1246 
The Guernsey is not at all dainty or fastidious, 
but is an active forager for whatever she can find; 
quiet, peaceable and well-behaved, yet never a dead¬ 
head. In contests she has repeatedly won in respect 
to economical'production of butter fat. The Guern¬ 
sey is hearty and of strong constitution, capable of 
consuming a large amount of forage, and what is of 
more importance, of giving good account at the 
pail for all she eats. The calves are strong and 
vigorous, somewhat larger than the Jerseys, though 
smaller than the IIolsteins. They have good diges¬ 
tion and grow rapidly. 
For the person who wishes a “family cow” the 
Guernsey stands preeminent Their quietness and 
docility, and the large quantity of rich yellow milk, 
these qualities make the Guernsey ideal. And to 
the farmer who sells his milk on the basis of qual¬ 
ity, and who wishes to improve his herd, the pure¬ 
bred Guernsey sire will prove a benefactor. The 
males are prepotent to a marked degree. The calves 
of the first cross will show the Guernsey character¬ 
istics strongly, while the three-fourths and seven- 
eighths blood will look and perform practically like 
pure-breds. The grade will ever be the farmer’s 
cow, but by using the best purebred sire we can get 
we can breed up practically to the level of pure- 
breds. The greatest difficulty in doing this with 
Guernseys is their scarcity. It is comparatively re¬ 
cently that they have been bred in this country to 
any extent, and this fact, together with their rapidly 
increasing popularity, keeps the price high. But two 
or more farmers may go together in the purchase of 
a good bull, and I am sure the results will not be 
disappointing. Chester l. mills. 
Allegany Co., N. Y. 
VALUE OF AN APPLE TREE. 
What is considered a fair valuation for thrifty young 
apple trees of standard varieties, six or eight inches 
diameter, now commencing to bear fruit? They are 
located in New England. C. H. P. 
East Pepperell, Mass. 
We do not know. The value depends on the var¬ 
iety, location, nearness to market, the number of 
trees, size of the farm they are on and many other 
things. A Baldwin or Spy ought to be worth more 
than a Ben Davis. The trees may be near a town, 
and a smooth hard road, or back among the hills 
where the roads are rough and soft, and market dis¬ 
tant. The trees may be in a place where thieves 
abound, or on soil not well suited to apples. It may 
be possible to sell the fruit at the door, or perhaps 
it must be shipped far. There may be enough trees 
to give a man a full business or only a few—hardly 
enough for a side line. They may be in a small 
field by themselves or on a good-sized farm which 
would give a man a full business. 
All these things and more will affect the value of 
the trees. You might ask us to name the value of 
a well-built house 30x35 feet We could not tell 
until we knew how it was located. It is much the 
same with an orchard. In cases where trees have 
been destroyed by fire near railroads, settlement has 
been made by figuring a yearling tree at one dollar 
and adding 50 cents for each year of thrifty growth. 
Our young trees 10 years planted would be val¬ 
ued at $9.50 each at such figuring. We would not 
accept any such price. McIntosh trees at nine years 
give us nearly $2 worth of apples, while Baldwin of 
the same age has hardly begun to bear. We call our 
own young trees worth $15 each. With 42 to the 
acre this means $045. They are worth that and 
much more to us, yet it is doubtful if anyone would 
pay that money for them as an investment. 
BUILDING A MANURE PIT. 
We wish to build a manure shed to hold a year’s ac¬ 
cumulation from 20 cows and young stock. Horse man¬ 
ure is used as absorbent in gutters; cows are not past¬ 
ured ; stables are cleaned with carrier. We do not find 
that spreading manure as made pays on our clay soil as 
well as plowing it under. Would a covered pit on 
ground level be a practical means for saving manure 
under the above conditions, and would _ it pay? M e 
have in mind a pit 12 feet or more in width, with con¬ 
crete walls 2i/» feet high sheltered by a common pitch 
roof six feet from wall to plate. This pit would be 
filled from carrier by means of one track or two, ac¬ 
cording to width of pit and emptied by loading wagons 
on either side. If such a plan is any good please ad¬ 
vise us how wide a pit to build to handle this manure 
to best advantage in loading wagons, and how long a 
pit to hold the year’s manure. Our most convenient 
space for such a structure is only 80 feet long. If our 
plans are faulty or too expensive, we would welcome 
advice on better methods. R. V. B. 
New York. 
We always figure about 10 loads of manure to a 
cow per year. This may or may not be accurate. 
We have never kept account, and if we are wrong 
on this point, would be glad to have some one cor¬ 
rect us. A load of cow manure, as we make it, con¬ 
tains only a moderate amount of bedding, and is 
pretty solid and heavy, so that we consider the 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
large-sized manure spreaders plenty large enough to 
haul one of these loads. On this basis your cor¬ 
respondent would have 200 loads of manure a year, 
and hauling the bedding as he does it is our opinion 
that he would have more than this amount rather 
than less, and that a pit 12 feet wide and SO feet 
long, 2 y 2 feet high, would nowhere near hold a 
year’s supply for him. 
We just built a pit for our own use about 40 feet 
long, 10 feet wide and three feet deep, which we 
estimate will hold the manure from 30 cows for 
about a month, or maybe a little over. We did not 
roof ours because we failed to see the necessity of it 
with cow manure. Both the walls and floor are 
tight, so that there can be no leaching, and while we 
may be mistaken on this point we do not see the 
necessity of the extra expense of a roof over this 
pit. We built ours on level ground, simply putting 
the floor in level with* the surrounding soil; run 
our carrier through the center and fixed it^so that 
we can throw into the spreader from either side. 
There is no reason at all why a pit could not be 
made wider and two tracks run through it. Some 
people fix so that they can drive through the pit, but 
our own arrangements were not convenient for do¬ 
ing this and we preferred the other way. Now, as to 
whether such a pit pays or not, it is only necessary 
to make one or two simple statements that are 
agreed upon by most scientists. First, that cow 
manure contains fertilizing constituents worth about 
$2.25 per ton; that about one-half of the nitrogen, 
the most expensive element in this fertilizer, is in 
liquid form in this manure and that unless we use 
a manure pit or else haul continuously from the 
stables it is the smallest matter in the world to 
lose 50% of this nitrogen. 
Taking your correspondent’s case, his 200 loads 
are worth approximately $450 per year. If he 
wasted only one-third by handling the manure with¬ 
out a pit, it would be*worth $150, which is sufficient 
to pay for quite a large manure pit. Ours prob¬ 
ably cost us in the neighborhood of $50. More than 
that, it is my opinion that each year soil conserva¬ 
tion is going to pay the farmer better. The world 
is getting close to a hungry stage. Notice how 
quickly prices of our greatest cereals advance, and 
to what high levels they go when two or three of 
our important agricultural States are being pun¬ 
ished by drought or other unfavorable conditions. 
If Jas. J. Hill is right in saying that our popula¬ 
tion will be more than doubled in the next 50 years, 
then the farmer who has his land in tip-top good 
condition is certainly going to be in a good position 
to reap the reward that is due him, and as a mat¬ 
ter of fact he probably will not have to wait nearly 
50 years for this condition to be brought about. We 
are more than glad, aside from purely selfish rea¬ 
sons, to see the farmer coming into his own, and 
he certainly is coming, and that quite rapidly. A 
strongly concerted and well-sustained action on his 
part is capable of accomplishing results on the mar¬ 
ket that even he himself would hardly believe pos¬ 
sible. 
An illustration.of this point is found in the present 
clover seed situation. There is probably the largest 
crop this year that has been harvested in five years. 
The last large crop brought the farmers about $4.25 
per bushel at the elevators. This year the farmers 
have held back their seed, and are getting $0 or 
$0.50. Probably there is not quite as large a crop 
as there was the last time, but the increased price 
secured on account of their holding their seed back 
has been noticeable. We do not mean by this that 
we would always approve of holding back large 
amounts of farm produce from market, especially 
so if the movement were continued for many con¬ 
tinuous months. Such a course has sometimes been 
tried and sometimes resulted disastrously, but if 
any semblance of glut could be avoided the farmers 
would be richer by many thousands of dollars. Now 
to come back to the point, I believe that with in¬ 
crease in population farmers are certainly going to 
get along much better than they ever dreamed pos¬ 
sible in the past, but before ever high prices can 
help them they must have good crops to sell. The 
production of good crops even in the most fertile 
portions of the corn belt begins to mean more and 
more the return of large amounts of fertility. As 
a matter of fact the country was settled and virgin 
soil opened up when we had vast amounts of fertility 
already stored in the soil. For 50 years we have 
been mining this fertility, and we have grown good 
crops much of the time simply because we were 
fortunate enough to have this soil that was capable 
of being mined. Right now many of the best farm¬ 
ers are reluctantly admitting that even with their 
clover rotations and applying some commercial fer¬ 
tilizer the land does not seem to produce the way 
it used to do. 
November 22, 
In making some computations for my own land 
a year ago I was fairly startled to see the very ob¬ 
vious reason why our soils would not produce as 
well as they formerly did. Some of our very best 
farmers in this section of the corn belt practice a 
three-year rotation—corn, wheat and clover. The 
corn may be fed on the farm, and the manure is 
usually very carelessly handled, so that there is con¬ 
siderable loss. Fertilizer is applied to the wheat, 
this fertilizer usually consisting of about 200 pounds 
per acre of about a 2-8-2 formula. I think it is fair 
to say that under the wasteful methods which prac¬ 
tically all the farmers in this section use of caring, 
or rather of not caring, for their manure, only about 
one-third of the nitrogen is conserved. The nitro¬ 
gen used in this rotation on our best farms is prob¬ 
ably about as follows: 
Yield. Nitrogen Soil Draft 
Corn, 65 bushels . 72.2 lbs. 
Wheat 20 bushels. 29.4 lbs. 
Med. Clover, 4,500 lbs. 1.7 lbs. 
Total .103.3 lbs. 
Now the total that is returned to the soil is first 
a little less than four pounds nitrogen in the 200 
pounds of commercial fertilizer, probably about 20 
pounds nitrogen from the clover that is fed, and 
about 24 pounds nitrogen from the corn and stover 
that is fed, a total of 48 pounds, less than oue-lialf 
the total amount that is drawn from the soil. This 
loss is, as already stated, largely due to the wasteful 
manner of caring for the manure. The corn and 
clover is largely fed to the cattle and hogs in lots, 
three-fourths of which are open and exposed to the 
weather. Cattle are fed in these lots during the 
Winter months and the manure is not hauled out 
until the following Fall. With the same rotation 
and the manure saved by the use of covered, con¬ 
creted barnyards, the wheat could still be sold and 
the corn and clover fed, with a slight increase in the 
fertility that would be returned over what was re¬ 
moved. If Alfalfa were substituted for the clover 
there would be a still greater improvement. If some 
cotton-seed meal were added to the ration, that 
would help still more, and then if a good carrier of 
phosphorus were used to reinforce the manure, the 
farm would steadily increase in fertility instead of 
decrease. chas. b. wing. 
Ohio. 
INTERESTING EXPERIMENT IN ROTATION. 
I have a neighbor, an enterprising young farmer, 
who owns a small but fertile farm. This is within 
the tobacco growing region, and he depends upon 
this for his principal money crop, yet he wishes 
also to grow corn, rye, wheat and clover in rotation. 
This is the manner of his procedure, beginning with 
clover sod, which is top-dressed with coarse stable 
manure in Fall and Winter: 
The clover is plowed down in May, and made 
richer by applying commercial fertilizer, rich in 
phosphorus and potash, but not very strong in nitro¬ 
gen. The ground is then planted in tobacco, taking 
care to plant as early in the season as conditions 
will permit. The crop is given the best of cultiva¬ 
tion, and after the last plowing, which usually is 
early in July, he follows with Soy beans, which he 
sows with a one-horse drill between the tobacco 
rows, using 1 % bushels per acre. Experience shows 
that the growing beans are not a hindrance in the 
care and cutting of the tobacco. The beans keep 
the bottom leaves of the tobacco from lying on the 
ground, and thus improve its quality. The mass 
of foliage not only shades the ground, but prevents 
too rapid evaporation, and furnishes a clean carpet 
on which the tobacco is wilted before removing to 
the sheds. No effort is made to avoid trampling the 
beans. As soon as the tobacco is removed, the 
ground is plowed, using a heavy chain to turn under 
% 
all the heavy crop of bean stalks. Later the ground 
is put in fine order and rye is drilled in at rate of 
1 y» bushels per acre. 
In the Spring this is broken with the plow and 
planted in corn. The standing corn is sown in wheat 
in Fall, and in clover the Spring following. This is 
cut for hay and seed, and this completes the ro¬ 
tation. The advantages of this plan are that two 
nitrogen-gathering crops are grown in each cycle of 
rotation. The soil here usually contains enough 
lime, and with this preliminary treatment will soon 
be in admirable condition for the growth of Alfalfa. 
Of course this land is of high grade to begin with. 
But the object to be secured is not only to maintain 
that fertility, but actually to increase it. The ex¬ 
periment looks good to me, and I believe it will 
prove a gratifying success. It seems to me that 
whether we live in the tobacco-growing region or 
not, we should plan to grow more of the nitrogen¬ 
gathering legumes in our crop rotations. 
Miami Co., O. b. p. albauoh. 
