lht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
1531 
Advice to a New England Baek-to-tke-Lander 
I am a city man. having worked in the city for the 
hu4 17 years, but I was born and brought up in the 
country, and know a little (very little) about farming. 
Five years ago I bought a farm in the southwest corner 
,.f New Hampshire. Of course 1 did not pay for it all 
at once, but by saving and cutting the hay and selling 
it I have finally paid for it. Next Spring I intend to 
live on the farm, and wish to begin to build up the 
fertility of the soil, which 1 know responds wonderfully 
even to light applications of manure, but. of course. I 
shall not have any manure for the first year at least, 
and I shall have to depend on mineral fertilizers. I 
intend to plant, next ‘Spring, three acres of corn. 2 1 / 4 
acres of oats and one acre of potatoes. Of these (HAj 
acres there are l 1 /^ acres which I had plowed up last 
venr (1919) and sowed to oats and barley. The crop 
was never cut. but was left on tho ground all Winter 
and plowed under this Spring; 900 pounds of 2-S-2 
commercial fertilizer were applied, and the piece planted 
to corn and potatoes, and by present indications 1 am 
going to have a fair crop. I sowed three pecks of rye 
among the corn (three-fourths acre) about the first of 
Au'Uist. and it is now up in good shape. This piece 1 
wish to seed down next Spring. The rest of this 6% 
acres is old land that has not been plowed for probably 
10 or la years. This gave a crop of bay this year of 
what we' call in New 
Hampshire June grass or 
White-top, with a few 
scattering stalks of Tim¬ 
othy, about one big two- 
horse load to the acre. 
It is all a gravelly clay 
loam with a clay subsoil. 
I am planning on the 
following rotation of 
crops: First year. corn, 
with rye and vetch sown 
at last cultivation. Sec¬ 
ond year, plow under rye, 
and seed down to Timo¬ 
thy and clover, with oats 
as nurse crop, oats to be 
cut for grain. Third 
year. Timothy and fourth 
year clover, leaving sec¬ 
ond crop to plow under 
for corn following year. 
Next year I shall have 
no manure, and shall 
have to depend on com¬ 
mercial fertilizer. What 
amount and what analy¬ 
sis fertilizer should I use 
on the I 1 /-; acres to be 
seeded down, also on the 
corn, oats and potatoes 
on the old land? Would 
it he better for me to mix 
my own chemicals or buy 
them ready mixed? 
Would you advise plow¬ 
ing this‘Fall or waiting 
until Spring? Would you 
advise a different rota¬ 
tion? Do you think an 
application of ground 
limestone would benefit 
the ground? In my gar¬ 
den sorrel or sour grass 
grows plentifully, but T 
also can raise good beets, 
and I understand beets 
will not grow in a sour 
land. Of course after the 
first year I would have 
an increasing amount of 
manure. Would basic 
Slag be of benefit to me? 
How many head of 
cattle could I keep on 40 
acres tillage and 90 acres 
of what I call wild pas¬ 
ture (no large brush to 
any extent), but what is 
considered good pastur¬ 
age? I intend to sell 
cream and butter, and 
feed the skim-milk and 
buttermilk to calves and 
pigs. w. ,T. M. 
F U< )M CITY TO 
COUNTRY. — The 
dream of the city man 
lor a farm—for land 
and a home thereon—is 
as old as the city itself. 
A!so it is one of the finest visions ever indulged in 
l'.' human beings. It probably goes unite a way to 
redeem mankind in the sight of a forbearing Provi¬ 
dence. The making of a place for such people is 
one of the tests of successful civilization. A good 
many city, men have taken advantage of the low 
Eastern land values to buy farms within the past 
the years, and look forward to living on them 
through their later years, and to rearing their chil¬ 
dren in the open country. No plans could he finer, 
•n making the shift from city to farm it is a wise 
t»an who grasps the t ruth that he has tackled a new 
Deposition. It is a wise man who approaches the 
Job of making a living on a farm in something of 
the spirit of learner and apprentice. History is 
chuck full of cases of men who did the other thing— 
"ho went ahead full steam, regardless, either pur- 
s,1 'ng some magazine-fed poultry-farm scheme, or 
^nt on revolutionizing modern agriculture and 
really showing the farmers how to farm! The 
shops are full of just such men who went bust, and 
v lioso digestion is impaired at the mere mention of 
farm. It is indeed a wise man who treadeth slowly 
and carefully; they stumble that run fast. 
GENERAL FLANS.—The man why buys a New 
England farm and starts out to organize, it into a 
going business has a job on hand. I am not now 
attempting any discouragement: I would merely 
suggest at the outset that here is a project that 
admits of some sizeable and frequent mistakes; such 
mistakes being sometimes disastrous. The point is 
that the more thought and intelligent-planning that 
are put on the matter beforehand, the less crop of 
disappointment, is likely to he harvested. At the 
risk of being called a pessimist I will say first off 
that my opinion is that a man setting out to develop 
a small butter-farm project in Southwestern New 
Hampshire today is letting himself in for a career 
of moderate profits and ample drudgery. This is 
not to say that it is not being successfully done by 
A New Recruit In the Dairy Field. Fig. '/SI 
many men. nor that it is not a conservative and 
improving type of framing, nor that there is not a 
lot of satisfaction in it. What I mean to say is that 
making butter means work, and it does not as a 
rule mean any very sudden riches. Personally, in 
the region mentioned, if the farm is too far from 
shipping point to make milk. I should be inclined to 
go into poultry, with potatoes for a cash crop, and 
would plant 50 apple trees of good standard variety 
religiously every Spring. 
POTATOES AND RUTTEIL—Assuming, however, 
that butter is the main live stock product, the thing 
to do is to plan a general farm enterprise to go with 
it. In the first place, I would grow more potatoes. 
Two or three acres of potatoes will make a cash crop 
amounting to something, and will he a source of 
income the first year or two. 1 know from consider¬ 
able study in this region that the profits from butter 
are likely to be mighty scarce on this kind of a farm 
the first five yrtirs. It takes time, skill and exper¬ 
ience to build up a herd of cows that will actually 
make profits selling butter. A few acres of corn 
and of oats are in order for feed. It will be found 
difficult to handle much of an oat crop for grain, 
for there is hardly a thrashing outfit in that part 
ot the State. One will want some of both these 
crops, however, the acreage depending on how much 
stock will be fed. 
A FIVE-YEAR ROTATION.—The general rotation 
of about five years is all right. Only don’t leave out 
the potatoes. Potatoes and corn on sod. followed by 
oats, seeded to Timothy and clover, the oats followed 
by a year of clover, and that by two or three years 
of Timothy. Sowing rye and vetch at the last culti¬ 
vation of corn is good practice and will improve the 
soil. There are a dozen tricks of this kind that can 
be done to improve the soil. In fact, the question 
of soil improvement, while a big problem in itself, 
will not loom so large when one is actually on the 
farm and at it. What will then assume importance 
will be a general system 
of crops and so on that 
brings in some income 
and makes ends meet. 
One thing that should 
have attention early in 
the game is Soy beans. 
Another thing worth 
while will be Canada 
peas sown with oats and 
cut for hay. These 
crops help the soil, and 
they likewise help the 
all-important protein 
content of the roughage. 
Neither should be neg¬ 
lected. 
PREPARING FOR 
NEXT SPRING.—The 
1% acres now in corn 
and potatoes will prob¬ 
ably need to be sown to 
oats again next Spring, 
and seeded to clover 
and Timothy. It will 
he wiser to take a crop 
of oats off next Summer 
than to seed the land 
and let it lie idle over 
the season. Seeding 
land without a nurse 
crop is a custom that 
arose in New England 
after grain ceased to he 
raised very much, and 
has little to commend it 
from the standpoint of 
value received from the 
land. The land that is 
going to be put into 
potatoes and corn should 
by all means he plowed 
this Fall if possible. 
This is for the double 
reason that the land 
and sod need to lie over 
Winter, and because the 
old sod is more than 
likely full of wire- 
worms that will other¬ 
wise play havoc with 
either potatoes or corn 
—especially the former. Fall plowing is the advis¬ 
able thing, all around, if it can be done. Once more 
I would suggest two or three acres of potatoes, three 
preferably, to plan on. It might be good advice to 
buy seed this Fall. What potato prices are going to 
be is problematical, though I have a feeling that some 
deterioration in the stored crop may make prices 
somewhat higher next Spring than they are likely 
to be this Fall. That is an incidental, however. 
FERTILIZER.—Of course manure is the great 
plant food. But there will not be much of a supply 
on this farm until the stock comes along. In this 
connection it does no harm to emphasize the all- 
important factor of care and conservation of 
manure. That is one of the big leaks in New Eng¬ 
land agriculture today. Look after the manure; it 
means hard dollars to you. Of commercial fertilizer, 
I believe common experience dictates a fairly good 
analysis for corn or potatoes. The low-grade mix¬ 
tures. full of filler, do not go very far on those crops. 
Something like a 4-S on corn and 4-10-2 or 4-S-2 
on potatoes will probably prove about as good a 
