10 THE BOOK OF ALFALFA 



never have any frost, they cut alfalfa eleven times a year, 

 and in Texas, south of the Rio Grande, they cut it nine 

 times a year. 



"Alfalfa does not exhaust the soil. Nitrogen is the 

 soil's most important element, and the one most liable to 

 give out; the one the farmer is called upon to supply 

 first. Alfalfa does not ask the farmer for nitrogen at 

 all, because it can get its nitrogen out of the atmosphere. 

 Four-fifths of the atmosphere consists of nitrogen. 

 Ordinarily, plants cannot make use of that nitrogen at 

 all; the roots of the alfalfa will leave in the soil eight 

 or ten times as much nitrogen as was there before. The 

 farmer who plants alfalfa, clover or peas does not have 

 to get nitrogen from the fertilizer factories. I know one 

 farmer who for the past eight years has made an average 

 of eight and one-half tons per acre of alfalfa on irri- 

 gated land in the state of Washington. I have heard 

 of other men that produced twelve tons an acre in south- 

 ern Texas on irrigated land. It would hardly be possible 

 to produce that much on land that is not irrigated, 

 because rain does not come to order. 



"I have lived ten years in a country where the horses, 

 cattle, sheep, hogs and chickens eat alfalfa hay, or green 

 alfalfa, the year round. It is the richest hay food 

 known. Eleven pounds of it is worth as much for feed- 

 ing purposes as ten pounds of bran," 



A most pleasing word-picture of alfalfa is that by 

 Geo. L. Clothier, M. S., who has studied his subject 

 closely in the field, the feed lot and the laboratory, and 

 he paints it thus : 



"The cultivation and feeding of alfalfa mark the high- 

 est development of our modern agriculture. Alfalfa is 



