^^ Illinois State Dairymen's Association. 



Member : — I have raised alfalfa for six years. 



Member: — Let the gentleman tell us how he started his 

 alfalfa. I am referring to the man that has been successful with 

 it for six years. 



Member: — The main thing I did was to get the soil in 

 proper condition, free from weeds, get a good seed bed. It is a 

 hard thing to start here and as a general thing the people plant 

 a little soon, the soil needs time ; it needs preparing. The ground 

 should be cultivated and carefully freed from weeds before alfal- 

 fa is sown and after that I think there will be no difficulty. 



Q. — Do you use lime? 



A. — I did on a portion, and on that part on which I did not 

 use lime I did not get as good stand or as good yield as where 

 I used the lime. I think the difference in the stand and yield 

 was on account of the lime. I sowed mine without a nurse 

 crop and sowed 20 lbs. to the acre. The first year I cut 1,800 

 lbs. to the acre, I cut it three times and gathered my crop each 

 time. The first crop was hardly worth the gathering, but I 

 gathered it. 



Mr. Long — I can tell you how I did with my alfalfa. I 

 sowed my alfalfa with barley, sowing the barley rather late, and 

 I cut the barley and sowed it on the land prepared just as I would 

 on land prepared to sow clover. I got a fairly good stand, 

 worked it two or three years and got a good crop three times. 

 One winter it badly winter-killed, that is it did not entirely 

 winter kill but was killed to some extent and I had a man to 

 plow it up, but this year we got a good crop again. 



I believe we can grow alfalfa in this county wherever we 

 can grow clover, and people get discouraged trying to grow 

 clover sometimes. I believe that alfalfa will grow on most of 

 the soil in this county ; there may be places where we cannot grow 

 clover successfully in Illinois, and there are possibly fields on 

 my farm where I could not grow alfalfa, there are fields where I 

 would not attempt to grow it when I can raise good corn. I see 

 no reason why any man who will persist in trying cannot grow 

 alfalfa in this county. 



Prof. Hayden : — If he cannot grow alfalfa he can grow 

 clover or soij beans. Let me tell what success we have had at 

 the station. The first year we sowed it early in the Spring, did 

 not get anything; it appeared to come up and started fairly well 



