1910. 
HANDLING SWEET CLOVER SEED. 
I bave about an aero of poor land, on which I would 
like to try the experiment of raising Sweet clover seed, 
and at the same time improve the condition of the land. 
Will Sweet clover seed sown this coming June develop, 
seed next year? If not, hotv early must 1 sow to obtain 
seed next year? Please explain method of harvesting 
seed and preparing for market. Should I be able to cut 
a crop of hay this season? Has any experiment station 
published a bulletin on the subject of sweet clover? 
New York. i. J. M. 
But little seems to be known about the proper 
handling of Sweet clover for seed. I wrote to a 
grower and received but little information from him. 
I wrote to a dealer who handles more Sweet clover 
that any other dealer that I know of, and obtained 
but scanty information from him. The plant has 
been considered a weed so long, that practically no 
one seems to know just how to handle it, or especially 
how to handle the seed. It is very evident to me 
that about three-fourths of the seed must be improperly 
handled, because at least three-fourths of the samples 
I receive are practically worthless. From what I can 
learn of the plant, it may be sown in February when 
the ground is honeycombed, and a crop of seed should 
mature the first year; this is also a good way to obtain 
a good stand of plants. Or, it may be sown late in 
the Summer without a nurse crop, and a crop would 
mature the next year. Correspor dents advise me that 
it may be sown almost any month during the Summer 
up until September, and a stand be obtained, but most 
of them advise either very early seeding or else 
August seeding. 
For the most part the seed is handled apparently 
in a very primitive way, 
cut with scythes or 
cradles and flailed out. 
Most of it is thrown on 
the market full of stems 
and trash, apparently not 
recleaned at all. A little 
seed comes from Europe, 
generally in splendid 
condition, nicely hulled, 
and good heavy seed of 
very high germination. 
It certainly must be 
hulled by a regular ma¬ 
chine. The trouble with 
this seed is that there 
is so little of it, and it 
frequently contains 
weeds that we do not 
dsre to sow. For myself 
I have very much pre¬ 
ferred the hulled seed 
when it was obtainable 
in anything like the 
proper purity, because 
the unhulled will usually 
contain some withered, 
light-weight seed that it 
is impossible to remove 
with a cleaner when in 
the unhulled condition, and one hardly knows what 
he is sowing. The seed is said to heat very easily) 
and this, no doubt, accounts for the low germination 
of most of the commercial samples. It is said to 
heat very easily even after being thrashed and sacked. 
I do not know whether the hulled seed will heat 
easily or not. I imagine that this is due to its being 
thrashed when not absolutely dry, and the hulls them¬ 
selves retaining enough moisture to cause fermentation 
and heating, but this is mostly theory on my part. 
It looks as if cultivation of this plant for seed after 
one learned how to do it would be a very profitable 
business, because even the unhulled seed should sell 
for as much as $6 per bushel of 60 pounds, and 
correspondents have told us that as high as 12 bushels 
of seed per acre could readily be obtained from the 
plant. The demand for the seed has increased very 
rapidly. The wholesalers, the few who handle it, 
inform me that they have doubled their sales in the 
past year or so, and nowhere nearly supplied the 
demand. I think that if I were going into the 
business of growing the seed, I would handle it the 
same as the Medium clover is handled, and T think 
I would certainly use a regular clover huller, which 
should hull the seed in good shape, and would, I think, 
make it very much more salable. 
Ohio. _ CHAS. B. WING. 
Gardeners and farmers near New York often have 
trouble in buying manure. They are compelled to 
pay for more than they get. In a number of cases 
farmers, after buying a car of manure, have had it 
weighed as they hauled it away. • There will be a 
shortage of 10 per cent or more. In one such case 
reported to us the railroad freight bill called for 29 
tons and 900 pounds of manure. The car had been 
billed at 27 tons, and really contained about 23 tons 
as hauled to the farm. The dealer wanted the farmer 
to accept it for 29 tons! In this case the manure was 
refused. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
THE FLORIDA ORANGE BUSINESS. 
I would like to give the results of the year’s opera¬ 
tions on my orange grove of 10 acres. I shipped 
1,500 boxes of oranges; would have had 2,000 boxes 
if it was not for the freeze. My crop netted me 67 
cents a box of about a bushel; that is, picking, 
packing and shipping were paid and I had 67 cents 
with which to cultivate, fertilize and all other expense 
up to the time of moving the crop. Picking, packing 
and delivering to the depot cost 50 cents, freight would 
average 57 cents, cartage three cents, commission about 
19 cents. It cost me about $630 to carry on the place, 
which leaves me $355 for income on a 10-acre grove. 
Evidently there is not much necessity for preaching 
“back to the soil” in the orange business. I got an 
average price for my fruit, and have nothing to com¬ 
plain of. I understand that the orange business in 
California is in a bad way too, and yet thousands of 
young trees arc being set out in California, Florida, 
Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Louisiana and the isles of 
the sea. If I could get my grove to put on 5,000 
boxes I could make something at 50 cents a box, 
but that means much more fertilizer, irrigation and 
spraying. Groves are selling in this section for from 
$6 to $7 a tree. If a grove is set out 30 feet apart 
for the trees my grove would sell for, say $3,500. 
But that does not represent anywhere near the cost 
of any grove in Orange County or any other county 
for that matter. Mine was set out in 1886, and 
froze down to the ground just as it was getting into 
good bearing in the great freeze of 1894-5 and also 
in 1899. The newly formed Citrus Exchange hopes 
to better the marketing end of the business, but in 
my opinion there arc too many oranges raised, and 
it is impossible to form a trust in a perishable pro¬ 
duct. FRANK HOWARD. 
Florida. 
TRAINING YOUNG STOCK. 
One of our readers, Mr. M. C. Emory, came home 
one day from delivering milk and found the children 
riding a calf which they had trained to saddle and 
traces. He got a photographer to have a picture taken 
and then the children both wanted to ride their calves. 
As a result we have the picture shown at Fig. 239. 
That is good enough young stock for any farm. 
Mr. Emory sends us the following note: 
“I am on a large farm, 2S5 acres, keep seven 
horses and 27 head of grade Holsteins. I run a milk 
route in Wayland, N. Y., bottle my milk, sell for 
six cents per quart and have a good trade. I am 
six and one-half miles out, which makes quite a 
drive, but I did not miss a day last Winter. We have 
line roads at present, not much of a dairy country, 
more for potatoes. My two children are Allen, eight, 
and his little sister Fern, five; they commenced break¬ 
ing Jack, the one Fern is ruling, when it was a 
little calf. It is two years old. The other one, Hoyd, 
is a grade bull. They broke him last Winter. They 
spend days with them riding and driving them; 
have bits in their mouths and drive them with lines. 
How they broke them to ride I never knew. I came 
home from delivering milk one day, the boy was riding 
one of them; Fern was behind riding on a hand 
sled.” 
Most farm children derive much pleasure from 
young live stock, and the training of a calf or colt 
trains the boy himself in lines that are helpful in 
manhood, whether his home is in city or country. 
683 
KEEP WORKING FOR PARCELS POST. 
I am watching with the utmost interest your fight 
for parcels post, and I, of course, look for you to 
win, as you generally do, not going into anything of 
the sort without being satisfied that it is worth your 
utmost effort, and then never letting up till you have 
won. If there is anything that the community needs 
more than anything else, it seenis to me that it is 
parcels post. From what I have observed of its use 
in Europe, I think we could afford to send all of our 
members of Congress over there to see what a 
blessing it is. Southern Europe is not well supplied 
with carrying facilities in a good many respects, and 
the postoffice is a much more uncertain factor than 
it is with us, but there are parcels post rates and 
regulations that would astonish our people. In Lon¬ 
don they rate the postoffice as about as efficient as it 
can possibly be made to be, while the telephone is at 
the low end of the scale, so that right in the city the 
telegraph is often used instead, but it is declared that 
anyone can send a letter to any part of that vast city 
and easily and almost certainly get an answer the 
same day. There are deliveries at frequent intervals 
from early morning to well into the evening. Yet 
for all this it is felt that a parcels post is also neces¬ 
sary, and every advantage is given to that service. I 
felt like coming right home and saying to everyone 
I saw that Europe, so far behind us in certain carry¬ 
ing efficiency, such as ordinary freight and baggage, 
has pretty nearly made up in the way it handles small 
private packages. An efficient parcels post, and it 
would be efficient if we had one at all. would create 
■a revolution in business, 
and it need not be made 
to injure the local mer¬ 
chant or jobber either. 
Let them have a special 
rate for two or five or 
10 miles if they fear be¬ 
ing driven out by the 
mail - order h ouse s. 
There would not be any 
harm in that. 
But the farmer of all 
is the one who should 
never flag in his effort 
to secure this benefit. 
He is complaining of the 
encroachment of the mid¬ 
dleman, who must so 
often get the largest 
slice of the consumer’s 
cost, yet what is there 
that would more com¬ 
pletely place him in 
touch with the consumer 
than parcels post? * In 
fact, I do not believe 
much progress can be 
made in that direction 
till something of the 
nature of a parcels post 
is established. The advantage is so obvious that 
nothing but the fact that the opposition is working 
hardest in Congress has been able to stave it off so 
long. __ J. w. c. 
SOY BEANS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 
In reading over an article by Chas. B. Wing on Soy 
beans, on page 489, I am favorably impressed with the 
idea of raising them, and would like to know if thej 
can be put in after the bay is cut off the field, as 1 
have a field where the grass is almost run out, and I 
may come short in both hay and oats. The soil is in 
some part a sort of red shell and dark loam and clay 
mixed. I only bought this place this Spring, and do not 
know what the soil is best adapted to yet. Do you think 
Soy beans would be profitable in my case? How should 
I care for and harvest them right? c. J. 
Pennsylvania. 
C. J. will find Soy beans a profitable crop if he 
keeps lots of stock, particularly cows. I am quite 
sure the Soy bean will do well in Bucks County, and 
on the soil he describes. If he expects first to cut 
a crop of hay the beans would have to be planted too 
late for best results. Soy beans require about the 
same growing season as Indian corn, and are at their 
best for hay if cut when most of the pods have begun 
to mature. I am unable to tell just what kind of hay 
the immature plant would make, or how difficult it 
would be to cure so late in the season. Soy bean hay. 
if properly made, is a most valuable feed. It is hard 
to advise in a case like this. I am inclined to think 
I should plow up at least part of this run-out grass 
field and plant to Soy beans at the proper time, any¬ 
where between May 15 and June 1. Plant in rows and 
cultivate same as you would corn. About one and 
one-quarter bushel seed per acre is the proper quantity; 
cut and cure as you would clover. If your soil is 
run-down, as it seems to be, it will pay you well to 
apply a fertilizer of dissolved South Carolina rock 
and muriate of potash, to 100 pounds of the dissolved 
reck, add 18 pounds muriate of potash and apply 
300 to 400 pounds per acre of the mixture. The Soy 
bean takes in atmospheric nitrogen freely, and will 
leave your soil in much better condition than would 
millet or oats. 
Middletown, Pa. a. w. s. 
YOUNG STOCK ON A NEW YORK DAIRY FARM. Fig. 239. 
