HINTS ON RAISING FARM CROPS 37 
depleted pasture a chance to revive itself, while 
the stock is grazing on the other pasture. 
Other farmers practice a method known as 
soiling, especially on high priced land, which 
consists of cutting green plants and hauling 
them in to the cattle in a small enclosure. 
This saves considerable tramping and waste 
of the green feed, but it involves a larger out¬ 
lay of labor. Some of the big dairy farmers 
get around this pasture shortage very nicely, 
by having a summer silo, so that when the 
pasture runs short, they can open up their 
extra silo, and keep the animals up in milk 
and flesh by this means. 
In order that a clearer idea of the important 
plants that compose meadows and pastures 
may be had, we will next take up some of 
these plants, explaining their best methods of 
culture, etc., separately, so that the principles 
governing their most favorable growth may be 
better appreciated. 
ALFALFA 
Alfalfa is one of the oldest plants used by 
man in feeding farm animals, but is a com¬ 
paratively new crop to this country. It was 
first raised successfully in this country along 
the Pacific coast, but did not grow very abun¬ 
dantly east of this section. However, it was 
such a wonderful crop, that constant attempts 
were made to raise alfalfa east of the Pacific 
states, and these attempts finally met with 
success. An early settler of Minnesota, Wen- 
delin Grimm, achieved quite a reputation 
