Bureau of Ageicultuee. 401 



county fair in tlie State. We are planning to have an 

 exhibit at the State Fair next year. 



Laurel county up to the present time has not been 

 a farming county, but the timber and coal supply is now 

 exhausted, and the people are beginning to really 

 awaken to the scientific principles of farming. The 

 county is in no sense the richest county in the State, but 

 after seeing and testing its products, we are forced to 

 believe that it has the best foundation soil for fruit and 

 vegetable production of any county in the State. She 

 has a great future in supplying the mining camps of 

 our neighboring counties with their daily food, and all 

 that is needed to make her one of the richest and most 

 desirable counties of the State is to have, along with 

 the completion of her pikes, a few more wide-awake peo- 

 ple to fall into the ranks of fruit and vegetable grow- 

 ers, with those Avho are already interested in making 

 the county the garden spot of Kentucky. 



Samuel Morgan, 



County Agent. 



MERCER COUNTY. 



The task you have given me of outlining the work 

 done in Mercer county since being County Agent is a 

 hard one. However, I will do my best. I have tried to 

 do such work as would save the farmers most money 

 and convert the greatest number of them to demonstra- 

 tion work. I have made a fight on hog cholera that has 

 made us many friends and saved the county thousands 

 of dollars. One old negro whose hogs I vaccinated said 

 to me (months after) : "Boss, if it hadn't been for you 

 I would have lost every hog I had." I have vaccinated 

 five thousand two hundred and twenty-seven hogs 

 (5,227) ; I have vaccinated three hundred and fifty-nine 

 cattle for black leg; I have treated 151 other animals. I 

 have inspected all stock shipped from or into Mercer 

 county since Sept. 12, 1914. 



Next in importance has been my work in soil build- 

 ing. We have built 23 silos, four cattle bams, and six 

 combination barns. We have built three concrete silos, 

 two of them sixty-five feet high. We are saving hun- 

 dreds of tons of manure annually which is showing al- 



