They Must Do it Themselves 
T HERE seems to be a prevailing idea among farm¬ 
ers that there is a surplus of about everything 
that the farmer raises, and I am wondering just why 
this idea is so prevalent. Is it because of an actual 
over-production, or just a theory, based on the fact 
that the farmer isn’t getting the cost of production? 
I just read in today’s Utica Daily Press an adver¬ 
tisement of the Sheffield Farms asking for an addi¬ 
tional supply of 2,500 to 3,000 cans of milk daily, be¬ 
ginning April 1. They want more milk and have to 
advertise for it. which shouldn’t be necessary if there 
was an overproduction. 
The U. S. Department of Agriculture announces 
that 22,336,544 lbs. of margarine were made during 
the month of October, 1923, an increase of 4,439,207 
lbs., or about 25 per cent, over the corresponding 
month of the previous year. There was a large in¬ 
crease during each month of 1923 over 1922. Ac¬ 
cording to this statement, there were manufactured 
over 11,168 tons of oleomargarine in the month of 
October last year, and there is a large increase in its 
manufacture from month to month. It doesn’t seem 
credible that there should be a very great surplus of 
milk with oleo selling at the rate it does. Why not 
manufacture more milk into butter that 
is retailing around 60c per lb.? The 
writer can recall when you could buy a 
load of butter from the local merchant 
almost any day at about one-fourth the 
price you would have to pay today. 
Everybody ate butter those days, and 
the farmers made more money than 
they do now. They weren't hopelessly 
in debt, with heavy mortgages on their 
farms, notes at the banks and accounts 
on the books of the feed dealer which 
they are unable to pay, as W. C. Logan 
puts it in his article on page 323, under 
the heading “Stop the Surplus Milk.” 
People bought farms those days and 
paid for them, and whatever else they 
bought they paid for, and let me add 
that they bought less those days and 
produced more. What proflteth it a 
man to draw a load of milk to the 
creamery and take a load of feed back? 
Wouldn’t it be wiser to grow more feed 
on the farm and not have an account 
with the feed dealer? 
You will notice in looking back over 
the past years that in proportion to the 
advance of milk prices there has been 
a like advance in commercial dairy 
feeds, in spite of the fact that only a 
few years ago Western corn was so 
plentiful that the farmers burned it for 
fuel, and last year they had so much 
wheat that it has been reported hardly 
worth the thrashing bill; however, we 
never see any of this tremendous over¬ 
production reflected in the Eastern 
prices of feed. A loaf of bread costs as much today 
W* RURAL NEW-YORKER 
much moisture under sod as under cultivated ground. 
There must be some other reason, then, why we cul¬ 
tivate, and that reason is to make available for the 
tree roots the plant food that is latent in the weeds 
growing in the orchard. It may seem paradoxical 
to speak thus in esteem of one’s weeds, but it is 
true, nevertheless. The wise orchardist now pur¬ 
sues a course something like this: He plows once 
late in the Fall, and then once or twice as early as 
possible in the Spring. By all means he gets this 
early cultivation done before the tree has started its 
Spring growth—before the buds and blossoms appear. 
These weeds that he turns under the soil manufac¬ 
ture humus which, with the result of later bacterial 
action, forms nitrogen for the roots of the tree. A 
tree well supplied with nitrogen in its early growth 
in the Spring can get along with a less amount of 
water than the ordinary tree in sod. Cultivation is 
the effective way of making available all the nitrogen 
that the tree can use. That nitrogen, latent in the 
weeds, so to speak, is not available, natux-ally, until 
it is turned under the soil by plowing. Clover and 
Alfalfa will also enrich your orchard after they 
have been turned under. By getting the ground free 
of weeds during the early Spring, those same weeds 
supply nitrogen to the tree roots and cannot, there- 
457 
a study from books seemed to assure me that Sweet 
clover and time would improve the soil “nature- 
wise. My land was so poor I could not get anyone 
to put in a crop on shares, and I offered an entire 
crop to get the land tilled. Three years ago this 
Spring I sowed about 12 lbs. per acre on one field of 
five acres. No plowing, harrowing, disking, fertil¬ 
izer—simply sowed on top about April 1. Ten days 
later a 10-day rainy spell followed. My Sweet clover 
came up very well, though a little spotted. It 
did not make much of a show the first year, espe¬ 
cially among weeds and grasses, but at blooming 
time the next year my field resembled a field of good 
buckwheat, and many people came to admire and 
ask about it. I let the seed fall to re-seed the 
ground, and last year I did have about a half a crop 
of blossoms, evidently from seed that did not ger¬ 
minate the first year; I also had a regular carpet of 
Sweet clover grass from the seed that sprang up 
from the re-seeding, which will make this year a 
powerful crop of hay if I cut it for that purpose, or 
a powerful lot of green stuff to turn under if I choose 
to do so. Then, too, I may let it fall to the ground 
to re-seed. I am not a farmer, but bought the 
ground as an investment, it being near home, and 
near Washington, D. C. After owning it I felt that 
if I could make it improve itself, with 
practically no cost to me, I would ac¬ 
complish or gain a double profit. Many 
people have land they are holding for 
better prices, or land they have not 
time to tend, or land that may have 
been neglected for a few years, and ap¬ 
pears to be run down; Sweet clover is 
the key to make this land produce the 
most with the least effort and expense; 
it provides a way to let nature assis; 
you to improve that land. For soil 
improvement and pasture I would rec¬ 
ommend the white blossom, for hay the 
yellow. An application of fertilizer or 
lime, or both, might be recommended, 
and I would strongly recommend sow¬ 
ing seed the second year, as well as the 
first, as that will cause a field to bloom 
every year after the first year. I have 
carefully prepared my soil and sown 
Hubam on from one to three acres three 
years in succession, but I don’t get any 
yield. F. N. IIAGMANN. 
Virginia. 
R. N.-Y.—No one is likely to get much 
Sweet clover on a sour soil. Unless it 
is natural limestone land, some form of 
lime will be needed. 
F. H. BALLOU 
A prominent Ohio horticulturist, and a long-time friend and contributor of 
The Rural New-Yorker 
as it did a year ago, and a hundredweight of wheat, 
just ordinary shrunken grain for poultry, costs $2.60, 
and with all this much-talked-of “overproduction” 
there are plenty of people right here in our good old 
U. S. A. who are not getting enough to eat. What 
is the trouble? 
As I see it, the farmer stands between the devil 
and the deep sea, himself an independent, unorgan¬ 
ized producer, competing on every hand with organ¬ 
ized labor and manufacturer. The laborer sells his 
labor at a price his organization has established, the 
manufacturer sells his product at a price plus the 
cost of manufacture plus a good profit; the farmer 
does not sell his goods, but takes what the organized 
buyers see fit to offer, and he pays what they see fit 
to ask. How long will the farmers remain unor¬ 
ganized? “They must do it themselves.” 
New York. grant mayeb. 
Why 
u 
I 1 
We Plow the Orchard 
T is well known,” said Prof. A. J. Heinieke, in 
an address, “Why We Plow the Orchard,” be- 
for a farmers’ week audience, “that we get nearly 
three times as much fruit from a cultivated apple 
orchard as from one that is in sod.” Prof. Heinieke 
is of the Department of Pomology, and speaks with 
authority on this subject. 
Formei’ly, he pointed out, it was believed that the 
chief benefits of cultivation were in the additional 
moisture which it permitted to permeate through the 
soil to the tree roots. But experiments have proved 
that, other things being equal, there is nearly as 
fore, take more nitrogen from the soil to the ex¬ 
clusion of the roots, which would be the case if they 
were allowed to thrive very long on top at this time 
of year. “Therefore,” said Prof. Heinieke, “culti¬ 
vate early and let the weeds finish off your fruit.” 
It is quite possible for the tree to take enough nitro¬ 
gen early in the Spring to supply it for the remain¬ 
der of the season. 
“Over-cultivation is equivalent to putting the full 
draft on the furnace. It burns out the humus in the 
soil, and one must have humus in order to form 
nitrogen.” 
If one is going to maintain an orchard in sod, one 
must use artificial nitrate of sodium fertilizer, as the 
grass itself robs the tree roots of the nitrogen in the 
soil. A pound to a tree is a light application. Barn¬ 
yard manure, however, is just about as good as the 
nitrate. In this connection it is well to remember 
that a tree without sufficient nitrogen requires more 
moisture than one that is well supplied. Generally 
speaking, Prof. Heinieke pointed out, it is only ex¬ 
tremely poor land that will require artificial nitrogen 
under conditions of cultivation as outlined above. 
New York. paul Gillette. 
o 
An Experience With Sweet Clover 
iN page 261 W. K. asks advice on Sweet clover 
for a back lot pasture. Literature on Sweet 
clover induced me to try it on a 16-acre lot, against 
the advice of friends and the county farm adviser, 
who had but very little if any experience with it. 
In my ease I was not able to spend a lot of money to 
plow, fertilize and turn under cow peas, etc., while 
Some Northern Vermont 
Questions 
W E have recently moved to a small 
farm that lies on the bank of the 
river, the land lying about 20 ft. above 
the river bed. We are surrounded by 
hills on the east and northwest sides, and some peo¬ 
ple tell me that I cannot raise apples here, as the 
trees a ill not grow. It often happens that such a 
report has existed in a community for years until 
everybody comes to believe it, for I know 20 years 
ago almost everybody around here had fruit trees, 
but the terribly cold Winter some 10 years ago killed 
out most of the trees, and nobody has planted since. 
hat is your opinion of the matter? I wish very 
much to set out some dwarf trees in the garden, and 
a Wealthy, Yellow Transparent, McIntosh and Snow 
apple in the standard varieties. What variety of 
everbearing strawberry would you suggest? What 
is the variety of hardy raspberry and blackberry for 
this part, where we have 30 degrees, or sometimes 
more, below zero? Do you know of any kind of pear 
that would grow here? Our land is about equal 
north and south side of house. Which side for the 
trees, if I set them out? u. j. t. 
Caledonia Co., Vt. 
With respect to the planting of fruit trees on a 
small farm near the river, about 20 ft. back, sur¬ 
rounded by hills on the east and northwest side, if 
very hardy varieties of trees are planted and they 
are given good cultural conditions, I see no reason 
why they should not do moderately well. The dif¬ 
ficulty hitherto experienced in that section, which is 
not particularly adapted to the culture of trees, is 
due, I think, largely to the planting of varieties not 
very well adapted, and failing to give good cultural 
conditions to keep the trees healthy and productive. 
Among the varieties most likely to succeed there are 
McIntosh, Iameuse (Snow), Yellow Transparent, 
(Continued on Page 463) 
