46 
Grow 
Burpee’s Annual 
The Leading American Seed Catalog 
Burpee^s Annual is the catalog that tells the 
plain truth about The Best Seeds That Grow. It 
describes the Burpee Quality Seeds. 
Burpee’s Annual is a complete guide to the 
vegetable and flower garden. It is„ a handsome 
book of 188 pages with more than a hundred of 
the finest vegetables and flowers illustrated in the 
colors of nature. 
If you are interested in gardening Burpee’s 
Annual will be mailed to you free. Write for 
your “Annual” today. Just tear off the coupon and 
fill in your name and address below. 
W. ATLEE BURPEE CO. 
Seed Growers Philadelphia. 
t 
Please send me a free copy of Burpee’s Annual. 
81 
Name -- - -—^ 
R. D. OR Street.-^^- 
State_^^— 
American Agriculturist, JanutoQ/ 20,192;f 
It Pays to Advertise 
A Plow Handle Talk on Selling Milk 
W E have been able to buy old process 
oil meal this winter at $50 a ton 
and we are feeding a little to all of our 
stock. I can’t account for the splendid 
effect of a pound of oil meal a day. 
Even less than that seems to lubricate 
the whole system. Our milk is used 
almost entirely for babies. It keeps one 
thinking and sometimes guessing how 
to be absolutely sure every day in the 
year that no mis¬ 
takes creep into 
the milk. If they 
do, mother will 
soon stop buying, 
the trade is gone, 
and the business 
is on the scrap 
heap. 
I feel pretty 
safe in saying 
that farmers do 
not as a whole 
take seriously 
enough their 
responsibility i n 
making their pro¬ 
ducts the best 
they know how. I know the impetus 
to “do” is retarded by a lack of careful 
grading. We see milk and veals and 
vegetables of second quality bought at 
a common price with better grades, on 
the general plan that, all together the 
mixture will pass. It was this faulty 
plan of grading that started our farms 
producing a grade of milk that could 
not be _mixed with other grades. It 
must be manufactured and sold abso¬ 
lutely on its own merits. If we let down 
the bars of quality we cannot charge 
the fault to a neighbor. We have to 
stand it ourselves. Occasionally there 
is a tendency to shift the responsibility 
from one person to another but that is 
so rare as to become negligible; all 
hands immediately go to it and locate 
the cause. 
Service Helps Maintain Demand 
Another thing we find most helpful in 
giving permanence to our demand, and 
the best has no value until marketed, 
is to study in season and out, how much 
we can do to facilitate the dealers or 
distributors problems. Of course, there, 
is a limit to what one can do along 
helpful lines and have money enough 
left to pay bills, but not many of us 
have reached that limit. I think busi¬ 
ness houses call it service,—that’s a 
good word or phrase to use. I know 
how it ruffles the feathers to have an 
unscrupulous person take advantage of 
a kindly disposition when one makes it 
easy for him. But that class of people 
are in a hopeless minority after all. 
If our business gets thoroughly sat¬ 
urated with real service so that it comes 
to every worker unconsciously on the 
spur of the moment and without special 
thought, enough appreciative customers 
will soon appear to take the output. 
Then we can drop off the one that does 
not fit into the general harmony of the 
service plan. Customers who uniformly 
have the best that can be given are 
wonderfully charitable when an occa¬ 
sional slip occurs, but we must always 
allow them to be the judges of when the 
case warrants their charity. Whatever 
we do in our business to go to extremes 
in giving service does not altogether 
come from high ideals or an unselfish 
devotion. It is good business and is 
worth while in dollars and cents, and 
also gives permanency. The time one 
gives to worrying over the loss of trade 
cannot go into the productive effort. 
Pays to Advertise the Service 
Well, what has all of this philosoph¬ 
izing to do with feeding oil meal. It 
has a lot to do. In our case the general 
health and appearance of the stock is 
an asset comparable to getting our milk 
to the distributor or consumer in good 
form and on time. We have not learned 
how to prevent cow troubles, like udder 
and uterine diseases, I am sorry to say. 
But we can immediately isolate the 
animal until she is ag^in in proper 
shape physically to produce milk that 
I would use myself or give to a child,— 
not a bad test by any means. 
The New York Milk Commission rules 
say that a fresh cow must at least 
give milk for 10 days before her milk 
can be put into certified bottles. I do 
not know any way to have every cow 
physically fit at that time, but we can 
easily keep her out until she is fit. In 
our local markets where we come close 
to consumers we do some advertising. 
We find that a small double folder 
printed on a thin card, envelope size, 
stating in brief paragraphs how the 
milk is produced and what it will do, 
is the best kind of advertising. Busy 
people can read it easily and quickly 
and these folders can be placed in the 
hands of mothers and invalids. Adver¬ 
tising is necessary in this day. If one 
has something to sell, somehow, some¬ 
way and somewhere, a buyer must be 
found. 
Shrewd advertising often finds or 
creates a buying clientele which is 
legitimate and worthy, when the pro¬ 
duct sold is a needed one, and-surely 
farm products when of go'od quality 
are needed. The work of the Dairymen’s 
League in advertising milk and milk 
products has been of value beyond its 
cost. When we are complaining that 
the returns should haVe been more, let 
us not forget that the investment in 
advertising has been a good one. 
Advertising is expensive, as I knod 
from experience. One must be pretty 
sure that the methods employed are 
proven ones or if not, that experiments 
be conducted in harmony with the funds 
at hand. The fact that milk profits 
are small, if any at all, leaves small 
margins to be spent for advertising 
purposes. If we had a method whereby 
we could change milk values as easily 
as corn and wheat prices are changed 
when they pass through a breakfast 
food factory, we could carry a full page 
advertisement in every paper in the 
land. Maybe in some future day such 
a thing will happen. 
Dr. D. B. Armstrong of Watertown, 
N. Y. a director of the American Hol¬ 
stein informs me that the association 
has voted an initial amount of $65,000 
for advertising- Holstein milk and more 
will be coming later, a most commend¬ 
able enterprise.—H. E. Cook. 
SPREADING MANURE PROPERLY 
PETER WILEY, NEW YORK 
Very few people understand the prop¬ 
er way in which to spread manure. The 
majority of men take a load of manure 
to the field and literally throw the 
manure off in chunks, caring very little 
about the way in which it landed, only 
so it reached the ground. This prac¬ 
tice is very wasteful, causing fermen¬ 
tation and a great loss in fertilizing 
constituents. When this practice is 
followed, vegetation grows very un¬ 
evenly. Some places in the soil the 
crop grows sparingly, and in other 
places so rank that the grain will lodge 
and thereby be wasted. 
An effort should be made by the man 
in charge to have the manure taken 
direct from the stable to the field, no 
matter whether in winter or summer, 
and see that the manure is evenly 
spread over the soil. In our practice 
the manure is taken direct to the field 
and spread evenly over the ground. 
Even though it might be a sloping field, 
the practice is followed. We find that 
very little of the ingredients are 
washed away down the slope. Occa¬ 
sionally we find those who believe this 
to be the case, -but from experience cov¬ 
ering many years we believe the great¬ 
er part of the fertilizing value goes 
directly into the soil. Through the 
summer we bought a spreader for this 
work, but during the winter we spread 
by hand. It gives better satisfaction, 
as the freezing of the manure inter¬ 
feres with the working of the ma¬ 
chinery. _ 
Test Seed Corn—All seed corn should 
be tested for a spring planting. March 
is a good time in which to make the 
test. The most satisfactory way is to 
test four to six kernels from each ear. 
The requirements for germination are 
moisture, warmth and air. The ordi¬ 
nary temperature of the living room is 
about right if it does not go below 50 
at night. A shallow box filled with 
wet sand and marked off into num¬ 
bered squares with twine makes a good 
germinator. 
POSTOFFICE, 
