The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
A Veteran Sheep Shearer 
T HE enclosed photograph (See Fig. IS) shows 
Tom O’Brien shearing with the fifth genera¬ 
tion, he having sheared with and for the boy’s 
father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great- 
great-grandfather. Tom O’Brien sheared his first 
sheep when he was 17 years old. As he is now 74, 
he has been shearing for 57 years. One season he 
sheared for 76 days. While he has never kept a 
record he thinks that for 40 years he averaged 1,500 
sheep each year and at least 1,000 a year the re¬ 
mainder of the time. Ilis activities have been con- 
fied chiefly to this and adjoining neighborhoods. He 
has noted a big improvement in the flocks, those of 
the early days being some 25 lbs. less weight and 
shearing about 4% lbs. of washed wool, while today 
some flocks average 12 to 15 lbs. in the grease. 
He has seen store sheep sold at $1.25 per head and 
$25 per head; washed wool at $1.10 per lb. in 1SG5 
and unwashed wool at 95 cents in 1920. He has 
seen it sold at 11 cents, and tells the story of a man 
who having delivered his wool to a dealer for 9 cents 
per lb. stopped at a hotel on his way home to refresh 
himself. Having treated the crowd, he remarked: 
“When a pound of wool won’t pay for a drink of 
whiskey I guess it’s time to stop drinking whiskey,” 
and he quit for good then and there. 
Ilis ambition and industry have brought him not 
only enough of this world’s goods, but far beyond 
the lot of the average man, he has a large acquaint¬ 
ance, which with his ready wit makes him a.welcome 
caller in many homes. ciiari.es c. perry. 
Live Stock and Farm Fertility 
I. C. Rogers’ contribution on page 1467 was very 
interesting to me. He covered his subject very fully, 
and set forth his arguments clearly. However, there 
was one point that T wish 
Mr. Rogers or some one 
else would explain more 
fully, and that is the 
matter of livestock farm¬ 
ing depleting the soil. I 
confess that my under¬ 
standing is that livestock 
maintains the fertility, 
and 1 wish to be in¬ 
formed of the causes to 
the contrary. R. 
New York. 
ARMERS AND 
BUSINESS. — We 
try to take a day 
each Summer for a trip, 
and the last one was 
down through the 
storm-stricken district 
of Allegany County, N. 
Y., and beyond, about 
90 or 100 miles, nearly 
to the Pennsylvania 
line; and a prominent 
feature of the trip was 
the passing of one im¬ 
mense plant after an¬ 
other, all belonging to 
one big concern, and 
representing not only 
hundreds of thousands 
of dollars taken from 
the farmers who are 
slaves to the “dairy 
herd to keep up the 
land” idea, but in addi¬ 
tion to this a vast 
amount of property, 
which has been paying immense dividends to its 
stockholders. Further than this, we understand 
that now, in spite of increased cost of production, 
these same farmers face still more serious condi¬ 
tions in their dealing with this concern. Where 
others would have been interested in the herds of 
cattle, what struck me was the fact that these hill¬ 
sides were being pastured to death, and the farmers 
slaving early and late, and their farms being sucked 
dry, getting poorer and poorer, in order that this 
one big rich company may grow richer and richer. 
ORGANIC MATTER ON HILL FARMS.—It is a 
fact that on many a hill farm today live stock of 
some kind, frequently a large or small herd of cattle, 
is kept, regardless of the fact that the owner knows 
that the net returns are small, just for the sake of 
“keeping up the land.” On a great majority of these 
hill farms it will be found that the shortage of 
organic matter in the soil is the most serious prob¬ 
lem we have to meet, so far as soil fertility is con¬ 
cerned. and that is why there is so much truth in 
the remark of the late Dr. C. D. Smith, that “it 
takes a rich man to be able to afford to keep stock.”. 
Especially is this true under these conditions, for 
not only is but a small proportion of the crop fed 
to an animal returned in the manure, but it takes 
very careful handling even then to get it back to the 
land without further heavy loss, so that under ordi¬ 
nary methods of handling the manure but a small 
proportion indeed of the organic matter actually 
gets back to the land on many a farm. While it is 
true that the depletion of the fertility of a farm is 
slower, where the hay and grain crops are fed to 
stock on the farm, than where these crops are sold 
off, the extent to which the farm is benefited depends 
very much on the way the thing is done. 
PURCHASED FEEDS.—It is possible to maintain 
and increase the fertility of a farm by keeping live 
stock if large quantities of crops grown on other 
farms are bought and fed aside from the grain, 
which is so often purchased for the dairy herd, or 
in addition to the crops grown on the same farm. 
However, few stop to consider that to even up on the 
organic matter which is returned to the land by 
plowing under a crop of clover, for instance, com¬ 
pared with feeding the same crop to live stock and 
returning the manure to the land, even by the most 
careful handling, would require the additional pur¬ 
chase and feeding of nearly two tons of clover hay, 
grown on some other farm, for each ton of home¬ 
grown clover fed, and by careless handling of the 
manure it might take two or three times as much 
more. The purchase and feeding of large quantities 
of grain only to a herd of cattle, in addition to the 
hay and silage crops grown on the same farm, will, 
if the manure is carefully handled, make the land 
richer in the elements of plant food, such as nitro¬ 
gen, phosphorus and potash ; but so large a propor¬ 
tion of the organic matter in the home-grown crops, 
as well as in the grain bought and fed, is de¬ 
stroyed by this method that eventually one must 
face the serious conditions that long ago ap- 
appeared in the older dairy sections of the State. 
HAY AND PASTURE—To follow the idea that it 
is necessary to keep a large dairy herd to keep up 
the fertility of these back-hill farms means that 
feed is going to be the great bugbear, Summer and 
Winter, and the farm and everyone on it must be 
run to the limit. To talk to a farmer under such 
conditions about plowing under a hay crop, or any¬ 
thing else he could feed, until after he had fed it, 
would be worse than time wasted. The idea that 
the land is improved by pasturing is a very common 
one, and few would believe otherwise, but I have 
wondered how many of the farmers who are pastur¬ 
ing those poor side-liills we saw the past Summer 
were among the large number who applied to The 
R. N.-Y. during the past few months for information, 
as to how to improve pastures, as they were not giv¬ 
ing as good returns as formerly. Is it any wonder 
when year after year they are pastured close, allow¬ 
ing only a small proportion of the organic matter 
consumed by the stock pasturing on it to be returned 
to the land? 
A DANGER SIGNAL.—We hear about the “purse 
of sorrel,” but sorrel is merely an unheeded danger 
signal flung out by Mother Nature where she is 
being robbed in a case of this kind, in most instances, 
as we see it on these hill farms. It is the curse of 
37 
too much live stock that makes the sorrel come in, 
to a great extent. On these hills the big red silo 
only too often is followed by big red fields of sorrel. 
Whether the silo is used for the dairy herd or 
whether live stock of some other kind is kept, in¬ 
stances are not lacking where the more stock there 
is on these hill farms, the redder they are with 
sorrel, though the combination of hay press and 
pasturing by fewer stock might be as bad. It is very 
true that of two farmers starting side by side on 
these rundown back-hill farms for a time the one 
who keeps stock will have the advantage in ready 
money front a dairy herd, for instance, and from 
bigger crops from the small proportion of the farm 
to which the manure is applied, but in the long run 
the advantage is with the man who makes the short 
cut, returning direct to the land all the organic 
matter he can instead of feeding it, thus getting the 
full 100 per cent of the consumer’s dollar through 
the crops which follow, for Mother Nature smiles 
on those who give her a square deal. 
UPS AND DOWNS.—Following a crop rotation is 
practiced on most of these hill farms, and manure 
from the crops grown on the larger part of the farm 
is usually applied to a few acres, so that while one 
part is coming up the other is going down, but it is 
the part that is coming up that is looked at. It is 
like a boy trying to lift a heavy plank out of water. 
Taking it. by the middle is too much for him, so he 
lifts first on one end and then on the other, but as 
one end goes up the other goes down. 
A LONG ROTATION.—A field that is heavily 
manured will give quicker results than plowing 
under a crop of hay direct, but the manure usually 
comes from several fields. To remove a crop of hay 
from a field and feed it and return to it only the 
manure actually made from the crop from that same 
field and expect a better 
crop to follow than by 
plowing under the whole 
hay crop on that field 
direct is simply the 
“live stock to improve 
the land” idea in a nut¬ 
shell. It's a long trip 
rotating round a farm 
where a field comes in 
for its uplifting coat of 
manure only once in 
four or five or even 
seven or eight years 
sometimes, and yet how 
many readers, if they 
are going on a long trip, 
even further from civil¬ 
ization than our back- 
hill farms, away up in 
the North Woods, where 
they would be unable to 
purchase any other sup¬ 
plies, would hesitate for 
a minute in their choice 
between a bushel of 
wheat ground entire or 
a fancy, easily prepared, 
1»red igested b rea kf a st 
food that would come 
from that same bushel 
of wheat, and no wore? 
That is the proposition 
that the man who keeps 
live stock to keep up 
is putting up to Mather Nature. 
TOO MANY HORSES.—The keeping of extra 
cattle or live stock on a farm, aside from that 
actually needed to run the farm and for family use, 
usually means the keeping of extra horses, and right 
there is one of the most serious causes of soil deple¬ 
tion of this State—too many horses. It is an actual 
fact that there is no lack of farmers who are going 
in debt for labor-saving (?) haying machinery to 
handle their hay crop, in order to have it to feed, 
requiring the labor of handling and rehandling, and 
then probably in the Spring buying a spreader to 
get the manure back on part of the land. Few of 
these farmers could stand the strain of handling 
their hay crop with a machine which cuts under the 
hay, rolls it into windrows and presses it as it goes, 
the work all done by one man and a pair of good 
horses. It is too short a cut to suit them, but that 
is the way one back-liill farmer handles all his hay 
crop he does not need to feed, and then after it is 
well mixed with water and dirt he sells it out by 
the peck and bushel, sometimes getting $100 per ton 
for it or better. i. c. R. 
The Ohio Experiment Station reports a new dark 
strain of Grand Rapids lettuce which grows well during 
dark and cloudy weather. 
Tom O'Brien Shearing Sheep with the Fifth Generation. Fig. .18 
the land 
