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DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



won't produce like the top soil, but you get plenty of room for the moisture 

 to settle, and it will take the sun twice as long to bring that lower six 

 inches up as it will the first six inches. 



Now then, some have asked me about planting and sowing and pre- 

 paring the ground for lucerne. If you possibly can, always plow it in the 

 fall of the year, and leit it remain rough, and the next spring, as early 

 as possible, go onto it with your disc and your harrows, and work it over 

 real nice, and sow about ten pounds of lucerne seed and a half bushel 

 of oats with that seed, and in the fall you will have a good crop of hay, 

 of oats and lucerne for your teams. Some think that the oats will take 

 too much substance out of the ground, but they will be so thin it won't 

 make any difference, and there wnll be plenty on top to shade that lucerne 

 and act as a nurse crop, and you will have a fine feed in that oats, and 

 it will be just about in the milk when it will make most beautiful hay. 



Some have asked me to tell about planting potatoes and preparing 

 the ground for them. I want to relate a circumstance that will perhaps 

 make it a little more plain. In delivering a lecture in one of our northern 

 Sr'ates a couple of years ago on the subject of dry farming, when I got 

 through telling th6m about planting wheat and raising it and threshing, 

 etc.. and planting lucerne and so forth, one gentleman got up. I told 

 them they might ask some questions if they wished to and I would answer 

 them to the best of my ability, and one gentleman got up and says, "I 

 have been farming ever since I was knee high, and no man can tell me 

 how to plant wheat or anything else in the ground." The bishop of the 

 ward sat next to me. He says, while he was talking, ''He is always abusing 

 everything that is good, and I want you to give him a rap, if you can." 

 After he sat down I said, "Are you through?" "Yes, sir." I said, "I have 

 met lots of men who talked just like you and they haven't learned to plant 

 potatoes scientifically." He said, "I could tell you how to plant potatoes." 

 I said, "All right, come up; I am always ready to learn from anybody, 

 whether they are young or old." The bishop called him up. He got up 

 and told us how he planted potatoes. He said, "I haul out ten or twelve 

 loads of manure to the acre in the fall, and plow that ground not less 

 than eight inches deep; plow it in the fall and leave it rough until spring. 

 As soon as spring comes and the ground is dry enough I cut my potatoes. 

 I pick the very best I can get — the largest and smoothest, and cut them 

 in two lengthwise, and make two seeds out of each potato, and then I 

 take my team and plow a furrow up and down on the other side and *have 

 my boys drop the potatoes in these furrows, then I follow with a plow 

 and cover them over, drop the potatoes and cover them over with the 

 plow, then when they are all done I harrow them over nice and smooth, 

 and when they get up about 3 1-2 or 4 inches I and all my boys get in there 

 with the hoe and straddle the row and cut the weeds out, then," he says, 

 "we take a cultivator and cultivate the middle, and we cultivate them two 

 or three times until they get about eight or ten inches high, then we take 

 our mold board plow and run one furrow down and throw the dirt to 

 the right, turn it back and throw the dirt to the left, and hill them up in 



