1! 
“1 
Published  by 
The  Rural  Publishing  Co. 
333  W.  30th  Street 
New  York 
The  Rural  New  Yorker 
Weekly,  One  Dollar  Per  Year 
Postpaid 
Single  Copies,  Five  Cents 
The  Business  Farmer’s  Paper 
Vol.  LX  XV. 
NEW  YORK.  NOVEMBER  IS,  1910. 
No.  4401. 
Thanksgiving  Thoughts  from  Vermont 
Be  Thankful  for  Something  to  Think  About 
[We  have  an  abundance  of  thought  material  in  the 
following,  and  this  is  a  good  season  for  considering  it. 
Alfalfa,  lime  and  milk  are  leading  subjects  right  now 
at  Thanksgiving  time.] 
LFALFA  WITH  TIMOTHY.— Those  Siberian 
Alfalfa  plants  you  sent  me  arrived  in  bad  con¬ 
dition.  I  planted  them  in  pots  ami  tended  them  the 
best  I  knew  how.  Only  one  showed  signs  of  life 
and  that  after  a  brief  struggle  gave  up  the  ghost. 
After  trying  several  times  to  get  a  stand  of  Alfalfa 
I  adopted  the  plan  of  mixing  the  seed  with  Timothy 
and  clover  whenever  I  stocked  down  a  field,  and 
now  have  a  fair  sprinkling  all  over  the  farm. 
TIIE  QUESTION'  OF  I.IME.— Do  I  need  lime?  I 
had  supposed  that  my  heavy  clay,  overlying  lime 
rock,  with  limestone  ledges  cropping  out  everywhere, 
was  plentifully  supplied  with  that  mineral.  This 
belief  was  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  wood  ashes 
AN  INDEFINITE  RESPONSE. — Nature  is  very 
chary  about  giving  up  her  secrets.  I  live  on  a 
crossroad.  It  is  a  long  narrow  road.  One  day  a 
stranger  came  along  and  asked  “Where  does  this 
road  go  to?”  “It.  goes,”  I  answered,  “to  Montreal, 
Chicago,  San  Francisco,  New  Orleans  and  Colum¬ 
bus,  Tennessee.  Take  the  first  right  hand  turn; 
you  can't  miss  it.”  “Did  up,”  said  the  man,  and  lie 
shook  the  reins  and  jogged  along.  Now,  I  don’t 
Ihinlc  nature  ever  lies  to  us,  but  if  we  are  not  care¬ 
ful  to  make  our  questions  very  definite  aiul  very 
l  recise  the  answers  are  apt  to  be  as  puzzling  and 
indeterminate  as  my  inconsequential  answer  to  the 
stranger. 
CORN  GROWTH. — How  fast  does  corn  grow? 
Last  year  was  a  good  corn  year  for  this  section. 
Along  iu  August  we  had  ideal  corn  weather — you 
could  see  that  it  had  grown  over  night.  I  picked 
out  an  average  stalk  and  measured  it  every  day  for 
v  week  or  more.  It  averaged  about  two  inches  a 
eral  thousands  of  those  Alfalfa  roots  last  Spring  but 
most  of  them  seem  to  have  failed.  They  started  in 
poor  condition  and  many  of  them  struck  a  severe 
drought.  Some  of  them  are  alive  and  have  made 
fair  growth.  Evidently  this  transplanting  should 
be  done  earlier.  There  is  no  doubt  about  the  great 
struggle  many  New  England  farmers  are  making  to 
establish  Alfalfa  on  their  farms.  Many  of  them  are 
working  on  soil  which  is  far  too  sour  and  wet.  Al- 
sike  clover  would  give  them  better  returns  than  Al¬ 
falfa — until  the  land  lias  been  well  drained  and 
limed. 
THAT  LIME  PROBLEM— We  would  like  to  have 
our  lime  experts  tell  us  what  they  think  of  this 
soil.  We  have  a  number  of  reports  from  sections 
where  limestone  rock  stands  a  little  under  the  sur¬ 
face  and  crops  out  in  places.  One  would  think  that 
the  soil  over  such  ledges  could  not  need  lime,  yet 
experience  shows  that  often  when  burnt  lime  is 
used  there  is  a  solid  increase  of  clover.  In  some 
A  Characteristic  Old  Dutch  House  in  Southern  New  York.  Fig.  578 
did  no  good  and  muriate  of  potash  did  harm.  I  had 
tried  the  soil  repeatedly  with  litmus  paper  with  no 
indication  of  sourness,  and  to  demonstrate  to  a 
neighbor  that  we  did  not  need  lime  I  tried  it  again, 
and  was  surprised  this  time  to  find  that  the  paper 
turned  red.  I  then  filled  three  large  flower  pots 
with  soil  from  the  same  locality.  In  one  I  mixed  a 
dose  of  a  complete  fertilizer,  in  another  lime  and 
in  the  third  nothing,  and  planted  in  each  a  few 
*  kernels  of  coni.  When  the  corn  in  the  check  pot 
was  six  inches  high  that  in  the  limed  pot  was  12 
inches,  and  in  the  complete  fertilizer  two  feet.  I 
then  bought  a  wagon  load  of  slaked  lime  and  scat¬ 
tered  it  on  different  plots.  That  was  several  years 
ago,  and  from  that  day  to  this  I  have  never  been 
able  to  see  the  slightest  difference  in  the  various 
kinds  of  crops  grown  on  those  plots.  The  lime  does 
not  seem  to  have  had  any  effect  at  all.  Wliat  am  I 
to  make  of  it  when  the  flower  pots  tell  one  story 
and  the  fields  another? 
day  and  one  day  just  as  the  tassel  was  coming  out 
it  grew  nine  inches  in  the  24  hours. 
A  DAIRY  DISTRICT.— This  Champlain  Valley  is 
n  great  dairy  country.  Along  the  line  of  the  rail¬ 
roads  part  of  the  milk  goes  to  New  York,  part  to 
Boston,  and  part  is  made  into  butter  and  cheese, 
'i  hose  who  were  sending  to  New  York  were  just 
getting  organized  and  ready  to  strike  when  the 
dealers  “came  to  their  milk”  as  it  were.  Cream¬ 
eries  and  cheese  factories  hare  held  their  own  so  far 
right  by  the  side  of  city  milk  stations.  We  like  the 
skimmed  milk  to  feed,  though  opinions  vary  widely 
as  to  its  value.  Some  young  gentlemen  from  college 
engaged  in  extension  work  informed  us  that  it  was 
worth  40  cents  a  hundred.  1  asked  what  they  would 
feed  it  to.  They  said  hogs.  1  said  I  thought  they 
would  have  to  feed  it  to  the  hired  man  to  make 
that  much  out  of  it.  e.  g.  hunt. 
Addison  Co.,  Vermont. 
TRANSPLANTED  ALFALFA;— We  sent  out  sev- 
cases  sorrel  grows  thickly  on  such  soils,  showing 
that  while  the  land  contains  lime  it  is  not  in  the 
form  needed  by  most  cultivated  crops.  The  sorrel 
has  the  power  of  taking  up  lime  in  other  forms,  and 
then  on  its  decay  turning  it  back  into  the  carbon¬ 
ate.  We  think  Mr.  Hunt's  farm  would  respond  to 
lime,  but  that  the  greater  need  of  the  Alfalfa  is  in¬ 
oculation.  We  think  either  the  commercial  bacteria 
or  soil  from  a  good  Alfalfa  field  would  make  a 
great  difference.  It  could  be  put  In  on  a  small  place 
and  then  when  (lie  bacteria  started  in  this  the  soil 
could  be  used  to  inoculate  larger  fields. 
CORN  AND  LIME. — Most  varieties  of  corn  do  not 
respond  freely  to  lime.  As  a  rule  corn  prefers  a 
slightly  acid  soil.  When  green  crops  are  plowed  un¬ 
der  it  often  pays  to  use  lime — not  because  the  corn 
needs  it  but  because  it  may  start  a  quicker  fermen¬ 
tation  and  thus  force  the  green  manure  to  give  up 
its  plant  food.  Some  varieties  of  com  seem  to  re¬ 
spond  to  lime  more  freely  than  others.  We  have 
