PART I— THE SOIL 



CHAPTER I 



A DEBIT AND CREDIT ACCOUNT WITH 

 THE SOIL 



The first consideration in dairy farming is nat- 

 urally the soil. This is an important part of the 

 dairyman's capital and perhaps shows the effects of 

 good business methods more strikingly than any 

 other branch of his work. It is possible to keep a 

 debit and credit account with the soil and thus show 

 the condition of each acre of the farm from the 

 standpoint of fertility and the amount of the crops 

 removed from time to time. 



We will take one acre of land for an illustration 

 and this will be considered the same as a bank ; that 

 is, our capital stock will represent the constituents 

 in the soil, our deposits the fertility elements applied 

 to the soil, our expenditures the fertility elements 

 removed from the soil in the crops taken ofif. 



Capital, the soil. — We will consider first our cap- 

 ital. What does our bank contain? We may make 

 a chemical analysis of the soil, but this will not give 

 us an accurate value of it, since a part of the plant 

 food is not available, and some of the power of the 

 plant to secure that which is available depends upon 



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