1436 
received no manure or fertilizer during all this time. 
On some farms the system of crop rotation requires 
a considerable part of the Alfalfa land to he plowed 
once in 10 or 12 years. Plowing a pewly-seeded field 
because its appearance is unsatisfactory is believed 
to be a mistake. In some cases the seed does not all 
germinate the first year, and it often requires two or 
three years for a seeding to become fully established. 
WHAT BECOMES OF THE CROP.—Only a small 
fraction of the Alfalfa grown here can be used at 
home. Quite a quantity is sold as loose hay in Syra¬ 
cuse, but the bulk of the crop is haled and shipped to 
Boston, New York, and other points, from which it 
is distributed to the surrounding dairy regions. Bales 
range in weight from 100 to 200 pounds. Prices vary 
at different seasons, and in different years. At this 
writing loose hay brings .$15 to $16, and baled hay 
$17 to $17.50 per ton. Growers who are in the dairy 
business feed Alfalfa to their cows. It is the best 
feed known for dairy cows. If carefully used it is 
excellent for horses, though occasionally one is found 
with which it does not agree. The first cutting is 
preferred for horses and the second and third for 
cows. Sheep thrive on Alfalfa. E. A. Martin says 
that all sheep need is Alfalfa and water. A few 
growers have fed Alfalfa to hogs and a good many 
have given it to hens. All report good results. There 
is a wide difference of opinion regarding the use of 
Alfalfa for pasture. Many growers have not tried it 
because they think it would he unprofitable. Some 
who have tried it have found it a decided injury. 
Others report that on dry ground, if the crop is not 
fed too close, pasturing does no harm. A few have 
Alfalfa pastures which are in use from May until 
October of each year. The animals thrive and the 
Alfalfa remains vigorous. The writer saw a field 
which has been pastured for 10 years, and is still in 
good condition. One grower suggests the division of 
the pasture into two fields, using them alternately 
for two weeks at a time. Pasturing Alfalfa on soft, 
ground is to be avoided. Only a few of the men in¬ 
terviewed have tried Alfalfa in the silo. One re¬ 
ports favorably. Others have found it decidedly in¬ 
ferior to corn. The general sentiment is that as some 
dry food is always needed it is best to fill the silo 
with corn and feed the Alfalfa dry. 
MANURE-LIME-COMMERCIAL FERTILIZER.— 
Of nine growers whose practice in this respect was 
learned seven sometimes manure their Alfalfa fields. 
One manures heavily and one lightly when 
the seed is sown, and the land is not ma¬ 
nured again until it is plowed. Two top- 
dress lightly every year. One spreads on about 14 
loads per acre every three or four years. One relies 
principally on what is used for the grain and Alfalfa 
at the time of seeding, but occasionally manures thin 
spots in the field. Two top-dress every two or three 
years and one applies a little manure before, but 
never after, the Alfalfa is three years old. lame is 
seldom used on Alfalfa fields. There seems to be 
enough in the soil. Hamlet Worker, who manures 
only at the time of seeding, experimented with one 
ton of lime and 500 pounds of acid phosphate per 
acre. This was sown in strips and had no appre¬ 
ciable effect upon the Alfalfa or the oats with which 
it was seeded. He obtained a remarkably fine crop 
of corn on land that had been in Alfalfa for 10 years. 
There will be no lack of nitrogen, but it is possible 
that in time continuous cropping with Alfalfa will 
deplete the stores of phosphoric acid and potash. To 
determine whether the time of exhaustion of these 
elements is near the experiment with some form of 
fertilizer will be repeated at intervals. Only one in¬ 
stance was found in which lime had been used with 
marked benefit. In this the yield of a field which 
had been mowed three years and given only light 
crops was increased 50 per cent., by the application 
of two tons of lime per acre. Of three growers who 
have tested commercial fertilizers one drills in 200 
lo 250 pounds per acre when seeding, and thinks that 
it pays, one broadcasts a little when the plants are 
small, and one has found it useless. J. E. b. 
• —--- 
PRACTICAL AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 
MEN NEEDED. 
ILL it pay me to secure an agricultural 
college graduate as manager of my 200- 
acre New York farm?” a Chicago busi¬ 
ness man inquired. This business man had 
been studying the educational exhibits of the 
agricultural college at. the dairy show. “I 
have studied the matter considerably,” he said, 
“and these are my views. If they are sensible I 
want your opinion. In mercantile business of some 
size I have been in touch with classical college men. 
I will apply the same acid test to agricultural college 
men on the farm. I do not want a young man who 
stands at the head of his class. I do not want a 
young man who is able to complete his agricultural 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
course without financial hardship. I want a young 
man who has worked for at least, part of his agricul¬ 
tural education. I want him to he a young fellow 
whose father opposed rather than supported his col¬ 
lege work. I do not want a fraternity or a society 
man. Not. because I oppose either, but the young 
man who has unlimited parental support, who goes 
in for society and for ‘fiats’ will be the fellow who 
has too big ideas for me. I want my farm to pay its 
way. That is business. I find that too many young 
fellows have big ideas when they get out of school. 
They intend to become rich or prominent suddenly, 
and they fizzle out. I know one young man who told 
his classmates at the agricultural college that he in¬ 
tended going back to the farm to do things. He 
plunged the farm hopelessly in debt before he shelved 
his high ideas for more practical ones. 
“I would be glad to secure a man past 30. My 
ideal would be a man who had worked out part of 
his time, one who had attended the agricultural col¬ 
lege perhaps a year, then went back on a farm and 
worked a year or two. and then returned to college. 
When his funds would become exhausted, he would 
then go back to the farm, go to testing cows or en¬ 
gage in some practical agricultural work. I would 
rather have a man who attended the short course, 
each year and worked the remainder of the year on 
his father’s farm, than have the young man who had 
continued his course without interruption and with¬ 
out hardship. I would rather have taken the young 
man who hopelessly mortgaged his farm, after he 
had been to college one semester, than have him the 
day he graduated. Now. after he has some of the im¬ 
practical ideas knocked out of him, he might become 
a valuable farm manager. I want a young man with 
executive ability. If he has been a renter for a year 
or so, or managed the home farm conservatively and 
progressively, he fills my ideal in that direction. It 
should not be difficult to secure a man of this sort, 
and possibly my man may not be an agricultural 
college student, hut some young man on a rented 
farm. In any event the star athlete, the society and 
fraternity man and the most brilliant student will 
find opportunities in teaching and demonstration 
work. Somewhere they tell of the stone the builders 
rejected which was placed as the headstone of the 
corner, and he is the fellow some of us want.” w. j. 
AM I A “RETAIL MILK DEALER?” 
LIVE in an “incorporated village” of about 1,400 in¬ 
habitants. We have two milkmen who furnish the 
people with the “blac-k-and-white” milk, peddling 
once a day. I have one cow, mixed Guernsey and 
Jersey, and sell milk to some half dozen of my neigh¬ 
bors, they coming after the milk and paying the same 
price they would have to pay for the milkman’s milk 
delivered at their door. There are some others who do 
the same, and some who deliver the milk to their cus¬ 
tomers. The milkman told me the other day that I 
must either stop selling milk or take out a license, bottle 
and label my milk, and have a bacterial test made of it. 
I want to know if this is true. Must all the little one- 
cow men go out of business, send their neighbors to the 
milkman, whose milk they do not like, and many times 
can’t keep for breakfast next morning, or go into all 
the expense and red tape mentioned? Hasn’t a person 
in our boasted free country a right to sell, or offer for 
sale, a quart of milk, a jar of butter, a dozen eggs, a 
chicken, of anything out of his orchard or garden, with¬ 
out taking out a license or going contrary to the law? 
If not it is high time the women took hold of the voting, 
for they could certainly do better than that. H. F. K. 
Whether or not you are a retail milk dealer, with¬ 
in the meaning of the new sanitary code of New 
York State, depends not so much upon the number of 
cows that you keep as upon your purpose in keeping 
those cows and the disposition that you regularly 
make of your milk. A strict interpretation of the 
language of the law would forbid one to sell even a 
pint of milk to a neighbor without having first taken 
out a permit from the local health authorities. As 
(he purpose of those who framed the code was not to 
prevent such neighborly accommodation, however, 
several “rulings, interpretations and explanations” 
have been issued by the Commissioner of Health for 
(lie purpose of making clear just what, the Depart¬ 
ment is trying to accomplish in the matter. 
As you state your own case, you do not come with¬ 
in the provisions of the new law. It is intended that 
this law shall apply to bona fide milk dealers only, 
and I think that “dealer” may here he fairly defined 
as one who produces, or purchases, milk and disposes 
of it at retail primarily for the business profit in the 
transaction and the income which it produces. There 
are other people who produce milk primarily for 
their own family use, but who, having a surplus 
above their needs, dispose of this to their neighbors. 
The number of cows kept or the amount of milk 
disposed of have less to do with the status of the 
dealer than the real purpose for which cows are kept 
The Commissioner of Health has ruled that “A man 
with three cows of his own who sells to a few 
friends, in their own pails, the surplus over his own 
needs is not a dealer.” As few families could use the 
product of three ordinarily good cows, it would seem 
December 12, 
evident that one or more of such a number of cows 
must he kept for the purpose of supplying others; 
nevertheless, this is the ruling and it serves the pur¬ 
pose. at least, of showing the Commissioner’s atti¬ 
tude toward the law. On the other hand, another 
ruling is that “A farmer who carries milk to a cream¬ 
ery hut also sells at retail along the way is a dealer 
and requires a permit.” 
The distinction seems to be that in one case milk is 
produced primarily for family consumption, as vege¬ 
tables are raised in the garden, but to avoid waste, 
the surplus is retailed to neighbors, just as a few sur¬ 
plus vegetables might be sold: in the other, milk is 
produced as a business proposition and its sale serves 
as one of the chief sources, if not the chief source, of 
business income. 
It must be admitted that there is a fine distinc¬ 
tion here that it is difficult to put into words that 
are not open to contravention; the distinction ex¬ 
ists, however, and it is the duty of health officers to 
apply it to individual cases with the judgment that 
comes from a knowledge of the circumstances that 
surround each case. Much is necessarily left to the 
discretion of health officers, and it, may be said for 
the Department that it is desirous that the law shall 
he administered in a spirit of fairness and liberality 
rather than in one of subservience to technicalities. 
The law does not require bottling of milk or a 
bacterial test unless it is sold as “Certified” or 
“Grade A.” The containers of all milk offered for 
sale must be tagged, however, and in the case of 
dipped milk the tag showing its grade may be at¬ 
tached to the can, or other receptacle, in which it is 
kept. For the present, milk will be sold largely tin¬ 
der “Grade C,” but it is probably the intention of 
the Department ultimately to abolish this grade and 
enforce observance of the stricter requirements in¬ 
volved in the higher grades. m. b. n. 
POTASH FROM IRON SLAG. 
AM inclosing clipping from the Boston “Transcript” 
for your comments. I don’t quite understand how 
so large a quantity of potash as will be required 
to turn out 500 tons of fertilizer a day could have 
remained undiscovered so long. 
“Pittsburg, Pa., Nov. 13 (Special)—The shutting off 
of the supply of potash from Germany by reason of the 
European war has resulted in the establishment here 
of a fertilizer company, capitalized at $1,000,000. About 
150 men will be employed in the beginning. The com¬ 
pany has a patented process for the manufacture of 
Commercial potash. It will be an important factor in 
the Pittsburgh district inasmuch as it will use thou¬ 
sands of tons of slag from the steel mills. This slag is 
ground and mixed with Tennessee phosphate rock and 
becomes effective and immediately available for fertil¬ 
izer. The company owns over 500 acres of phosphate 
rock in Tennessee and will manufacture 500 tons of fer¬ 
tilizer a day.” h. w. b. 
You may safely discount most of the (special) news 
items you read in the papers. There are a good 
many ways of printing concealed advertisements. 
This year the best trick in the fertilizer business is 
to talk in some mysterious way about a new source 
of potash. It is well known that the German mines 
provide all the available potash now cheap enough 
to tise as fertilizers, but anyone who can make far¬ 
mers think he has some, new supply will stand a 
chance to reap a harvest! 
Chemists know that certain steel interests have a 
waste product containing small crystals of apatite. 
This is a hard mineral containing phosphate of lime. 
Van Slyke says it is probably the original source of 
phosphorus in all other phosphoric compounds. It 
is too hard to be of much use in making fertilizers. 
It is not likely that there is‘ enough potash in this 
slag from the steel works to amount to much. There 
are various methods for treating silicates of potash 
(rocks) so as to make part of this potash available. 
Our guess is that this fertilizer company is handling 
this slag and ground rock in some way to make the 
phosphoric acid more available and simply talking 
about the potash in order to attract attention to their 
business! 
The goods sold by this concern last year were 
what they called “experimental” and known as “phos- 
plmtic lime.” There was very little available phos¬ 
phate in these goods. Their goods this year contain 
more available phosphoric acid, but the chemists 
have not yet determined how it is obtained. Sam¬ 
ples collected last. Spring showed only from six to 
10 pounds of potash to the ton. This did not show 
that they were making (lie potash in the slag avail¬ 
able. It. strengthens our suggestion that they are 
making available phosphoric acid and talking about 
potash in order to sell their goods. We are as eager 
as anyone can be to find sources of American pot¬ 
ash, but when they come with these “patent” meth¬ 
ods they must “show us.” 
The hens often suffer at this season. As they do not 
lay the hen man concludes they should not be fed. They 
need food more than ever now. “He that will not work 
neither shall he eat” does not apply to the molting hen. 
