3014. 
TIT 35 RURAL NEW-YORKER 
A PROFITABLE TURNIP CROP. 
On page 1301 I notice that the farmers of Limvood 
coniiminity, in Leavenworth County, Kansas, are sell¬ 
ing their turnips at .$12 per acre. That seems to me 
a very small price if they have anything of a crop. 
The writer has sold this year from an acre of ground 
$55 worth of turnips, and has on hand 40 bushels 
that are altogether too large for commercial pur¬ 
poses. We had one weighing six pounds. A great 
many of them weigh 2% to three pounds and over. 
A Badge of Inefficiency. Fig. 11. 
They are too large for selling, but are solid and 
good. We shall feed them to our cow this Winter. 
Our market has been two small county towns, from 
1,500 to 5.000 population. 
I have found turnips a valuable catch crop. They 
require very little work. They grow late in the sea¬ 
son, when it is cool. The above patch I speak of was 
sown on the 4th of July. On the afternoon of the 
first of July we had one of the fiercest hailstorms 
that needs to visit any community. It rained hail by 
the bucketful, and in places ruined every green 
thing above ground, and tried hard to bark the 
trees. This patch was in sweet corn, and was 
ruined. We just ran the spring-tooth over the 
ground once, I sowed 15 cents worth of seed, and 
with a single horse brushed the ground lightly. This 
was all of the work, except harvesting and market¬ 
ing them. 
This acre of turnips was in a 10-acre field, and 
yielded enough income to pay the rent of the field. 
I pay cash rent. The remainder of the field was in 
oats and early potatoes, and was nearly completely 
ruined by the hail. I have also found out in other 
years that turnips are a good crop to raise. Last 
year I sold more than $00 worth, all raised in the 
cornfield as a companion crop. They grew mostly 
after the corn was cut up. I shall continue to raise 
them, as they bring in considerable money. This 
year we harvested some on December 0, and still 
have some in the field to get if the present cold spell 
moderates again. samvel iieymann. 
Huron Co., Ohio. 
It. N.-Y.—The point is that these Kansas farmers 
had not tried a second or cover crop before. They 
found this $12 a clear gain in a section where most 
people had seldom heard of turnips as a profitable 
crop before. Of course the crop is worth more in an 
older settled country. 
WHY NOT TACKLE CLOVER SEED ? 
Did you ever see a big table of results in clover 
seed growing? You've seen dozens or hundreds on 
wheat; a hundred pounds of phosphate made so 
much more wheat; plowing early or planting late 
made 221 pounds more or 136 pounds less. Tables 
on tables like that for wheat, and the same for corn, 
oats, barley and for clover as a hay crop. But 
where are we told about clover seed? Very little 
about how to raise the seed. The literature is main¬ 
ly about how to tell the weed seeds in it. 
The Department of Agriculture and the various 
State.institutions on the same line arc supposed to 
exist to help the farmers. Tiie It. N.-Y. has often 
pointed out how this help might work the other way. 
The bigger crops of grain the growers get the less 
the total money value; urbanites thus benefit from 
bumper crops rather than the people of the soil. Not 
so with clover seed, for the farmer is not only the 
producer of this crop; he is almost the sole con¬ 
sumer. If clover and other legume seeds could be 
produced more easily we could afford to keep more 
acres idle with soiling crops on them. We could get 
the same amount of salable grain from less land 
and without so much hiring to do. When everyone 
could raise most of his own seed there would not 
he so much scattering of weed seeds from one end 
of the country to the other. Only the cleaner stands 
would he thrashed. The back-breaking hoeing would 
be: reduced and the tiller’s comfort added to all 
around. It does not look fair to farmers to expend 
all the official energy teaching him how to grow 
cheaper grain for town people, and almost, none on 
how to produce cheaper legume seed for himself. 
These farmers do not apply so much to cow peas and 
Soy beans. It is the small seeded and the Winter 
legumes that have been neglected. 
Probably the stations will not undertake to grow 
Red clover seed, but there are thousands of other 
legumes, some very likely ones. More attention 
should be given to these and their seeding, and less 
to the grains. Department Bulletin No. G tells about 
legumes that will grow on acid soils, Hairy vetch, 
Soy beans, lupins and others. They seem to have 
the power of using the “unavailable” nitrogen. More 
work on this line ought to be done. It is fresh and 
interesting to see a plan of adapting the plant to the 
soil instead of laboriously carrying the soil to the 
plant. BEN. P. EDGERTON. 
TENANT FARMING-THE LANDLORD’S SIDE 
[The It. N.-Y. wishes to be known as a human docu¬ 
ment—giving freely the human side of farm life. This 
means an honest statement of the sorrows as well as the 
joys, the failures as well as the successes. Statements 
of this sort are in language which plain people can 
understand. There follows a personal statement from 
a landlord in Central Illinois. This is his point of 
view. If any tenant wants to give the other side we 
shall be glad to hear from him.] 
I fortunately own four farms, which I rent for 
cash and grain rent for enough to keep the wolf 
from the door. Farm tenants call me hard to please 
as a rule. I do not ask more rent than they have to 
pay others. My buildings are in as good repair, also 
other improvements, as the owners who live on their 
land have. I would like to have all kinds of fruit 
on each place,*sufficient for one or more families and 
some for sale. The fruit-growing trees, vines and 
shrubs have about disappeared, and how I would like 
to replace! When I saw a tenant wilfully break 
limbs on cherry trees to secure the fruit, stand on a 
ladder and with a long club punch and beat the 
Better Than a Shotgun for Thieves. Fig. 12. 
!*ii 
sEMfe-V*:-. 
limbs of the plum and peach trees, too lazy to run 
a wagon under to enable him to gather from the 
ladder, I just concluded not to replant again. It 
seems to me to do so would be casting pearls before 
swine. I am past the three-score period of life, have 
been on hundreds of farms on either side of the 
river in the Mississippi Valley, across the country 
from coast to coast via Portland, Oregon and Maine. 
I make it a point never to let a tenant treat me 
better than I will him. or anyone else when it 
comes to doing the fair thing. No one better enjoys 
seeing well-tilled farms or good improvements, and 
I should be delighted to help my own tenants to have 
them, if they would only make an effort to take 
care of the places. I have enough outside income to 
pay half my living expenses. I do not want all the 
land that joins me, only one child to inherit, and 
sorry to say no good wife to enjoy the fruits of my 
toil and our early savings. 
I have seen answers in print and heard verbal ad¬ 
vice to such tales of woe. The advice is, look for a 
good tenant, rent for a term of years, so they will 
take more interest, etc., etc. Well, I have been look¬ 
ing for the good tenant for over 30 years, one whom 
I felt. I dare risk binding myself up for more than 
one year. Tenants do not give security, as a rule, 
that they will keep and comply with their part of 
the contract, and a judgment is scarcely obtainable 
in court, and almost as hard to collect. True, a land¬ 
lord can hold any product grown on the farm for 
rent due. There are so many things which a tenant 
or the owner living on a farm should do which the 
average tenant won’t do. I was raised on a farm, 
and all my hopes, desires and interests are centered 
in farming. I think I know what a farmer can do 
or ought to do; how much the natural elements will 
interfere, just as well as the average tenant. So 
why should I bind myself up for more than one year 
at a time by putting a farm worth from $20,000 to 
$35,000 in the hands of a tenant who gives me no 
security that he will keep and perform his part of 
the contract? My word is as good as a tenant’s. 
I do not want to sell my farms. I expect to rent 
so long as I live, and never want to change a ten¬ 
36 
ant so long as we can get along. I feel sure I do 
not misstate when I say, the average tenant care¬ 
lessly lets a place go down to equal five per cent 
of the rent he pays. So much damage is done un¬ 
necessarily. 
I have had some tenants live on my places as 
long as seven years. If tenants will do what they 
agree to do, the chances are they need not move in 
20 or more years. My heir will have no occasion 
to change them after I am gone. 
TOP SOIL IN YARDS OR RUNS. 
During each year we frequently have letters from 
farmers who ask us about the value of the surface 
soil found in barnyards or old chicken runs where 
flocks of poultry have been kept for a number of 
years. Many farmers appear to think that this soil 
must be of very great value as a fertilizer, worth 
scraping up and hauling away. In Arizona farmers 
have not yet come to any thorough use of manures, 
yet in localities near the towns and cities the truck 
growers are beginning to look about for plant food. 
In that country there are many old yards or corrals 
where sheep or cattle have been herded for a num- 
oer of years. Some of these corrals are used as 
shearing pens for the sheep, and the theory is that 
the upper surface of soil in that rainless district 
ought to be valuable. Analyses have therefore been 
made. In one case such a yard was found on a 
well-drained or gravel soil. Even in that country 
of limited rainfall, most of the plant food had been 
washed out. Still this soil contained about 11 
pounds of nitrogen to the ton, which is about the 
average of ordinary stable manure. Other yards 
or corrals were examined on heavier ground, where 
there was little chance for the water to soak 
down through the soil. In some cases the soil 
scraped up from the surface contained 30 to 35 
pounds of nitrogen in a ton, which made it richer in 
this element than some of the brands of low-grade 
fertilizer put on the market. These yards had been 
used for herding sheep and goats, so that the 
.soil was richer than would have been the case had 
cattle been kept there. One sample of the soil found 
in a goat corral actually contained 44 pounds of 
nitrogen, 36 of phosphoric acid, and 75 of potash, 
which gave a value of nearly $15 per ton, at the 
prices in which chemicals are sold in the Eastern 
States. This plant food is not yet needed for farm 
purposes in Arizona. Soils as rich as the last-named 
would be worth handling and working over by our 
1- astern manufacturers. 
There is no doubt that the bottoms of ordinary 
barnyards, as well as the top soil in chicken runs, 
contained large quantities of plant food. The first 
fact is the best evidence we have of the value of a 
cement or water-tight bottom in the barnyard. A 
concrete covering, or hard clay pounded down solid¬ 
ly, will hold most of the plant food, which would 
otherwise escape in liquid form by drainage or over¬ 
flow. With this firm water-tight bottom the yard 
can be scraped out with a scraper, and promote a 
great saving in the fertilizer bill. In the case of 
chicken yards it is well known that after a few 
years of constant use, these yards become foul, and 
the birds more and more affected by gapes, bowel 
diseases, and other troubles. This soil may be dug 
Genuine Irish Cobbler Potato. Fig. 13. 
out to a depth of eight inches or a foot, plowing up 
the yard and scraping. We have seen cases where 
this soil carted out and spread over grain or grass, 
or over a garden, gave wonderful results. As a rule, 
however, we think it more economical to plow up 
such yards and plant them directly to corn or gar¬ 
den crops. This is much less work, and rank grow¬ 
ing crops like corn or cabbage will clean the soil, 
give heavy crops, and fit the place for poultry once 
more. 
