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H. G. Hastings Co., Seedsmen, Atlanta, Georgia. 
HASTINGS' FARM- 
Along with our being in the seed business we are in the farming 
business also. We farm because we wanted to know by actual ex- 
perience just what sort of troubles our customers run up against 
in growing the different crops in the South. 
When we "went into the farming business we tried to get as near 
as we could average conditions of soil, climate and rainfall. 
We didn’t buy the richest land we could fina or the poorest ; we 
didn’t go to the extreme north or the extreme South, but located 
it in Middle Georgia. 
We have plenty of rolling upland, some heavy stiff clay, some 
rather sandy, some hills so steep as to be fit only for pasture, 
some bottom land at times subject to overflow. 
While we are generally against the practice of holding large 
bodies of land, yet our need of having considerable distance be- 
tween some crops where there is danger of mixing (corn for in- 
stance) made large acreage a necessity. 
The lands of the Hastings Farm were, when we started, in the 
usual condition that lands are in most of the South, lands that had 
been “single cropped’’ in -cotton, butchered up by tenants; in fact, 
abused almost to the limit. 
Some of our good friends in the seed business have some test 
ground patches of two to ten acres which pass for farms on their 
catalogue pages, but which are a joke from a real farming stand- 
point. 
We didn’t want that kind of a joke farm, neither did we want a 
place for a little fancy farming regardless of expense. What we 
were after was a real farm that after it got started would have to 
pay its own way from the crops made on it. 
We started out and have continued to grow cotton as our prin- 
cipal cash crop and we are doing so under boll w'eevil conditions 
which we have to contend with just the same as most of you in 
the Cotton Belt have to, and all will have to contend with sooner or 
later. 
But on the other hand we pay just as careful attention to the 
corn crop, the oat crop, the various hay and forage crops, the cow 
crop, the hog crop and the manure crop as we do to the cotton crop. 
We thought enough of our farming operations and the Hastings 
Farm to put the Vice-President of the H. G. Hastings Co. in full 
charge of it as resident manager, and right from the start, Mr. 
Brown has taken to farming like a duck to water. 
He has put into it the same energy, thoughtfulness and enthusi- 
asm as was ever put into the Hastings’ seed business, and each year 
shows increased results that show that farms need and will re- 
A 3,200 ACRE ONE 
spond to energetic and intelligent business treatment as well as an 
active commercial business. 
The operations of the Hastings Farm each year give us full op- 
portunity to try out practically every new variety of field, grass, 
clover or forage crop, first under ordinary test plot conditions, and 
then, if they give promise of being of value, are grown under gen- 
eral field conditions. 
It is not always that test plots are conclusive as to any variety’s 
value and before it gets a place In the Hastings Seed Catalogue 
and a recommendation to you it must have proved itself under 
field conditions of culture on the Hastings Farm. 
We try out hundreds of new things on the Hastings Farm that 
you never heard of and never will hear of through our catalogue, 
for most of these new things have little value. If we can get one 
new good thing for you out of each hundred we try out we feel that 
we are lucky. 
Some seed houses apparently don’t care whether a thing has 
value so long as it is new, but that has never been the Hastings, 
policy. When a variety is given a place in our catalogue that is a 
recommendation in itself. 
The Hastings Farm is the great “checking up’’ place on all these 
varieties, not only in small test plots under high fertilizing, but 
out in the broad fields where they have to stand the same treat- 
ment as to soil, season, cultivation and fertilizing as do the stand- 
ard well known and largely grown sorts. This latter kind of a test 
is the one that really tells. 
No other seed house on the American continent is carrying on a 
farm like the Hastings Farm. No other seed house in the United 
States gets the chance to deal so closely and intimately with farm 
troubles and farm needs as we do, and this knowledge comes from 
our farming and gardening operations on the Hastings Farm, un- 
der the same general conditions and with the same general crops 
that you do. 
Below we print a picture from a photograph taken on the Hast- 
ings farm. It doesn’t show cotton or any other growing crop ; but 
the stacks of hay saved for the winter feeding of the stock housed 
in a good barn. This means plenty of of manure and it’s all part of 
a looking ahead, first for a money saving in feed; second, for a cut- 
ting down of fertilizer bills, third for better succeeding crops. 
Is it any more than a plain common sense proposition to say 
that a Southern seed firm carrying on farm work as ours is, both 
in farming, the growth and sale of seeds is the safest firm for you 
to trust your seed order with out of all firms in this country? 
