504 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 



barns were not full when September came and at 

 that time stood a beautiful growth of alfalfa, 2' high. 

 The temptation was too strong; we cut over nearly 

 all the meadows and secured a lot of prime hay. Fol- 

 lowed then the hardest winter ever known here with 

 ice in hard sheets over the earth for weeks, and in- 

 tense cold. This resulted in killing a large part of 

 the alfalfa that had been cut the fourth time. Where 

 it was cut but three times, and went into winter 

 with a strong growth standing, there was little or 

 no winterkilling. One could easily trace the path of 

 the mowers. On one of our farms, a 60-acre field, 

 was killed outright; on another farm 40 acres was 

 seriously crippled and an 18-acre field destroyed. 

 There were, however, interesting lessons. In the 60- 

 acre field belonging to my brother we had excavated 

 a ditch with horses and scrapers, afterward plac- 

 ing a tile deep under the bottom of it. This soil 

 has in its subsoil many small pebbles and particles 

 of carbonate of lime. We left the raw clay, with 

 these lime fragments in it, on the surface of a strip 

 a rod or so wide and of some length. Alfalfa had 

 grown especially well in this spot, but we had given 

 it no notice until after the freeze, when we found 

 that the alfalfa growing here, in the midst of so 

 much carbonate of lime, had not winterkilled, al- 

 though cut as close as the rest and at the same time. 

 There seemed here a striking lesson of the preser- 

 vative effects of limestone on alfalfa plants. Maybe 

 the lesson learned was worth all that the disaster 

 had cost us, although the 60-acre field had the year 



