No. 4.] ALFALFA GROWING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 117 



ALFALFA GROWING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 



JOSEPH E. WING OP MECHANICSBURG, 0. 



Coming yesterday by day train through New York and 

 then through western Massachusetts, I gazed out of the car 

 windows with deep interest. I longed to know well the old 

 land of my fathers. The little farms fascinated me. I 

 longed to know whether it is well with them, whether or no 

 there is prosperity there, and hope and good outlook. And 

 as I came along, I mentally rebuilt many of the farms that 

 I saw. I drained the marshy places. I took out the dividing- 

 fences and made the fields larger. I limed the fields, and 

 covered some of them with alfalfa. 



It was deeply borne in upon me that there is need for an 

 alfalfa crusade in this old land, for from Rochester to Spring- 

 field I did not see one field that I was sure was set to 

 alfalfa. Xor did I see one field that could not grow it, 

 when conditions are made right. There is no crop that has 

 greater possibilities for the New England farmer. It is a 

 hardy plant. Frosts do not much damage it. You may not 

 be well situated for corn growdng, but you are well situated 

 for gi'owing alfalfa. You are not too far north, for they 

 are gi'owing it by thousands of acres in the Saskatchewan 

 where the thermometer goes often to 50° below zero. They 

 have learned that alfalfa does not winterkill there when they 

 leave uncut the last gi-owth. That is a lesson that Massachu- 

 setts farmers need to learn, perhaps, — to leave a strong 

 growth to hold the snows of winter and to protect the crowns 

 of the plant. On Woodland farm, our home in Ohio, we let 

 the alfalfa go into winter always with a growth of a foot or 

 more, and since we learned to do that we have had no winter- 

 killing. 



