226 
TheU 
H 
HE LJ NEXPECTED L1APPENED 
in the dairy barn at Mara Alva Farm, 
Smithville, O., when they ran short 
of a very good quality alfalfa hay. The 
substitution of a poor mixed hay was 
necessary—there was nothing else in 
sight for some time. Mara Alva’s # 
herdsman naturally looked for a sud¬ 
den sharp slump in milk production. 
But right here he thought of his 
grain mixture and of how it might be 
improved to offset the change to in¬ 
ferior roughage. He decided to give 
DIAMOND CORN GLUTEN MEAL 
a trial. So he added a liberal amount 
* 
of DIAMOND to his ration, still ex¬ 
pecting, of course, to see production fall 
off, minus the stimulus of the alfalfa. 
But production didn’t . It went 
along on its usual levels for a few days 
and shortly it began to increase. 
The DIAMOND in the grain ra¬ 
tion was more than making up the 
difference between good and poor 
roughage. 
Do you wonder it’s in 
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AMERICAN STEEL & WIRE COMPANY 
Chicago 
New York 
Boston 
Dallas 
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American Agriculturist, October 6,1923 
To Plow or Not To Plow 
The Pros and Cons of Turning Land in the Fall 
Anthony 
Fence ^ 
T HERE is a strong Bv DAVID STONE KELSEY warm, unless another 
series of arguments “ _ crop is immediately 
in favor of fall plowing, thus get¬ 
ting a hard, slow, power-consuming 
job out of the way of April’s rush 
—and it is really about the only way 
to properly prepare for next spring’s 
potatoes, and oats; but there are at 
least an equal number of sound reasons 
against fall plowing, as usually prac¬ 
ticed here in the eastern States, or a 
lot of “dont’s” at least, as my boys call 
them in giving out work to the men. 
And lest some good neighbor rushes 
out to hitch up before reading this 
story to the end, I shall begin by a list 
of some of my pet “don’ts.” Then, if 
he still goes to plowing, he can at least 
give a reason for his act. 
We do not plow, where possible to 
avoid it, for any fall-sown grains or 
grass seeding even—unless it can be 
done early enough to permit ample time 
for settling of the soil again. Rather, 
we keep harrowing instead, more-and- 
more shallow, like summer fallow 
methods, for all grains, grasses and 
clovers need a solid seed-bed. 
We never plow merely to “turn over.” 
After any hoed crop, that three inches 
of the soil immediately at the surface 
we believe is the richer. Why should 
we turn up exhausted soil and turn 
down the best? It would give a poor 
start, besides subverting Nature. 
And plowing is not necessarily in¬ 
verting. A slice of turf, turned smooth¬ 
ly up-side-down is not plowed (for us) 
for by that process we mean to in¬ 
clude crushing and mixing and loosen¬ 
ing even more than merely inverting. 
We always chop turf land (diagonally 
—never “with” the coming furrows) by 
using the weighted cutaway two or 
three hours per acre first, thus start¬ 
ing the process of remaking it into 
plant-food. But never use a mere disc- 
harrow for this work—nor go, even a 
few feet, in the direction you are to 
plow, we “Dutch harrow” always, that 
is, go both diagonal ways. Then, by 
turning about three-quarters over, with 
a good jointer to tuck the edge down, 
we have done something besides invert. 
That field of chopped up turf will de¬ 
cay very rapidly in the warm, moist 
condition of fall. 
And that brings up another “don’t!” 
When the soil is not too cold, and loose 
enough and dry enough to be pervious 
to the air, soluble plant-food elements 
are constantly being liberated. Under 
the added stimulation of plowing, which 
further aerates and hurries both bac¬ 
terial life and chemical reactions, grave 
losses may result by leaching through 
the winter following. Better wait till 
November. It is a great waste of soil 
nitrates to plow while the land is still 
seeded in to take up the fast-forming, 
soluble elements. This is why we try 
to have something growing on the land 
about every hour of the unfrozen, year. 
And finally, we don’t plow without 
turning under something. The very 
stimulus of tillage burns out our pre¬ 
cious humus, of which no eastern up¬ 
land ever has enough, and only the 
plowing under of turf stubble, coarse 
manure, straw, clovers or other green 
manures can deepen our humus and 
make Nature’s two inches of forest or 
wild soil, ten or more inches deep. 
Briefly then, we plow far less than 
is done on many farms yet where 
“there’s a reason,” never hestitate to 
plow for spring or other purposes—; 
after November first. It is an excellent 
time to thus get the jump on the 
spring rush—to clean out burrowing 
insects and perennial pests like quack, 
by exposing them to all the fury of 
winter winds and weather. 
We like bare, unharrowed furrows 
too for the hard job of winter lime¬ 
spreading, and we always resort to 
the fall plow for the subjugation of 
bogs, briers and brush. But we do not 
plow in early fall, other than for im¬ 
mediate reseeding. We believe that, 
in any good husbandry, bare, brown 
fields are anathema—the mark of an 
agrarian crime. 
CONVENIENT METHOD OF 
LAYING TILE 
Ray L. Walker, a Lorain, County, 
Ohio, farmer, has worked put a home¬ 
made chute for unloading tile which 
H. L. Rogers, his county agent, says is 
the simplest and most successful device 
he has ever seen. 
It is, in effect, a tile-sized trough 
sloped down from the back of a wagon, 
so that a load of tile can be slid down 
it, one by one and end to end, and laid 
out on the land along the line of the 
proposed ditch as the wagon is driven 
slowly forward. 
The trough is simply a two-by-six, 
eight feet long, with two inch boards 
nailed to the edges to hold the tile on 
the track as it slides down. The top 
end of the chute is attached by a 
half-inch rope to the tail of the wagon, 
so that it slopes about 30 degrees. The 
lower ends is carried on small wheels. 
An inch board three inches wide and 
three feet long is nailed across the 
bottom of the chute where it touches 
the wagon, this to prevent overturning 
on rough ground. To prevent breakage, 
and to insure even distribution of tile, 
the chute should always be kept full. 
Champion American Milk Producer East of the Rocky Mountains 
Kolerain Marion Finderne has recently finished making a record of 35,339 
pounds milk containing 1,278.5 pounds 80 per cent butter. Her milk record 
is the largest ever made east of the Rocky Mountains and the third largest 
in the world. She milked over 100 pounds a day for 178 different days, her 
best day’s production being 116.7 pounds which was produced when she had 
been on test 42 days. There was only one day in an entire year that 
she milked less than 70 pounds. She was bred by E. F. Copeland of Colerain, 
Mass, but has been owned since she was 3 years old by Loeb Farms 
of Charlevoix, Mich. Her sire is Finderne Pride Fayne. She is the second 
daughter of this sire to milk over 32,000 pounds in a year 
