HAMPSHIRE COUNTY FARMERS' MONTHLY 



FARMERS' MONTHLY 



PUBLISHED BY THE 



Hampshire County Trustees for Aid to 

 Agriculture 



STAFF 



Roland A. PayiH*. County A;r<-nt 



Home l>enionstr:itton A£;«>nt 

 Bena <;. Eriiard. County Cliib Asent 

 Mary C. OT.eary. Clerk 



Office First National Bank Building 



Northampton, Mass. 



Entered as secoiirl class matter Nov. 9, 191.^, at the 

 Post Office at Northampton, Massachusetts, under 

 the Act of March 8, 1879. 



"Notice of Klitry " 



"Acceptance for mailing at special rate of post- 

 age provided for in section 1103. Act of October 3, 

 1917. Authorized October 31. 1917." 



Price, .50 cents a ye.lr 



Officers of the Trustees 



Edwin B. Clapp, President 

 Charles E. Clark, Vice-President 

 Warren M. King, Treasurer 

 Roland A. Payne, Secretary 



Trustees for County Aid to Agriculture 



Edwin B. Clapp, Easthanipton 

 Charles E. Clark, Leeds 

 Clarence E. Hodgkins, Northampton 

 William N. Howard, Ware 

 Milton S. Howes, Cummington 

 Mrs. Clifton Johnson, Hadley 

 Warren M. King, Northampton 

 John A. Sullivan, Northampton 

 Charles W. Wade, Hatfield 



Continued from page 1, column 2 

 the lunch hour the Farr Alpaca band 

 gave a fine concert which was thoroughly 

 enjoyed by all. 



At two o'clock the club met at E. 

 Thornton Clark's farm in Granby. After 

 inspecting the herd, a stock judging con- 

 test of two classes was held. The first 

 class of three cows was placed by Prof. 

 C. L. Blackman, Field Secretary of the 

 New England Association and Prof. T. E. 

 Elder of Mount Herman, President of the 

 local Club. The winners of this class 

 were: First, J. H. Cady of We.stfield; 

 second Gu.s Lombella of Westfield; third. 

 Rev. C. H. Smith of Granby. The second 

 contest was won by E. L. Bartlett of 

 Montaque with Roy Lambron of We.stfield 

 second and C. B. Towed of Haydenville 

 third. Prof. Blackman explained the 

 type of animals the breeders should strive 

 for and told why the animals were placed. 



President Elder welcomed the Hamp- 

 den County breeders to the meeting and 

 expressed the hope that it would be their 

 wish to join with the local two county 

 association and form a three county or- 

 ganization. Everyone felt that the field 

 day meeting was one of the best held this 

 year. The annual meeting of the club is 

 scheduled for Northampton, Saturday, 

 January 6. It is hoped that all the men 

 in this county interested in Holstein will 

 attend. 



POTATO BLIGHT CAN 



BE CONTROLLED 



Results of This Year's Demonstrations 



Potato blight has caused the loss of 

 thousands of dollars to farmers of Hamp- 

 shire County this year. Experiments 

 have proven that blight can be controlled 

 by thorough spraiiing with home made 

 Bordeaux Mixture. There are farmers 

 who will swear that they have spiayed 

 and yet their fields delighted. True but 

 they did not do a thorough job. In years 

 like this spraying three times or less was 

 no better than simply using posion for 

 bugs. 



Fortunately there are those who have 

 done a real job and have obtained re- 

 sults. By this we do not mean that they 

 kept the tops green up to the middle of 

 October nor do we mean that they had 

 absolutely no rotten potatoes. We do 

 mean that they kept the tops green long 

 enough to get a real crop of potatoes and 

 they had comparatively little rot, which 

 all will admit are getting results this 

 year. 



As regards blight control the potato 

 growers of the country may be roughly 

 divided into two classes ; those who raise 

 3 acres of potatoes or over, and those who 

 raise less than three acres. The first 

 group can afford to own and operate a 

 real spray outfit. By this we mean a 

 traction power horse-drawn sprayer capa- 

 ble of maintaining ove 100 lbs. pressure 

 spraying four rows at a time. Many 

 with 2 or 3 nozzles to the row and 

 horse drawn machines will not do this 

 but there are machines that will and some 

 farmers in the county own and operate 

 them. The second group have three 

 options: (1) Co-operate with others in 

 the same class and own a real sprayer; 

 (2) Rig up barrel pump on two wheeled 

 gig and have a spray boom behind; (3) 

 Use hand dusting machines. 



We have particularly noticed three men 

 of the first class in the county who have 

 done a real spray job. They are: G. R. 

 Tedford of Cummington, William Baker 

 of Chesterfield and Earl Ingham of 

 Granby. Tedford used an Arlington X L 

 engine driven sprayer which is mounted 

 on a two-wheeled gig and has a spray 

 boom behind spraying four rows at once. 

 He sprayed every 10 to 14 days through ; 

 the season and while blight showed on 

 the tops the last of September he har- 

 vested over 2.50 bushels of potatoes per 

 acre and had practically no rot. j 



Baker used one of the popular makes of ' 

 traction sprayers and was fortunate in 

 getting his five sprays on at the right 

 time. In fact, he did so good a job that 

 the tops wer green the 21st of September 

 and gave him considerable trouble in dig- 

 ging. His crop of four acres averaged 

 over 250 bushels per acre with but very 

 little rot. 



Ingham used a tarction sprayer with 



1 a single action pump and has one nozzle 

 to the row. Even with this outfit he was 

 able to keep blight well in check by 

 .^praying every ten day and as a result 

 obtained a crop of about 200 bushels to 

 the acre on plain ground. The average 

 crop for the town was less than half of 

 this amount. There was practically no 

 rot in the field. 



Franklin Sears and Ward Streeter, 

 both of Cummington have had fine results 

 from spraying. In fact, Mr. Sears sold 

 Ibis potatoes for $1.2-5 a bushel in 10 bu- 

 ! shel lots, delivered, when other growers 

 who had rot in their fields wer unable to 

 get a dollar a bushel. All the men 

 who had rot in their fields were unable to 

 spray thoroughly. 



Among the men who have less than 

 I three acres there are many who got re- 

 sults. Burt Brothers of Westhampton 

 have a home rigged sprayer which is 

 simply a barrel pump mounted on a two- 

 wheeled gig with a spray boon behind. 

 With this outfit they controlled blight on 

 their two acre fields and on one piece 

 harvested 253 bushels of potatoes to the 

 acre. These were sold at the Northamp- 

 ton Community Market at $1.15 per bu- 

 shel for their firsts and the demand far 

 ' exceeded the supply. Using a spray out- 

 I fit of this kind means hard work but it 

 lean be done. 



It has always been a problem how to 

 control blight on small potato pieces. We 

 believe that hand dusting machines would 

 j solve this problem. They present the 

 I easiest way of protectng the tops and the 

 machines are not expensive. The great- 

 est drawback is the fact that material 

 costs far more than liquid spray. Eight- 

 een demonstrations were signed up this 

 spring with plots which were to be left 

 undusted. Sander's Dust composed of de- 

 hydrated Copper Sulphate and Hydrate 

 Lime was used. Unfortunately twelve of 

 these went wrong by August 6 when both 

 the dusted and the undusted plots blight- 

 ed. Fortunately the other six came 

 through in good shape. 



Ralph Cole of Huntington planted 

 about an acre of potatoes May 30. He 

 dusted the field July 8, 15, 25 and 

 August 5, 15 and 22. It took just 151 

 hours to do the job for the season. July 

 dusting took 2 hours each while in 

 August it took 2i, 3 and 4 hours re- 

 spectively to do the job. He used 200 lbs. 

 of dusting costing $18.00. One hundred 

 ninety feet of row was harvested on both 

 the undusted and dusted parts. The re- 

 sults were: Cobblers Dusted, 173 lbs. 

 firsts, 73 lbs. seconds; Not Dusted, 145 

 lbs. firsts, 51 lbs. sconds. This means a 

 grain of 35.5 buhels of number one pota- 

 toes per acre due to dusting. Green 

 Mountains Dusted, 126 lb.s. firsts, 20 lbs. 

 seconds; Not Dusted, 63 lbs. firsts, 14 lbs. 

 .seconds, a gain of SO bushels per acre 

 of firsts due to dusting. 



Continued on paf^e fi. (rolumn 1 



