126 Our Farming. 



as Professors Hunt, Thorne, Weber, Latta, Lord, etc. and several 

 times I asked them to tell me, afterwards privately, if I was at all 

 out of the way in any statement made in regard to clover. But 

 this is the scientific side. Does practice show results that corre- 

 spond ? Can one feed his crops so much better by growing clover 

 as these figures would indicate ? On my farm, yes. In this case 

 I see no reason so far, why practice and theory do not go hand in 

 hand. Actual results first led me to paying more attention to 

 clover growing. Twenty-five years ago I believed that growing 

 clover was simply taking out of one pocket and putting it in the 

 other ; that the soil gained nothing, because all you got was taken 

 from the soil. My faith was all tied, and blindly, to manure 

 making; stable manure was my hobby. Well, it was a good one, 

 but so was clover, as I gradually found out. It is curious to look 

 back and think how gradually I worked over to thinking more 

 and more of clover. I read about it, of course, then, but what I 

 read had little influence. I thought I knew what was best. But 

 the very first spring after I came here I sowed a small piece of 

 clover, without any manure on it, on land that the tenant would 

 not plow the year before for all the crop. A fairly good stand was 

 obtained, and the two crops cut the next season against one on the 

 rest of same field, which was in timothy, attracted my attention 

 somewhat. When I came to plow the field the clover land yielded 

 well without manure. I think I explained to you in a previous 

 chapter how, in changing around the divisions of the farm, it so 

 happened that parts of fields had been heavily manured and parts 

 not. Of course, where this heavy coating of manure was put we 

 got good crops every time. It was good plant food if one could 

 only get enough of it. And I used to put on enough about 40 

 good, solid loads per acre. It would have been wiser to have 

 spread it lightly over more acres and on young clover to make 

 that grow strong, but we did not know then. A big dose on a 

 little ground was what we put on. Of course, it was little land, 

 because we could not cover much so heavily. And we kept put- 

 ting on to the same few acres, too. I well remember overhearing 

 a remark made by a man, who was riding by once, to his mate, 

 when looking at the quantity of manure I had spread on a little 

 land for sowed corn, viz : " Terry had better sell his manure and 

 buy his corn." Well, there was reason in it, and it set me to 

 thinking. Now, one field was manured at one end thoroughly 

 after this fashion for some time, while the other end was not, sim- 

 ply because at first we hadn't the manure to put on. All was 

 clovered in regular rotation afterwards in one field, and time and 

 again I have taken friends to the line, and asked them if they 

 could see any difference in the growing crop between the part of 

 field that had been so heavily manured and the part that had had 

 but little besides what clover had done for it. I well remember 

 taking iny friend John Gould to see this some years ago. I have 



