504 ALPALPA FARMING IN AMERICA. 
barns were not full when Scptember 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 serapers, 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 ax the rest and at the same time. 
There seemed liere 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 
