charles W. Wade, Hatfield 



W. H. Atkins, Amherst 



L. L. Campbell, Northampton 



CHICAGO TRIP 



The county agent has received many 

 inquiries regarding the soil fertility pro- 

 gram contest in which he took first honors. 

 The contest is open to all county agents 

 in the twenty six northern states. Its 

 purpose is to encourage county agents to 

 formulate better soil fertility programs. 

 Six prizes are awarded which were trips 

 to the annual meeting of the American 

 Society of Agronomy. The prizes were 

 made available by the National Fertilizer 

 Association through the Soil Improve- 

 ment Committee. 



The county agents entering the contest 

 send their programs to a committee of 

 agronomists who act as judges. The 

 prizes are awarded on the following 

 points: (1) Analysis of the problem ; (2) 

 Methods used; (3) Results obtained; (4) 

 Plans for future work. The first point 

 counted forty, while the other three 

 counted twenty each. We were told that 

 the reason that the prize came to Hamp- 

 shire County was because of the analysis 

 of the soil fertility problem. 



In company with Prof. J. B. Abbott we 

 left Springfield Saturday night at nine 

 o'clock and arrived in Chicago at six 

 thirty Sunday night. Only those who are 



used to traveling on sleepers can appre- 

 ciate how good the hotel bed looked and 

 felt. Monday was spent at the meeting 

 of the American Society of Agi-onomy. 

 The morning session was devoted to 

 "Methods and Relations in Extension 

 Work in Agronomy." 



Director M. S. McDowell of Pennsyl- 

 vania emphasized the fact that agronomy 

 specialists should have information which 

 is adapted to local conditions. He also 

 stated that the job, not the department, 

 was important. Pi'of. L. F. Graeber of 

 Wisconsin, known to many of our people 

 through his writings on Alfalfa in 

 Hoard's Dairyman, spoke on Visual aid 

 in Agronomy. He illustrated his talk 

 with charts, enlarged pictures and lantern 

 slides. Prof. Henry Lefevre, official rep- 

 resentative of the French society of 

 agronomy stated that admission to the 

 agricultural colleges in his country was 

 limited so that there would not be an 

 over-production of college graduates. The 

 county agent had to give "A review of 

 my soil improvement program" before 

 noon and proceeded to enjoy the meetings 

 from then on. The afternoon session was 

 devoted to a discussion of "Soil Deteriora- 

 tion." Prof. B. O. Weitz of the Bureau 

 of Agricultural Economics, U. S. D. A., 

 gave an analysis of crop yield statistics 

 which did not paint too black a picture 

 as regards lower yields per acre. Direc- 

 tor C. G. Williams of the Ohio Experi- 

 ment station discussed "The testimony of 

 the field experiments of the county." Dr. 

 O. Schreiner of the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture discussed "Changes 

 in characters, conditions and amount of 

 organic matter." He stated that the 

 amount of organic matter in the soil 

 varies from season to season and depends 

 upon environmental conditions. Director 

 Hartwell of Rhode Island stated that 

 toxicity in soils was due to a super con- 

 centration of mineral plant foods. Acid 

 pho.sphate, lime and building up soil fer- 

 tility is necessary to overcome toxic con- 

 ditions in the soil. In very acid soils it 

 is better to use medium amounts of lime 

 and large amounts of acid phosphate to 

 overcome these conditions than to use ex- 

 cessively large amounts of lime. We need 

 to know amount of lime used each year by 

 crops. 



Tuesday morning the county agents 

 visited the stock yards and packing plants. 

 In the latter, we saw hogs, sheep and cat- 

 tle slaughtered and dressed for market. 

 In these plants each man performs just 

 one simple operation while the animals 

 move on an endless chain from the 

 slaughtering floors to the ice box. The 

 operation which attracted the most in- 

 terest was the cutting off of the fore 

 quarter of the hogs. A colored man 

 wields an enormous cleaver, severing the 

 fore quarter from the rest of the pig at 

 one blow. He looks for all the world like 

 the headsmen of old. For some reason 



the agents were vegetarians that noon. 



Tuesday night a banquet was held in 

 honor of the prize winning county agents 

 by the Soil Improvement Committee at 

 which time certificates were given the 

 a.!?ents. Wednesday we visited the Armour 

 and the Swift fertilizer plants. In the 

 former we saw sulphuric acid manu- 

 factured. In both plants the manufacture 

 of acid pho.sphate was studied. In the 

 large mixing rooms the raw materials are 

 moved by enormous cranes to the mixing 

 hoppers and again from the mixing 

 machine to the storage bins. At the 

 Swift plant we saw their control labora- 

 tory where all fertilizer material and the 

 mixed goods are analyzed. Wednesday 

 night we took the sleeper for home. 

 While we had a wonderful trip we be- 

 lieve that another Payne told the truth 

 when he wrote that "there's no place like 

 home." 



Soil Fertility l"r<»gr:im 



Continued from pjtge 1. column 1 

 acre which denotes poor fertility. Then 

 too the bulk of the acreage is devoted to 

 forage crops which are resistant to acid 

 soil conditions. The problem of soil 

 fertility can be divided into two parts: 

 (1) To build up the fertility of the soil 

 so that profitable roughage crops may be 

 grown; (2) To reduce the acidity of the 

 soil so that better quality roughages may 

 be grown. Both of these factors must be 

 met on dairy farms before grain bills 

 can be reduced to a reasonable figure. 



Soil Fertility Program 



A study of the important steps in build- 

 ing up soil fertility in this and in other 

 counties showed that the following prac- 

 tices were necessary: 



1. Manure conservation. 



2. The use of acid phosphate to bal- 

 ance manure. 



3. The use of nitrogenous fertilizers 

 on the hay crop. 



4. The use of high grade mixed fer- 

 tilizers on cash crops. 



5. The use of lime where necessary. 

 Economic and agronomic conditions 



force Hampshire County farmers to use a 

 long rotation with clover usually occupy- 

 ing the land once in six or seven years. 

 This means that clover is of greatest im- 

 portance when fed to dairy cows, the 

 i manure conserved and the fertility re- 

 turned to the land in this way rather than 

 being returned directly to the soil by 

 plowing under of the rowen crop. 



Results Obtained 



When work was started on this pro- 

 gram it was expected that it would take 

 several years before any great number of 

 farmers would adopt it as a whole. For 

 this rea.son individual steps in the pro- 

 gram were stressed each year. The first 

 work was on the use of nitrogenous fer- 

 tilizers on the hay crop. The use of ni- 



