1370 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
existence of a longer cycle averaging about 35 years, 
often called the Bruckner period, is cpiite generally 
conceded. Indications of this cycle are found in 
the records of the stages of rivers and the lengths 
of glaciers, as well as in the records of precipita¬ 
tion itself. 
PERIODICITY OF RAINFALL.—While indica¬ 
tions of periodicity in rainfall have been found for 
many regions, most of the studies until recently 
have been concerned with the precipitation of the 
entire year, the relation of the rainfall of the grow¬ 
ing season to the yield of crops having received less 
attention than the subject deserves. Professor J. 
Warren Smith of Columbus, Ohio, has studied the 
subject extensively and has presented statistics 
which show the dependence of various staple crops 
on the rainfall of critical periods in the growing sea¬ 
son. According to the annual reports of the Chief 
of the Weather Bureau and the summaries of weath¬ 
er conditions contained in the Monthly Weather 
Review, droughts of undoubted national importance 
have occurred since I860 in the following years: 
1803, 1870, 1871, 1887, 1S94, 1895, 1904, 1908 and 
1913. These dates bear out the assertion of Pro¬ 
fessor A. ,T. Henry in Bulletin D, Rainfall of the 
I'nited States, that there is a tendency for droughts 
to recur in irregular periods of from four to eleven 
years. george w. mindlixg. 
U. S. Weather Bureau. 
Buckwheat-Rye-Vetch Combination. 
T HE rye that I sowed with my buckwheat this 
Summer is all dead, while a fair proportion of 
the vetch has lived and is now growing luxuriantly. 
The chickens are looking after the buckwheat right 
in the field, and conveying the impression that it 
fdls a daily want. Next Summer I shall sow the 
buckwheat somewhat later, use more vetch (if I can 
get it then) and leave out the rye entirely. 
My purpose in planting this combination crop was 
to kill out a tough sod that hadn’t known a plow 
for 10 years, grow a little grain for my chickens, 
and if possible, have a cover crop to turn under 
next Spring. My land is a heavy clay loam and 
was not ready to plow until late in April. It was 
afterwards disked twice at intervals of about a 
week, and May 15 I put in the seed with a drill. 
The mixture was four parts buckwheat, one part 
rye and one part vetch. No fertilizer, lime or in¬ 
oculating material was used. 
I had rather expected that the rye would come 
up, stagnate in the shade of the buckwheat, and then 
stool out as usual in the Fall. Instead it shot up 
into the air above the buckwheat, promptly headed 
out, and went to seed weeks ago. It may have been 
Spring rye, although I didn’t buy it for such. The 
buckwheat came up nicely and has made a very 
fair crop. The vetch all came up with the other 
seed, but after that midsummer wet spell, there was 
only a vine here and there to be seen. These grew 
very slowly until the buckwheat had matured, but 
since then they have been making up for lost time. 
They are now spreading out among the tops of the 
buckwheat, and are blossoming freely after two 
killing frosts. I don’t expect the vetch to live 
through the Winter, but evidently it will take good 
care of the soluble nitrates in the soil this Fall. 
Dead or alive, there will be a fine supply of vege¬ 
table matter to plow in next Spring, which ought 
to help grow a fair crop of corn. c. it. g. 
West Hartford, Conn. 
R. N.-Y.—This rye did about what we expected. 
Like Crimson clover, Winter rye is not a crop for 
Spring seeding. Seeded in July or August it would 
have gone through, but in our experience Spring 
seeding matures the crop so it will not winter over. 
The School and the Farm. 
[Dr. B. T. Galloway, Dean of the New York College 
of Agriculture, made a strong speech at the convoca¬ 
tion of the University of New York. The great prob¬ 
lem, as Dr. Galloway sees it, is whether this country 
can develop a permanent agriculture without making 
old-time peasants of the present small farmers. Part 
of this speech follows.] 
W HEREVER is found a permanent and suc¬ 
cessful agriculture, measured merely by the 
maintenance of soil fertility and high average crop 
yields, there is found a peasantized and labor-de¬ 
pressed people, whose days are full of toil and whose 
minds have never been given much opportunity for 
growth. Even in this country more than a million 
farmers live and support their families on a labor 
income of less than a hundred dollars a year, and 
very little of this income actually comes to the 
farmer as money. So, despite all that has been 
said regarding the delights, the independence, the 
freedom, and the self-sufficiency of the farm, people 
are turning from it. 
While there has been a steady decrease in the 
percentage of our population engaged in agriculture, 
the per capita production of our staple crops has 
been increasing. This is primarily due to the util¬ 
ization of machinery, making it practicable to mox-e 
and more utilize horsepower and other power in¬ 
stead of man power. 
Despite the fact that in practically all other 
countries the intensity of the farming has increased 
with the density of population, this need not follow 
here. It would be unfortunate if it did follow, be¬ 
cause an intensive agriculture has been practicable 
only where there is an over-supply of human labor. 
The bountiful crops from small areas have been 
made possible only by the toil and sweat of the man 
who, while he is able to pi*oduce these results, must 
do so at the expense of the mental, and I might 
almost say moral, side of his being. This is agri¬ 
cultural peasantry in its worst form, and, while 
much may be said on the subject of making two 
blades of grass grow where only one grew before, 
we do not want to accomplish this object by sacri¬ 
ficing the very things that make life worth living. 
The farm of the future will so utilize modern 
labor-saving devices and efficiency methods that hu¬ 
man labor will be reduced to a minimum, and the 
farmer and his children will have time, opportunity, 
and means of living a satisfactory, wholesome life. 
It will probably mean a farm of average size. We 
may look forward to a permanent husbandry, freed 
from the blight of peasantry, standing squarely for 
its place in the affairs of the nation, but recog¬ 
nizing its relations and responsibilities to other in¬ 
dustries, and recognizing further that the fullest and 
best development of one can be attained only 
through the fullest and best development of all. 
The demand is for education that will teach the 
meaning of things and their relation to the present, 
rather than the teaching of words and their rela¬ 
tion to the past. I am not so much concerned with 
making more farmers, as I am with making better 
ones. The school must concern itself more and 
more with the needs of the people, and be more of 
a community center with the teacher as a communi¬ 
ty builder. The mere introduction of “agriculture” 
into the school will not accomplish the ends desired; 
and it must be fully realized that the school is not 
for the preparation of life, but is life itself. 
The Wonders of Hairy Vetch. 
I WAS interested in the editorial comment and 
Mr. Barnes’ report of his Hairy vetch crop on 
page 1296. To me the reason for such growth is 
very plain. The vetch roots are well covered with 
nodules and his vetch has fed very largely from the 
air since it was six weeks old. If that was not the 
case it would not have made any such growth. 
Hairy vetch will make ten times as. much growth 
where properly inoculated as where no bacteria are 
living on its roots. That you may realize the ab¬ 
solute necessity of proper inoculation, I give below 
a report of the comparative results from sowing 
uninoculated and inoculated Hairy vetch seed. This 
report is taken from the Alabama Experiment Sta¬ 
tion Bulletin No. 87. 
Hairy Vetch. Green Forage. Cured Hay. 
Not inoculated. 900 232 
Inoculated . 9136 2540 
I have in my office Hairy vetch four feet eight 
inches long, taken up when 10 weeks old, and in the 
window of one of our banks here one plant nine feet 
in height grown since July 1, 1915, and also one 
with 62 sprouts from one seed, all well inoculated 
and billions of bacteria have fed these three plants. 
Hairy vetch will secure, where properly inoculated, 
more nitrogen from the air and produce more to 
plow under for humus than any plant that grows, 
and it grows between crops. It is well named the 
king of soil builders. Another interesting table 
from Prof. Henry’s “Feeds and Feeding.” 
Crude 
Protein 
Nitrogen Phosphoric 
Potash 
lbs. 
Fat 
lbs. 
acid lbs. 
lbs. 
Rod clover. 
7.1 
1.8 
19.7 
5.5 
18.7 
Alsike clover. .. 
8.4 
1.1 
20.5 
5.0 
13.9 
Crimson clover.. 
10.5 
1.2 
24.3 
4.0 
13.1 
Mam. Red clover 
6.9 
2.1 
17.1 
5.2 
11.6 
White clover... 
11.5 
1.5 
25.1 
7.8 
13.2 
Burr clover.... 
Timothy, cut 
8.2 
2.1 
21.S 
... 
.... 
nearly ripe... 
2.1 
1.1 
8.0 
• • • • 
Alfalfa . 
11.1 
0.6 
24.7 
6.1 
17.9 
Hairy vetch.... 
11.9 
1.6 
27.2 
9.7 
21.4 
Wheat bran.... 
11.9 
2.5 
• • • • 
• • • 
HCttt UX (III ■ • • m.U •••• ••• •••■ 
The fact is that the fundamental principle of 
successful farming has never been followed until 
the farmer learns to plow under a green crop every 
year, as well as take one off his ground, and vetch, 
Soy beans, cow peas and other inoculated legume 
crops are the solution of this most important of all 
farm problems. If we could only realize that the 
plant food in the air is worth hundreds of times 
what is in our soil and it can be easily secured 
through well inoculated crops, and that the soil 
must be xvell supplied with humus by plowing under 
green crops, our land would be decidedly more pro¬ 
ductive. w. R. B. 
November 20, 1915. 
The Story of the Silage Harvest. 
I T always has been a belief of the writer, that a 
corn crop would pull itself through in some way, 
and make a fair yield, but it was a “tough” pull 
this year. Of necessity, corn was planted late last 
Spring, then the rains came, and cultivation was 
about impossible, the days were too cool, and the 
nights too cold to promote its growth, and many a 
field stood for weeks almost, scarcely a foot in 
height and as yellow as any “Asiatic peril” could be. 
Weeds grew apace, fox-tail and kindred weeds lux¬ 
uriated, and some farmers were forced actually to 
shovel-plow their corn even to see down the rows. 
The first days of September gave a short spell of 
quite hot weather, and how the corn did grow and 
put out ears 1 Even the big Blue Ridge silage corn 
made something like a home run. Then came a light 
frost, in early September. What shall be done, for 
the corn, to get mature enough for the silo, should 
stand another three weeks? A few, by September 
15, were filling their silos with this immature corn 
with ears just silking. The many chanced it to fill 
later on. These first filled silos sprung a leak at 
once, the silage took on great heat and is at it yet. 
Then came more frosts, and continuous rains, so 
that the leaves were whitened to the stalk. Then 
more began to fill. But to get engines and cutting 
boxes and help was a perplexity. The engines were 
away on thrashing jobs, and the many rigs of 1914 
had mostly disappeared it seemed; and when once 
under way there was never such a breaking up of 
corn binders and filling machinery known, things 
breaking that took three days to a week to replace. 
Help had all disappeared. Not a day man could be 
had at any price, all gone to the rubber works, auto 
shops, or to clerk in banks. Farmers had to change 
work so to get the six teams necessary to keep the 
big fillers going. Farmers would exchange works 
with another, often four miles away; often so at 
least the man who got help to fill his silo, had to 
work somewhere for two weeks to repay the favor. 
Often would come a deluging two and three days’ 
rain, followed by a frost. How slow the work went 
on! October 20 came and hundreds of silos yet to 
be filled, and then came a frost, that froze the re¬ 
maining corn about to the limit. 
Before the big freeze, many farmers cut the corn 
in the field, and put in great piles—not shocked— 
upon the ground, but no benefit seemed to follow 
over not cutting down. It was queer-looking silage 
when it landed in the pits, and the surprising thing 
was the great amount of moisture that was liber¬ 
ated. It was seemingly wet enough in the pits with¬ 
out adding water. The moisture of the stalks seemed 
to have gathered as “free water” in the stalks, and 
within a day or two streams of juice would be ex¬ 
uding from the silos. One large silo actually showed 
barrels of juice forming puddles about the barnyard. 
Then more frosts, then November, and on Novem¬ 
ber 1st the last silo was filled in this vicinity. 
What will it be worth when fed? ‘Will it keep? 
Will it settle down compactly? This and a hundred 
other questions are coming up daily. I think the even 
badly frosted fodder will come out better than the sil¬ 
age made of the half grown corn. Some so early cut, 
is pretty active in the pits, and a man who ventures 
upon its surface, will “go in” three feet—more since 
election! The frosts did strange pranks, skipping a 
field and just killing the crop in the next field. In 
some localities the frosts were all light ones, and 
a mile away, they hit to destroy. The man who 
planted field corn for silage because the big corn had 
no substance got a very meagre crop, while the big 
Blue Ridge corn made a pretty fair crop—often 
large—and put its grain into the roasting stage, but 
r.o one found any “honey” in the joints of any kind 
of silage corn, this year. There were lots of late 
silos built to put the late maturing field and other 
corn into, as the only way to dispose of the soft 
corn question, but how anyone is going to come out 
is uncertain. The question of next year’s silo filling 
is being discussed now. The talk is the “five neigh¬ 
bor plan” of a gasoline engine, and a smaller cutter 
—say a 12-inch, and slower filling, and let these few 
farms supply their own labor and if required, let the 
rig then go to help out the less fortunate. Prices 
for work this year will have a tendency to bring 
the small rig plan about. The prices here came up 
to $20 for 10 hours’ work of engine and cutter and 
three men and a team to haul coal and water. The 
gasoline engine needs neither, nor two men to tend 
it. It looks as if a “state of preparedness” would 
be inaugurated by the farmers as well as the Gov¬ 
ernment. The Weather Bureau will see that the 
weather is looked after, so that there will be no re¬ 
petition of this year’s oversupply, and the real per¬ 
plexing question next Summer will be that of choos¬ 
ing a President, which is only a pleasure after all. 
Ohio. j. g. 
