a New Hark State Callege of Agriculture At Gornell Wniversity Ithaca, N. VY. Library Cornell Universi alfa farming in America, Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924003323221 JOSEPH E. WING. Alfalfa Farming In America 3h By JOSEPH E. WING Late Staff Correspondent of The Breeder’s Gazette ak CHICAGO, ILL.: Sanders Publishing Company 1916 Copyrighted, 1912. BY SANDERS PUBLISHING CO. All rights reserved. Copyrighted, 1916, BY SANDERS PUBLISHING CO. All rights reserved. @1Ib058 ee GBI9L ficel FW Chr © lame PAG Pe, CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION ins area what aumaad arraaree ttn wea waa e how akeeet me » 38- 45 HELTSTORY as sicasaticeace Setcve alone adhe wahis nes ogee acme ee eee Mies 46- 77 VARIETIES OR ATALWS, ¢5c5h.8 ack gucdan + ok aueaaicd Seiad enaviasanns aw TO BO FLA BIT OW GROW PUL ansiccays seateous & SieuedQdunted at maces 24 ruse erode ada caine S4- 96 SEED: BEARING FIABIT;: DIE acs scans onees eee sgn eed ea xoee scat 97-100 GETTING A STAND OF ALBALIA isis s esuiee sagen sais dscns duiee eee 101-106 CARBON AD OR TAT NER) 52-05 sniestot tenon a. alas d Mack oan ive dive de asaeaiace nonsense 107-149 MANURES AND HUMUS: IN SOIL sais osasipa iver nue omcies waad« raisins 6 150-175 PHOSPHORUS FOR SOLLS 243 esas ae iwc s ete s jaes dee ba Seiad vamere 176-188 POTASH AG A. PERTIDAZER: joie scsi a eGiedue ob nis eben 8c eM Reigns 189-190 PIOWING THE BOWE. ses0ssecn soe ees p4deesemede ee die saesgevensntoleios SEEDING AND; CUTTING (sects usone specs somes edewad oains Gs uw da ane 199-222 INOCULATION AND NITROGEN ........ cece ec eeee ec cteteeeeeee 223-236 ATLDARPA IN CROP ROTATION? #0 sacivic vi vader siquaty vieieins @ aieees ¢ ene Sew 237-248 YIBED' OF ALBALBA eiseuscke.cesiegl tes Berd ted aus Home derk suas s 249-253 DISKING AND (CULTIVATING js cine cided accaceu cngied vs dine teenias 254-257 W.REDS: AND ‘GRASSES! sass. tngiraiin care ania mang geaiits wants s saritees YOOSHOOD PIPATES. IIOPASUS jee a uke «nubiles nemo 4vERs & 09-04 4 E84 a Nee baa Res 266-267 BHBUINE GRABBER 32hu don das cay oes moss nd dewda ey Coane edeueee 268-276 , GROWING BY IBRIGATION «i .ie.ccccssrensseanssa see snacesscarene « 277-202 TIME OF CUTTING +045 a Veh GRa aS CSAS Saw RRagex oD OSE OS HARVESTING Hay IN THE West . BVISS iad Gos vinaee eee Senate tater 299-301 AYING TOOLS ....... ied avid Bolen. AR A RING Calor te =BOS perees MAKING IN RAINY ‘CouNTRIES caw ede aed peewee eae eS 309-322 SOILING AND PASTURE eee e ee 823-335 ASS A PASTURE! EL AIND i023 tiie eras 2 h/awalievidsgs aye Bok decd seated uhenty wR 336-347 ALPALIA IN SOUTH cANIERICA oa 2 sciigs seaccnita ee aie wiagiale + thesia hos Gees 348-353 ALFALFA ‘FOR THE SILO scactes quedies sca sos vane cesses oa genie ss BO4-B5D BAUING ATLBALPA, FRAY (2 isceviecsacass nostew siesta tiaured dade Aiamen duce 356-357 SEEDING VALUE OBSHAW «cece oi antawceneaumenaamanne waieeeneeies 358-862 CHEMICAL: ‘COMPOSITION zine ica sale. y avsasey densbaee s taRde Heyes 863-372 ALPALMA WOR: TIORSHS aic2 vidi steer edie caaioaokayged Palvede ad a tdi 373-379 ALFALFA FOR CATTLE FEEDING ...... 0.000 c eee eee eee eee ee 880-388 PEPE POR DAIS Ces 8 es idds ec depece diene y eaedevemerees 386-391 JALPATIA POR SHEEP 2sgi8 i-qi0el sacs aus Aas chee taeee aden eae AOD 2-BOD HAY VOR SHEEP PERDING 25 cccscceneseraesd i804 crea bs ene sway 396-401 APPA OR: SWINE cc yecaee Hs 5 Faded Bey he ob. FOES ewK ERS 402-414 INTRODUCTION. In March, 1886, the writer, a tall awkward young man fresh from ‘he fields of Ohio, was traveling by rail through Utah. Near Provo he began to see snug farms with trees, meadows, orchards, granaries and haystacks. Some of these stacks had been cut in two with the hay knife, and he noticed with won- der the beautiful green color of the fresh cut sur- face. Calling the attention of the conductor to this phenomenon, so strange to him, he asked, ‘‘ What sort of hay is in those stacks?’’ ‘‘Lucern,’’ prompt- ly replied the conductor. ‘‘And what makes it so green?’’ ‘‘It’s green because that’s the color of it,’’ sagely replied the smiling conductor, as he pocketed a cash fare and moved on about his business. At that date lucern, or alfalfa, had not spread much east ‘of the valleys of Utah; some was grown in Col- orado, but it was a new thing there. The Utah farmers were many of them English and Danish, hence their choice of the old name lucern, while the Spanish term alfalfa had come in from Chili by way of California. Late that night the writer reached Salt Lake City and early next morning he was up ready to explore. In his rambles about the quaint old city (more old- world than American at that time with its houses of adobe, its walled gardens and orchards, its rows of towering Lombardy poplars) he came across a (3) 4 AFLALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. square devoted to the hay market. There stood awaiting purchasers dozens of loads of this curious green-looking hay. He went to a load of it and drew out a stem and chewed it to see what it tasted like. To his astonishment it tasted good, much as wheat tastes when chewed. It dissolved in his mouth and tasted as though it would nourish him. ‘‘The best country I have struck yet,’’ remarked the boy to himself. ‘‘If ever I get hard up here I can at least go to a haystack and eat lucern hay. I won’t starve.’’? Curiously enough it later came to his knowledge that this first impression was true, that alfalfa hay has really in it nearly the same amount of nutrition, pound for pound, as has oats, and from oatmeal have come mighty good men. Next the boy lived for a time in Salt Lake City and cared for his uncle’s cow. She was a fine motherly cow, very wide where width did the most good, low down and gentle, with a big mouth and an appetite to match it. He fed her on alfalfa hay without grain. What milk she gave! That cow must have been a freak, for she gave some 5 or 6 gallons a day of rich creamy milk with no other food than alfalfa hay and hydrant water. Steadily as he milked the cow the respect of the boy for alfalfa hay grew. Next the boy went down into the deep mountain canyons along Green River and worked there on a cattle ranch. It was a great ranch in dimension, full 40 miles in extreme length, extending from the horrid cliffs along Price River to the cool heights INTRODUCTION. 5 of the Big Mesa, sloping down to the Nine Mile. Through this ranch ran a little creek called Range Creek. The soil was sandy and gravelly along the creek, not very fertile. The climate was intensely hot; often the thermometer would climb to 110° and stay there day after day. Cattle and horses were kept on the ranch, some 2,000 cattle at times. In the narrow sandy valley little ditches were made to lead the water from the bubbling creek, idle for ages though once Cliff Dwellers had farmed along its banks and grown corn, which they had stored in adobe and stone treasure houses high up under the cliffs. Now little fields were cleared from their en- cumbering sagebrush and grease wood, the water turned on, and they were planted to corn and al- falfa. It was called lucern then; later the name alfalfa overpowered and became almost universal. At first the alfalfa did not thrive along Range Creek. It made a small feeble growth, but it stuck. In one field especially, down close to the headquar- ters cabin, alfalfa grew the first year no more than about 6 inches high. The boy, who already had charge of the farm and general charge of all the ranch, was disgusted with it and wished to plow it up and try something else. The soil there was sandy, gravelly, open and rather coarse. An old- timer happening in at the right time counseled against plowing it. ‘‘Let it be; you may have good alfalfa there another year,’’ he said. This advice was heeded; the next year the alfalfa there grew so high that when the burros would walk out into it only 6 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. their heads would be visible. It produced four crops of hay and easily 8 tons to the acre. Water for irrigation was very abundant at that time in Range Valley. It was the custom to flood the land over just before cutting off the hay and once afterward. At that time no one knew anything about soil inoc- ulation and the behavior of alfalfa was a profound mystery. It now occurs to the writer to explain the curious behavior of the alfalfa in this manner: up the canyon a mile or two was an established alfalfa field, not a good stand, but thrifty. When this field was irrigated the surplus water flowed on down to the lower field and went over that. It seems clear now that in this manner the bacteria were intro- duced from the established field to the new one. As long as the writer had connection with this ranch, some twelve years, this field continued to produce heavy crops of alfalfa, though not so wonderfully rank as the earlier growths. Doubtless the excessive irrigation leached away some fertility, and the con- tinual removal of hay without returning any manure or fertilizer told, even on that very deep and per- vious soil. However, the last crops that the writer remembers growing on this field could hardly have been less than 5 ‘tons to the acre. It used to be a great joy to grow alfalfa on this old ranch. Before the alfalfa came there was noth- ing in the valley to relieve the monotony of brown, drouth-stricken nature. The alfalfa fields were vividly green squares and patches, relieving the monotony of brown sage brush and bare earth. The INTRODUCTION. 7 advent of the alfalfa changed the animal life too of the canyon. Before alfalfa came there used to be little animal life save the chipmunks and lizards; all had fled that could flee to the green mountain tops. After alfalfa deer came to stay down in the meadows all summer long; some of them had their little fawns down there. The boy foreman used to see the old does standing deep in alfalfa nibbling daintily very early in the morning as he went up to change the water. He would not shoot them; they were his companions. Humming birds too came in great num- bers to sip the sweet nectar of alfalfa bloom. They would sit in quaint rows along the wire fence, peer- ing curiously at the boy as he passed by smiling, shovel on his shoulder. Bees he had none, else there would have been great stores of honey made there. It was joy to grow the alfalfa, because the grow- ing of it was so very easy. The method of sowing was very simple. The fields were first made fairly level. There was a strong slope so that it was easy to get water to any part of them. Then furrows were made with a common turning plow run shallow, or else with a furrow marker that made a number of shallower furrows parallel with each other. Then the alfalfa seed was sown, sometimes brushed in with a brush drag, and then a tiny stream of water turned in each furrow and kept running there for days and days, since under that burning sun one could not count on sandy land holding moisture at the surface very long. Sometimes the alfalfa was sown in March, oftener in April. It did not make 8 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. much hay the first season, hardly any in fact; the second year was when it began to hump itself. By the second year all furrows were pretty well leveled down or washed away; then the land was irrigated by flooding. Large ditches were placed across the heads of the fields, with lesser ones transversely lower down. The head ditches were provided with dams hastily thrown up across them from the sand of the ditch bottom. Then as big a head as could be mustered was turned in and all of it turned out in one place. The irrigator got out with his shovel, often in bare feet, and helped it flow this way and that, spreading it so that it covered that part of the field with an even-flowing sheet of water a few inches deep. When it had flowed a few hours the dam was broken, ‘the stream carried further along to another turnout. By this simple plan of irrigation the writer unaided one summer watered about 90 acres of land. That was a happy summer. He had a big white burro, ‘‘Old Nig,’’? which he kept saddled most of the time. Nig knew the work about as well as the boy knew it, and he would gallop merrily up the road to the top of the field in the morning, about two miles from the cabin, stand patiently under a cottonwood tree till the work was done there; then with his master on deck gallop cheerily down to the next field, and soon till all the water had been given attention. There is a great fascination in working with water and the writer yet thinks irrigation farming one of the finest schemes in the world. The making of the hay was hard work, but not INTRODUCTION. 9 accompanied with worry, because usually no rain fell between April and September. We used to mow down the alfalfa and rake it while quite green and as soon as possible pile it up in big cocks and leave it there to dry out a while. In that hot sun and baking air the moisture disappeared very rapidly indeed, so that by the time we could get to hauling, the hay would be dry enough, and thus it retained perfectly its color, leaves and delicious aroma. Very joyous times we had at this haying, a lot of harum- secarum cowboys and ranch hands, strong as wild colts and rejoicing to see which of us could lift the largest forkful of hay. At first we simply hauled the hay on wagons and stacked it by hand. Later an ingenious Mormon boy showed us how to rig a pole stacker, and then we let the horse do the pitching. We accumulated great ricks of hay, hundreds of tons, against pos- sible severe winters. Meanwhile we were feeding alfalfa to our saddle and work horses, to poor cows and calves that would have died before green grass came had they not had this help, and occasionally fattening a bunch of beef steers on it for the spring market, when fat beef brings a premium in Denver and Salt Lake City. We had no grain at all and fed only alfalfa hay, making with it very good beef indeed, though doubt- less we would have made much fatter cattle had we had corn to feed along with it. We had a few old sows on the ranch and must make provision for feeding them and their pigs. 10 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. They were astonishingly prolific sows and gave us great litters of healthy pigs, so many sometimes that we did not know what to do with them. The sows were kept penned up nearly the year through and during summer we simply cut alfalfa with a scythe and threw it over to them. This kept them in fine thrifty condition and their pigs grew but kept rather lanky on the diet. Whezx fall came we would fatten them off with pumpkins and squashes and alfalfa. In winter time we would vary the diet by giving them dry alfalfa hay and alfalfa leaves. They throve well and it was at first very amusing to see hogs eat alfalfa hay, putting their feet on it to hold it down while they tore it apart with their teeth and chewed it as best they could. It was won- derful to us also to see what fine full udders our milk cows had. Old-fashioned milking Shorthorns they were, of the type that the fathers had. The Mormon settlers had brought with them their best family cows when they came across the range, and we had some of their descendants. We fed these cows only alfalfa hay in winter, and mostly soiled them on green alfalfa in summer, and what splendid foaming pails we carried down from the corral! We half lived on milk and cream those days, being too busy to make butter. Sometimes we had trouble from alfalfa bloat. That came in the fall, after we had turned the cows on the meadows and they grazed the alfalfa that had come up since the last mowing and gotten badly frosted. We used to have strenuous times with these old cows, tvine sticks in INTRODUCTION. 41, their mouths like bridle bits, making them stand with their heads up a steep bank and putting cakes of ice on their distended sides. We never had one die, but learned then that frosted alfalfa is never a safe feed for a cow. Over on the Castle Valley desert were Mormon settlements, Castle Dale, Ferron, Price and other villages. They were on adobe soil mostly, a sad sort of alkaline clay, full enough of minerals but lacking in humus and life-giving properties. The first attempts of these settlers to grow grain were mostly unsuccessful; it would not thrive, and the people were incredibly poor. Little by little they got alfalfa to growing on this alkaline soil and then with cows and pigs and poultry they managed to live quite well. Finally one of them let the water rim over his alfalfa in the winter so that it froze into solid ice over his field. This is sure death to alfalfa, unless there is air under the ice, and in the spring he had lost his meadow; nearly every plant of alfalfa was dead. He grieved over this, but set to work to see what he could get from the land and planted a part of it to spring wheat, though it had previously refused to grow wheat, and a part to potatoes, also a very uncertain crop at that time in Castle Valley. The result was a crop of wheat that made 60 bushels to the acre, a marvel to the whole valley. The potatoes made some unheard of yield, about 900 bushels to the acre, I think, and the for- tunes of Castle Valley with its sun and brilliant skies and wildly desolate plains and crags was assured. 12 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. These valleys were fertile, they would yield food for man and beast, and alfalfa was the magic sesame that made open the door to the riches of the valley. All this time the writer was becoming more and more enthusiastic over the wonderful value of the alfalfa plant. Back in Ohio was the old home farm where he had spent his boyhood. It was a little farm of less than 200 acres, charmingly diversified by little hills, rich flat meadow lands, wet and half wild, in which grew wild lilies and pink fragrant spireas. There was woodland and pasture, a run- ning stream, the Darby creek, with swimming holes in it, a big pond where he had sailed his tiny ships not so very many years before, a corn field, usually of about 15 acres, meadows in irregular patches, and an old apple orchard that ‘bore famously of big red apples. On that farm too was an old man once tall but now bent and gray, weatherbeaten, seamed and furrowed from exposure, with a kindly serious face and a twinkling blue eye. That was the father. And a mother, small and agile and energetic, rather frail yet sunny and happy, ever singing at her work. That was mother. And two younger brothers did the work about the barns and went to school. These younger brothers, men now, are yet on Woodland Farm and are the writer’s partners. The writer had been a very close friend of his father, and together they had planned the work on Woodland Farm before he had gone west, and now the old man remembered his boy and knew of his interest in the old place, so he used to write now INTRODUCTION. 13 and then long and careful letters telling of what he was doing, of the drains that he was laying, or the good corn that he grew. And the boy in his very first enthusiasm for the alfalfa plant sent home a package of seed by mail (that was in 1886) and asked the father to give it space and soil and care. And often in his daydreams he would ponder the question of returning some day to the old farm. He would dream idle dreams of what he might do there, how he might enrich it and plant it and maybe buy neighboring acres to add to it. Somewhat more than two years rolled away and the boy took a vacation and went back to the old home, to see the home folks, and a sweetheart he had there. It is a very joyful and rather a wonder- ful thing to come home after having been exiled to a strange land. The deserts of Utah were like an- other world, so that when the boy came to Ohio it was as though he had come to a dream world, so beautiful, and so natural and so lovely it all seemed. How eagerly he explored his ‘old haunts, one by one! What old memories were stirred into life as he saw the meadows, the woodland, the hill planted to corn and kept immaculately clean of weeds, the orchard, the garden; the dear old father, stooped and aged more than the boy remembered him, went right to his heart; the mother, silvery haired now; the sister and young brothers! The sweetheart was of course unspeakably marvelous and wonderful, and it all was as though the boy had been born again into a new world. Soon after his arrival, as he explored 14 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. with diligence, he asked the old man: ‘‘Father, where is my alfalfa? Did you plant that seed that I sent you?’’ ‘‘Why, yes, I planted it, but it did not amount to anything. This is no country for alfalfa. It may do for you in the West, but it is of no use here; but come and see it, what there is of it.’? Back of the garden the old man had spaded a square rod of good clay soil and sowed his seed. He led the way and pointed accusingly to the stunted little plants scattered thinly over the ground: “Mhere, don’t you see that this thing is no good for Ohio?”’ The boy stood in amazement looking at it, so dif- ferent from what he had fondly hoped it might be. His father turned away and left him, but still he stood studying the situation. Soon happened along a flock of his mother’s fowls; they came to the alfalfa patch and began an eager search for leaves; one by one they plucked them off till nearly every plant was stripped bare, then walked away. ‘‘Aha!’’ cried the boy; ‘‘I see a light now,’’ and he went to the well and pumped a tub full of water, which he carried and emptied carefully down by the strongest root that he could find. It was early August and the land was dry. To keep away the chickens he took an old barrel, knocked the heads out of it and put it over his alfalfa plant. In a little more than three weeks he was ready to go back to his work on the ranch and he went to say good bye to his alfalfa patch. To his delight the stalk of alfalfa had thrived for its wetting and its protection and had grown out through the top of the barrel! Joyfully INTRODUCTION. 15 the boy called his father, ‘‘Come here; see what my alfalfa has done!’’ And the sire, amazed and be- wildered at first, stood there scratching his old gray head and smiling an amused, puzzled smile. Finally he turned and said: ‘‘Son, do you suppose that I want to grow a crop that won’t grow till you put a barrel over it?’’ The lad laughed and said no more, but went back to his mountains and the alfalfa fields, remembering the one stalk of alfalfa that had succeeded and saying, ‘‘I know that alfalfa can be grown in Ohio. If one stalk will grow as that one grew, why can’t a man grow a thousand? If he can grow a thousand, why can’t he grow a million, why can’t he cover his farm with alfalfa?’’ The ranch was not just the same to the boy when he came back to it, not just the same because he had ever before him the image of the sweetheart left be- hind. Yet it was a happy place, and he went tumul- tuously into the work again, strong as a young giant, eager to do, finding no day long enough for him. Now was time of happy dreams, and after a time the dreams began to materialize as he mixed mud and made ‘‘adobes,’’ or ‘‘dobies,’’ as the boys called them, and hauled down logs from far up the canyon, for She was coming and a house must be made ready for her. There were wonderful letters coming, too, and often the boy would be seen on Sundays sitting far up on the rocky hillside, away from the confusion and talk of the cowboys, reading the last letter that She had written, or writing one in reply to it. The work 16 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. of the ranch was much the same as it had been save that the ricks of alfalfa grew larger and larger each year and the problem of making and using the hay grew to be portentous. The mountains remained the same always, and the boy loved them deeply and climbed them eagerly, going up where never white man had been before, just to gaze off afar to other snowy ranges, and across sunny yellow valleys in the desert, beautiful from afar. All the cowboys loved him and worked faithfully for him; every one worked as hard as he could and the cattle waxed fat on a thousand hills. In November it was that the letter came, the letter written in that familiar crabbed yet plain handwrit- ing that the father used. Nearly always the father’s letters gave the boy much pleasure. He opened this one expecting it to be like the others that had come, but it was a shock to find in it a totally different note. It read like this: “My boy, I wish you to come home. Times are hard back here; hired men are no good any more. I am getting old and infirm. I need you very much. Come home and help me with the farm. I do not see how I can get along without you longer.” The letter gave the boy a rude shock. All at once he realized how he loved the wild ranch with its free- dom, its responsibility, its opportunities for doing things. He loved every hill and every mesa and every canyon. Half of the canyons he had named, some of them he only had ridden through. He loved the sun and air, the yellow bunchgrass, the INTRODUCTION. 17 solemn pines. He loved the horses that he rode and the great herd of cattle in his charge, and his com- rades, rough as bears and loving as brothers. So he carried the letter in his pocket with a sad heart for a day or two, when little Billie Barnson, who was riding beside him, turned to him and said: ‘‘Joe, what in thunder is the matter with you? Has your girl gone back on you?’’ ‘‘No, Billie, that is not what is the matter,’’ and in a few words he laid bare his heart; he ought to leave the mountains, perhaps forever, and he dreaded to go. ‘‘Why, Joe, I’m ashamed of you.’’ ‘‘Ashamed, Billie? Why are you ashamed of me?’’ ‘‘Well, Joe, if I had had a father as good as yours has been [Billie had never known his father] and jin his old age he asked me to come home and help him, I’d go.’’ That decided it. ‘‘T think you are right, Billie. I’m going.’’ ‘‘Well, I want to see you smile then.’’ ‘‘All right, Billie, T’ll go, and I’ll smile too,’’ replied the boy, and his heart grew light again as he began to turn his thoughts toward home once more, and the simple but satisfying joys of the homeland. The homecoming occurred just before Christmas time of the year 1889. It was a very joyous home- coming. The kind and rejoiced old father, the old mother happy to see her son, and the things made dear by old association, all these conspired to make full the cup of joy; and beside near by lived the sweetheart. So the boy was very happy for some days. After that he began to explore again the old farm. It was a good farm, of 196 acres, mostly 18 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. meadow and pasture land, with a fine bit of wood- land, and about 50 acres part of the time under the plow. It was farmed in the old-fashioned way— corn followed by wheat and wheat by clover and timothy. Hogs were kept and cattle; timothy hay was sold with wheat, pigs, fat steers, potatoes, parsnips, pears, grapes and a few minor items. The father was a careful man, economical to a degree, hard working and patient. He loved his land and cared for it as best he could, saving every scrap of manure and tilling the soil with diligence. He loved his animals and fed them well. His driving mare was almost too wide to get between the shafts; his cattle knew him and would stand to be rubbed and petted. It was through no lack of industry or in- telligence that the father had not of late years made the farm pay; it was due mainly to his following an unprofitable system of farming. When the boy came home there was an old lame negro man helping do the farm work, old ‘‘Uncle Sam’’ they called him, a faithful old soul but slow and feeble. In the feedlot were about eight steers, maybe twenty pigs were being fattened, in the crib probably 500 bushels of corn, in the mows maybe 50 tons of hay. The boy took it all in very rapidly and a great hunger for the old ranch came over him, a hunger and a longing for its wide free life and its endless range of activities. To add to his unrest a letter followed him, a letter from the manager. It read like this: ‘‘Come back, Joe, as soon as you ean. Your place is awaiting you, and more wages if INTRODUCTION. 19 you think best, and we will build the house for your sweetheart, and you shall be your own boss. Come back as soon as you have your visit out.’’ Small wonder then that the boy soon began seek- ing to frame some explanation or excuse to offer the father, some way to tell him that he éould not stay to care for the little farm, with the great ranch calling him. And the father could read the boy’s mind like an open book, so one morning after family prayers he said: ‘‘My boy, I wish to talk business with you. I suppose you did great things in the West. You probably had 2,000 cattle there, if you say you did. I don’t know, as I never saw that many cattle together and never expect to; but I wish to show you that this old farm is not played out either. Now see here, here is what we have done this year.”’ Then he took down from the shelf his old account book and read off the items, all duly set down in black and white, the wheat that he had sold, and the hay, the pigs and the potatoes and the cattle. And together they carefully footed it all up. It amounted altogether to a little less than $800. Eight hun- dred dollars! It came over the boy the good salary that he had forsaken in the West and all the bright hopes of that golden land and his heart went down like lead. ‘‘What,’’ he said to himself, ‘‘have I given up all my bright prospects, all my plans and aspirations to come back and manage a farm that does not produce more than $800 a year? Why, with such an income as that, with taxes to be paid and repairs to ‘be made and all expenses to be met, 20 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. I can not so much as keep old Uncle Sam. I must myself get out with the lantern before breakfast and feed and curry the horses and begin over again to | do all that drudgery that I had only lately escaped.’’ It was not a very worthy thought, but it added to his perplexity. The old father waited anxiously for the boy’s de- cision. Very gently he said: ‘‘My voy, when you were with me we made more money than this. The farm then was in better condition ‘and times were not so hard. I am too old now to develop it as it should be developed and I am tired. My happiest memories are of the time when I was strong enough to be called a man, and you were my boy, helping me. Now I am tired of being the man; I wish you to be the man. Won’t you be the man, let me be the boy and help you?’’ There was silence for a little time while many thoughts passed rapidly through the boy’s mind, then he came to decision. ‘‘Yes, father, I’ll stay. I’ll take hold ef the old farm and do what I can with it. I think we can make it profit- able after a time, and you may help me.’’ ‘*Good,’’ the old man exclaimed. ‘‘Now you go ahead and do whatever you wish to do. I’ll give you chance to do it, for I’ll feed the cattle and the pigs. I can feed them better than any man you can hire, and you know it.’? ‘‘Of course you can,’’ replied the boy. Then: ‘‘Father, let’s go and take a walk.’’ ‘‘All right; where shall we go?’’ ‘‘Oh, anywhere; just out to look at the farm again.’’ Together they sallied out, the father happy as a child, the son glad INTRODUCTION. 21 that it was settled, the uncertainty over, yet uneasy, feeling within him a rising tide of restlessness, an aching to get to work somewhere. They did not walk very far. Just beyond the barn was a field of flat clay land, wet, mostly poor and unprofitable. All over the field rose little clay chimneys, the work of crayfish. The boy stopped here. ‘‘Father, may I drain this field?’’ ‘‘Yes; it ought to have been done years ago,’’ was the reply full of hearty encouragement. The boy went to the village and came home with a ditching spade with a blade 18 inches long. He stretched a line where the first ditch was to be laid and began digging a long narrow ditch in which to lay tiles. How happy he was all at once! Those ranch muscles of his were in good training; mightily he dug. And as he be- gan pushing his muscles against that soil he began to believe in it, to have faith in it. And after he got down in the ditch and had rubbed the mud on him well he forgot the old ranch. When at last the ditch was dug and the tiles laid and covered there was one strip of land dry, only a beginning, true, but it was a beginning. The boy stood there that afternoon as he finished covering the tile and leaned on his spade and dreamed, and talked aloud to the old field. ‘‘Old field,’’ he said, ‘‘some day I will make you all dry. Some day, old field, I will make your soil rich. Some day I will cover you over with clover, and with corn, and with alfalfa too. Some day, old field, out of you shall sprout and grow a home, a home for that sweetheart of mine.’’ And 22 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. he looked at his watch; it was past 5 o’clock, so he went home and shed off his muddy overalls and went across the fields to see the sweetheart, happier than any king. Spring came in all its maze of bewildering hope and promise and beauty, as it comes in central Ohio, and the boy was supremely happy. There was just the joy of seeing God’s miracles all around him, the bursting buds, the unfolding leaves, the blossoms on every twig, the tender grass hiding the dull, ugly earth, the dewdrops sparkling in the morning light and all the little birds singing cheerily their songs of gratitude and joy. There seemed something prophetic in it all, and something very wonderful, God’s forgiveness, God’s fulfillment of His gra- cious promises. In a dim way the boy understood and believed, and realized his own duty in the mat- ter and bent eagerly to the task, seeking in a way to make himself partner with the Almighty to cover over the few acres entrusted to his charge with grow- ing things, with bloom and with beauty. Yes, it was the joyous seedtime when all one’s hopes spring up anew and he has prophetic insight into what may be and what should be, not only of the good green earth, but of one’s own soul as well. Every morning bright and early the boy was astir in the fields, with a faithful colored man, Frank, to help him. He had brought with him from Utah two bags of alfalfa seed and this he wished to sow. But the father was much alarmed. ‘‘No, my boy, we cannot afford to sow so much as that at one time. It INTRODUCTION. 23 has not been tried yet. You may have that potato patch down by the old orchard; that is good soil. Begin there and if that succeeds we will sow more later on.’’ The potato patch had in it one-third of an acre. That was quite a coming down from his expectations, but he acquiesced and sowed the little field. Fortunately it was a good place to begin. The land was a strong clay loam, fairly well drained. It was full of carbonate of lime, for all through it were little pebbles of limestone. It was rich, for the cattle had stood there much when it was a part of the orchard. In some way or another it had become inoculated with alfalfa bacteria, perhaps because the father had grown sweet clover on the farm for years in odd corners and in his dooryard. So this alfalfa started out vigorously and grew well. The boy was delighted. He had a path well trodden where he had walked to see his first field. It settled in his mind the question of whether alfalfa would grow; he had no doubt whatever now that it would grow. Rapidly his mind went on ahead to the time when he would have 40, maybe 100 acres in alfalfa. The farm at that time had in it only about 50 or 60 acres of land that could be plowed. The rest was wet or poor or covered with trees. That summer came another boy from the old ranch, Willis. He was a wiry, slender lad, just out of his high school, and had spent about a year at ranching, getting health and strength there prepara- tory to going further with his education. He did not then dream of becoming a farmer, yet he was 24 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. as enthusiastic as the older brother over the beauty and promise of the little alfalfa field. He took off his coat and helped with the farm work and enjoyed it hugely till September came, when he went away to school again. It happened that he never finished his education in school; the confinement of the schoolroom was too much for his health, so fortu- nately for the farm he came back a few years later to be a partner, and later to have almost entire man- agement of the farm. Willis dreams dreams of his own and makes them come true, and he loyally car- ries out the plans of the writer. Woodland Farm owes its final development very largely to the en- ergy and executive ability of this younger brother Willis. And there was another brother yet, a sturdy lad, Charles, growing up at home; he grew to be the largest and strongest of them all and mightily he bent his muscle to help with the work. Later he too spent years in the West, ranching with sheep and cattle, and harvesting alfalfa hay there. Then he also came home and found on Woodland Farm ample scope for all his energies. It is true, is it not, that any work is as big as the man who undertakes that work? That first summer was uneventful save in the fact that the alfalfa grew so well on the trial patch. It was a year of drouth and the corn crop was nearly ruined, only about 500 bushels in all being harvested. The chief events were the long and delighttul drives that the boy took with his sweetheart and the fre- quent walks he took to watch his alfalfa. When INTRODUCTION. 25 fall came the sweetheart and the boy drove out one day along quiet byways and gathered a buggy load of wild flowers and vines and with these decorated the sweetheart’s home, and that night they were married. Next day they went on a honeymoon jour- ney, with the same old horse and buggy, out again into the country, driving slow beneath the old oaks that overarched the road, and more than ever the boy resolved that his life should not be a failure; that in some way he would strive mightily to be worthy of her, who had been an inspiration to him since she was a merry child of eleven, with sunny curls hanging down on her shoulders. And as soon as they were married he began digging for the foun- dations of a little cottage in the corner of the wood- land, a cottage where she might be mistress. All winter whenever it was warm enough he.worked on the cottage, so that it was done nearly altogether by the labor of his own hands saving that the sweet- heart’s father came to help now and then. In June they moved in. All was fresh and new and clean, the whole air was full of hope and life was very joyous then. That spring they sowed another field to alfalfa, this time a little field of about 3 acres. And this field taught a much needed lesson. It began down by the creek where the land was low and wet, ran ‘on up over a little hill where the land was dry and filled with limestone gravel, extended on back over some flat cold poor clay. And on only one acre of the three did the alfalfa thrive; that acre lay on 26 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. the rich dry hill, full of limestone pebbles. Down by the stream the alfalfa was weak, sickly, soon taken by the crowding grasses and weeds. Back on the flat wet poor clay it amounted to very little. On the dry rich soil full of carbonate of lime it thrived beautifully. So there the boy stood and pondered; the lesson was plain, though unwelcome. ‘‘It is evi- dent that this farm is not ready for alfalfa,’’ he said. ‘‘I’ll make it ready. I’ll drain the wet land. T’ll enrich the poor land. I’ll grow alfalfa; some day I’ll have 40 acres of it, but not so soon as I thought I would.’’ So then began the work of lay- ing tile underdrains in earnest. The father had laid many in his day, but not nearly enough, judging by the new standard that alfalfa set up. And that fall the kind old father died, died in a peaceful and happy sort of way, as almost anyone would be glad to die. He had been fairly well that summer, and had insisted in helping in the hay field, raking with the horse rake and cheerily, almost glee- fully, showing the men that he was by no means worn out. One morning he arose early, as was his habit, and went out to work in his garden before the breakfast time, and there the boy had his last talk with the old man, and arranged with him about going to the fair soon to come off. After breakfast the father went to the barn and hitched his gentle mare Daisy to a spring wagon and got ready to go to the village on some errand, probably to take some vegetables to market. When the horse stopped at the front gate, coming from the barn, no one seemed INTRODUCTION. 27 with her, and when the women of the house went out to see they found the old man lying in the wagon as though peacefully sleeping, with a half smile on his lips, dead. It was a fitting end. He had lived a strenuous life, he had been good, he had been kind; he had been builder not destroyer, and wherever his foot had been put down there rich grasses and clovers had sprung up. The writer makes no pretense of being as good or eareful a farmer as his father was. We try to fol- low in his footsteps, that is all, and we do things in a larger way than he in his old age eared to do them. Yes, the father was gone, and with him the safe counselor, and the boy all at once realized how much he had depended upon this counsel. He could do as he pleased now, but he was not glad of the chance. He would have been very glad indeed if he could have had the continued company of the old father. He took account of stock. The farm was not pay- ing; the crops that grew upon it when all sold could not possibly bring money enough to make it a busi- ness worth while. Much of the land was too poor to be profitable. The little alfalfa fields paid well, but they were but small spaces after all; the rest of the farm was mostly unfit for alfalfa. The farm needed enriching, needed further drainage. If ever it paid it must be made rich. How? Well, there was stable manure. The boy knew about that; the old father had been a most careful user of manure; he saved all that he could, but he fed his cattle out in the woods where the manure was largely wasted. 28 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. The boy reasoned: “Our practices are wrong. We sell off timothy hay and wheat, and thus load by load we sell away the fertility of the farm, and what we do feed is largely wasted, as we do not get the manure. Now if ever we build this farm up we must feed on the land the crops that we grow upon the land. And if we make any money in feeding animals we must feed younger animals than we have been feeding. We must feed some sort of babies. Now what shall it be?” Then he thought of the lamb. ‘Why, here is the lamb,” he said. ‘He is a baby, a gentle little fellow. One can put him in the barn, can feed him there in shelter. His manure will all be saved in good order and can go direct to the fields with no wastage, and from the feed given him one ought to make good gain and thus make money.” He had already a little flock of ewes which were his pets and his darlings. To them he added now a little bunch of 200 feeding lambs, building a shed to hold them. As he had no money only what he borrowed, he bought the small- est and cheapest lambs that he could find. They were natives, fairly healthy, and weighed 55 lbs. when he put them in the sheds in November. He had carefully dipped them in a half barrel, and had himself as thoroughly dipped as the lambs, so they were free from ticks. All winter he fed them care- fully, every feed with his own hands. Not knowing anything about feeding lambs, he had written to Prof. E. W. Stewart to get his advice as to how they ought to be fed, and he had told him how to INTRODUCTION. 29 compound a ration with wheat bran, oilmeal, corn and mixed timothy and clover hay. He had too little alfalfa hay yet to make much show in the feeding barn. The lambs throve; they became very fat in- deed and in May weighed 108% lbs. In fact in all the years that lambs have been fed on Woodland Farm no such gain has since been secured, which simply shows that a greenhorn may do as well as an expert, if he has his heart in it and is earnest and careful. The boy had kept careful account of what the lambs had eaten so he knew what the gain had cost him. When he had figured it all up he found that he had made a clear profit from feeding these lambs of $115, the first real profit from Woodland Farm since his new venture in manage- ment. It was a small sum, yet mightily it encour- aged him. And then he dreamed another dream, out there on the sunny side of the barn. Thinking it over, he said: ‘Some day we'll feed a thousand lambs on this farm.”’ But he told no one that, not even his wife, for all would have smiled in derision, for had he not bought part of the hay that he had fed this first 200? But there was more manure to haul out than ever before, and it was put where corn would be grown and where alfalfa might be expected to succeed, and more alfalfa was sown. Wherever the manure had been put out and the drains laid the alfalfa suc- ceeded. Inoculation took care of itself on Woodland Farm after the first start, because of the use of manure made from alfalfa hay perhaps, and every 30 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. little field added to those first started succeeded in aimost direct proportion to the amount of manure used and the thoroughness of the underdrainage. The next winter 300 lambs were fed, then 350, then 350 again, and then a larger barn was built and 700 were fed. The work grew easier and easier; wheat was dropped from the rotation, and no more timothy seed was sown. Lamb feeding promised profit, so finally it was resolved that lambs would be fed and crops grown that lambs liked, and nothing else. Meanwhile Willis and the writer bent their backs energetically in the ditches, draining more and more land, and hiring men to dig what they could not. Charlie, too, growing up a stalwart boy, helped cheerfully, and the three brothers were full of faith. And yet neighbors smiled, and some there were to sneer. It is true that when the new barn was built with a mow that could hold 100 tons of hay men asked smilingly if we thought we could borrow money enough to buy hay enough to fill it, and went off laughing when we declared that we would fill it from our own alfalfa meadows some day. No one else in the country was trying to grow alfalfa, so far as we knew, no one else in Ohio, though there was some grown in Onondaga Co., New York. Well, we filled the barn at last, and had an overflow. We fed a thousand lambs as we had dreamed, and we fed 1,200. We had learned how at last. Lamb feed- ing is an art, a science; it is not yet all learned. It had not all been smooth sailing, this lamb feed- mg. More than one disaster had overtaken us. INTRODUCTION. 31 There had been bad years, low prices, diseased lambs, all sorts of troubles. Grimly we had held on. ‘‘We can’t afford to change now,’’ we declared. ‘‘We have made too many mistakes in what we are doing. To change now would be to lose all we have gained by making these mistakes; we don’t have to make the same mistakes the second time.’’? So we held on, confident that our scheme was a safe and reason- able one, based on alfalfa growing, the alfalfa fed to lambs, the manure put out for corn, the well en- riched corn stubble sown to alfalfa, often with addi- tional phosphorus and as much as possible of the corn and alfalfa fed back to lambs again. But during these years we were in debt, a little at first, but steadily the debt grew. We owed for labor to dig drains, we owed for labor and materials to build fences and barns. We did all the labor that we could do with our own hands, but we were too im- patient to wait to develop the place ourselves. ‘‘Harming either is or is not a business proposi- tion,’’ we declared. ‘‘If it is a safe business propo- sition this thing will pay some day, and if it is not we will break and be done with it. If we can’t farm as a business proposition we prefer to break up trying it.’? And ever and often the writer, the older of the brothers, declared to Willis, his willing lieutenant: ‘‘It is only a question of one good year, just one good year, and the lambs will pay every dollar that we owe and we will have the ditches laid, the buildings built, the fields made fertile, and it will all be ours.’’ 32 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. That year came when we had 1,200 lambs. We had learned how to feed them by this time, and they were as alike as peas, and ripe and fine as they could be. The commission merchants down in Buf- falo had learned to watch for our lambs and to prize them. They had an alfalfa quality about them that no one could attain except he had alfalfa. We had fed them this winter altogether on alfalfa hay and ear corn, all grown at home, and we had hay left over enough to sell to our neighbors; some of whom needed hay with which to do their spring plowing. Well, we sold the lambs, one load at a time, and the checks came back and we laid them down on the bankers’ counter. Now we owed no one in the world but this bank, but we owed it a lot of money. Stead- ily despite the fact that we had economized, had rid- den in our old buggies and worn our old clothes, this debt had grown, and at last it had become a serious burden on our minds; it seemed incredible that it would ever be paid. At last the last check had come. With a fast beat- ing heart the writer laid it down on the bankers’ eounter. ‘‘Here it is. The lambs are all sold; is it enough to pay that note?’’ The banker smiled; he was a good fellow. ‘‘Yes, plenty to pay it, and some over,’’ and he handed the note through the window, cancelled. The writer looked at it; how huge then the amount of it seemed! He tore off the signature and turned anxiously again. ‘‘Tell me,”’’ he asked, ‘‘how much is there left???’ The banker figured for a moment and presented with a smiling INTRODUCTION. 33 face the bank book, where on the right side of the page was a credit balance of $800. The debt was paid. The tiles were laid, or a lot of them were laid at any rate, the barns were built, the home was paid for “and there was actually money in the bank! The writer feels that there are many happy days ahead of him, but never again expects to experience the relief, the thankfulness, the joy that came to him when his first victory was won for Woodland Farm, and the brothers fully shared the feeling. The writer jumped into his old buggy and drove home, his face wreathed in smiles and his heart singing a-joyous song. As he neared his home the thought came: ‘‘Why, I will have some fun with the sweetheart. I will make believe the thing has ended badly. I will tell her some sort of story to deceive her, just at first; afterward I will undeceive her.’?’ But when he drew near the little cottage she stood there in the open door waiting for him to come, looking out at him, all unconscious, yet on her face was revealed all that the thing meant to her, and his heart became suddenly very tender and it came over him with a shock of understanding. ‘‘ Why, I never dreamed that the girl cared like this. Did she per- haps wonder whether the home would be sold, the place where she had planted flowers and vines, the place where her babies were born? Where she had been so brave, so strong, so patient and helpful all these years, and yet cared so much as this?’’ So all his foolish stories were put aside and he told her the glad truth. 34 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. And what had the farm done that year? After all the items of sales and expenditure were footed up it was found that the same land that had yielded our father less than $800 had yielded us a net profit of | more than $2,500. Alfalfa had worked this miracle. It had given us the hay with which to feed the larger number of lambs, and through the soil enrichment that it had given the fields it had made possible the heavy crop of corn that we had fed to the lambs, so really to alfalfa should be credited both corn and hay. Further, alfalfa had made it possible to con- tinue feeding lambs. When we were beginning, and were almost without alfalfa hay, we had fed largely of oilmeal and wheat bran to balance up the ration. This was necessary; experiment proved that. With- out plenty of digestible protein in the ration the lamb does not gain much. We made good lambs through the aid of the bran and oilmeal, but it cost us too much. When finally we had our own alfalfa hay to furnish. protein we made two lots of lambs. They had equal merit in the beginning as near as we could tell, for they were of the same bunch, se- lected to get two like lots. The one pen was fed with timothy hay, with some clover, shredded corn fod- der, corn, wheat bran and a little oilmeal. They grew well, but each pound of gain made cost us 6140. The second lot was fed with good alfalfa hay and corn only. With them the cost of gain was only 3%4c. As the price of lambs declined during the nineties we would have had to give up had not al- falfa come to our rescue. INTRODUCTION, 35 At the present writing (1909) we are feeding some 1,450 lambs, with about 150 ewes and lambs, and we could as readily feed 2,000 or more if we had more shelter for them. ; Woodland Farm is larger now; the alfalfa has crowded the line fences back a little. It contains 320 acres and is devoted mainly to the growing of corn and alfalfa. During the summer of 1908 corn was grown on 90 acres of alfalfa sod. This field had been twice sown to alfalfa, with intervals when it was planted in corn. The last pe- riod of alfalfa was a 6 year period for part of the land and a longer period for the remain- der. During the 6 years there were taken off at least 20 crops of hay, certainly 20 tons of hay to each acre. During this time no manure was put on the field, but on parts of it phosphorus was applied in the shape of acid phosphate, about 300 lbs. per acre or maybe a little more. The great crops of hay taken continually off of this field disturbed our mother, who finally spoke in sorrowing tones to the writer, thus: ‘‘ Joey, I am worrying about that alfalfa field.’’ ‘‘Why, mother?’’ ‘‘Because you do not manure it. You haul off hay and haul off more hay and it seems to me you actually have hollowed the land out so that it is lower than it used to be. I think of what your father would say if he could see it. Why don’t you put some manure on it, boy?’’ I assured her that I could not believe that the land was really getting poor, and that we were putting the manure out carefully on land that we knew. was 36 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. poor, and she said no more. When we plowed the land in the winter of 1908-09 it seemed more mellow and friable than usual, so we plowed it deeper than it had usually been plowed. And when we disked it up in the spring it was most evident that the field had changed its character somewhat, so loose, mellow and friable it seemed. We resolved to make an ef- fort to beat our record for corn raising, so we planted with care. The seed was good and had been tested. We got nearly a perfect stand over much of the field and all summer gave it good culture. There was a most serious drouth late in the summer, which doubtless cut down our yield somewhat. Yet 50 acres of that field made for us a little more than 100 bushels of shelled corn per acre and the entire 90 acres only fell a little short of making 9,000 bushels. This result astonished us, as the field had in olden times yielded only about half that amount. In truth the alfalfa had built it up far beyond the fertility that it had had when a ‘‘virgin soil.’’ Let us briefly examine this miracle and see how it was accomplished. In the first place it is probable that this especial field has in it already about as much potash as it needs for large crop production, since it is a glaciated soil. Most of the field is well supplied with lime; in truth one can find small peb- bles of limestone sticking all through the soil. Thus it was sweet, and the alfalfa revels in sweet soil, al- kaline, not acid. So the alfalfa was at home there. Then the land had been thoroughly well under- drained; thus it was full of air. Alfalfa bacteria INTRODUCTION, 37 thrive in soils rich in lime and full of air; they perish in a wet sour soi]. Thus the alfalfa filled all the soil with its rootlets, going down often as far as 6 feet, no doubt, and numberless millions of bacteria work- ing there were storing the soil with nitrogen drawn from the air. The phosphorus supply may have been somewhat deficient; we bought phosphorus for part of the land and added that. Then the land was plowed; the plow cut off millions of those big roots and left the top soil one mass of roots, with also many little rootlets and many leaves and stems that had fallen down. And the subsoil was made porous by being honeycombed by millions of the tap roots, so the air penetrated all the more easily. Thus it is seen that conditions for a big corn crop were almost ideal. It would be an interesting thing to know just how much richer Woodland Farm is than it was before alfalfa began to grow uponit. It is safe to say that the alfalfa, yielding on the average 300 tons of hay per year for the past ten years, has added to the soil plant food worth at least $3,000 each year, count- ing the manure that has been returned and the work of the roots; probably this is an underestimate, in fact. Once we racked our brains to find manure enough, and never did find enough. Now we rack our brains again to find time to haul out the manure that is made upon the farm. Gathering fertility by the use of alfalfa is like rolling a snowball—the farther you roll it the faster it gathers. This would not be true if the hay was sold off of the farm, but 38 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. it is certainly true when the hay is fed and the manure carefully saved and returned, to make an- other spot rich for alfalfa to grow upon. The story of Woodland Farm is only half told; the rest lies in the future. We have some acres that yield as much as 6 tons of hay each year, yet the average of the whole farm is less than 4 tons. Thus we are not yet inclined to boast of our success with alfalfa. We now are proceeding to try to spread these good yielding areas. What is the secret of the lands yielding alfalfa so well? Perhaps we do not know the whole story, but here is what -we can readily observe. One of these spots is a round hillock. It is a strong, tough, tenacious limestone clay. Stick- ing all through that clay are bits of limestone peb- bles, as large as grains of corn, as large as a man’s foot, and of all sizes. These pebbles are of soft mag- nesian limestone. They readily decay and keep the land very sweet. Alfalfa roots seem to like actually to touch carbonate of lime. On that hillock the al- falfa never gets old. It is one of the most productive spots on the farm. On it our father put much ma- nure, for it was, when he bought the farm, extremely unproductive. We have not manured here for many years. On other lands we find the limestone pebbles all dissolved away in the surface soil. When we dig down two feet we find them in abundance, but on the surface there are none. Here we are assuming that lime is needed, and are putting on more ear- bonate of lime, buying ground and unburned lime- INTRODUCTION. 39 stone and applying it at the rate of about 5 tons to the acre. Probably that is too little; it is yet too early to know. We feel sure that when we have made the drainage right and the lime content right we will grow as much alfalfa over all the farm as we now grow on those favored spots. Then we can proudly boast, sure enough! Then we can say: “‘Wrom 100 acres of land we harvested 500 tons of alfalfa hay.’’ It may take time to reach this con- dition. It may not even come in my day. But we have boys and to these boys we bequeath the ideal, the task, and to them will fall the pleasant duty of spreading these spots of gloriously beautiful alfalfa, rich and productive beyond anything else that could be sown. It may be of interest to know something of the present system of farming on Woodland Farm. Let us begin with the alfalfa sod that is to die that corn may live. It is plowed usually in November and during the winter. Perhaps the field was mown off late, four cuttings being taken from it, in antici- pation of its impending destruction. We find that late cutting is bad for the alfalfa and do not usually cut it later than early in September. This field to be devoted to corn then will be mown off late, as it does not matter how much the roots are weakened. Usually we plow with very strongly built walking plows. We put two wheels on the beam, well in front; one wheel runs in the furrow, the other on the unplowed land. These wheels hold the beam rigidly in place, and thus the plow runs well; a boy can man- 40 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. age it if the thing is set right. We keep the plows sharp. The plowman carries a file and often lifts the plow out of the ground and sharpens it well. The land is plowed deep, from 7 to 10”, and we hope ultimately to plow much deeper than that. We aim to get the land all broken before mid-winter, so that the frosts may work on it. No manure is used on alfalfa sod. It is disked and fitted for corn which is planted usually about May 5 in checks. This corn is as well cultivated as we know. Often in the early part of the season the alfalfa roots will grow, espe- cially if the season is wet, and the field will look not a little green. This does not disturb us in the least, for after the corn cultivation begins the alfalfa soon weakens and mostly disappears. Some stray plants will escape destruction and will live over, even for two or three years of corn. This is all the better, since thus the inoculation is safely carried over. The corn has as clean cultivation as we can give. We discourage weed seeding as much as pos- sible. We have learned that that enemy of alfalfa, fox-tail or pigeon grass, can be surely eradicated in one year by not letting a stalk of it make seed. The corn is cut and shocked. Before winter it is husked and the folder set up, two shocks in a place. We cut our corn 12 hills square; at present our hills are 42” apart. We find corn to thrive wonderfully on alfalfa sod. The second year will usually find this land yet in corn. This time as much manure from the stables and sheep barns as can be found will be put on. Even with this manuring INTRODUCTION. Al we do not expect quite so good corn as we had when we grew it on alfalfa sod. As before, clean cultivation is given. We are especially careful to destroy all fox-tail grass before it seeds. This land is now to be sown to alfalfa. If it needs lime that is applied as convenience suggests, when- ever the teams are idle and the land is hard enough to drive on. We use finely ground raw limestone rock, not burned. We use about 4 tons to the acre of this. It cost us only $1.25 per ton on cars. The land is plowed as deep as the plows will run, making the furrows narrow. We would plow 24” deep if we could do so. Some day no doubt we will begin sub- soil work, and expect that to pay well. We like to do this plowing a month or more before time to seed alfalfa, so that the earth may settle well together again. In April we disk and prepare the land with some care, but not attempting to make any “ash heap” or ‘“‘onion bed,” as some advise, only a little better seedbed than one would make for corn. About April 10 we begin drilling. We use a fertil- izer drill that sows fertilizer, beardless spring barley and alfalfa seed. Of barley we sow 2 bushels to the acre; of alfalfa seed, 15 to 20 lbs.; of fertilizer (usually plain acid phosphate, sometimes bone meal) we use 300 to 500 lbs. per acre. We think it prob- able that the more we enrich the land the greater our profit is. We let the alfalfa seed fall in front of the drill sometimes, at other times behind the drill, ac- cording to the condition of the soil. If moist we do not roll but follow the drill with a plank drag. If 42 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. the land is dry and cloddy we use a roller to com- pact it and to leave the surface smooth so that the mower may run over it readily. We do not inocu- late, since all the farm is now filled with alfalfa bac- teria. The alfalfa comes up with the barley and all grow together till the ‘barley has come into head; before grain has formed in the heads it is mown off and all made into hay. Barley hay is exceedingly good hay, though not so good as alfalfa hay, of course. After this cutting the alfalfa comes on rap- idly and in about 45 days, or a little less, it also is eut and a crop of hay taken off. We judge of.the time to cut this young alfalfa al- together by the condition of the growth, not by the bloom. When small shoots appear at the base of the stems, down by the ground, as though it was ready to make a new growth, then it is to be cut, and not before that time. If cut before these shoots or buds appear, the alfalfa is very greatly weakened and sometimes is destroyed. After this cutting the alfal- fa is left religiously alone; it is never pastured nor mown nor tramped in any way during the fall or win- ter. The fall growth of about a foot or a little more is worth a very great deal to the plant, in some way or another; it helps hold the snow and makes it win- ter better. The next year the alfalfa shoots out as soon as the frost is ont of the earth. Alfalfa fields are sacred ground on Woodland Farm, and never unless by accident is an animal per- mitted to tread upon them. It is especially im- portant that no stock go upon them in the spring INTRODUCTION. 43 when the young alfalfa is pushing up; even though the alfalfa might be destined for pasture everything is kept off until it has made good growth, and is nearly knee high and almost come into bloom before stock is turned in. Gloriously beautiful the fields be- come in May, and as June draws near we watch them to see how nearly they are approaching harvest. We have long ago learned not to regard the bloom- ing of the alfalfa as being an essential indication of maturity, but only we suspect that it is ready for cutting. We get down upon our knees in the field, and parting the stems look to see whether small buds have appeared at the surface of the ground. If these buds or shoots are pushing out, showing that the plant is ready to make new growth, then the mowers come out, three of them, each cutting swaths 6’ wide, and with merry rattle the beautiful green forage is laid low. : Not much use is made of the tedder on Woodland Farm, since it shatters off the leaves too much, al- though sometimes it is employed when the crop is very succulent and heavy. Before the alfalfa is dry enough for the leaves to shed off, the rake is started and the hay gathered into small windrows, which are then piled into slender but fairly tall cocks by the use of the hand fork in the old-fashioned way. Rather a jolly time haymaking is, with all the men and boys on the place busy in the field, with merry callings to and fro and sometimes the note of a song, yet it is a busy place too. Seldom can the hay be drawn in the same day as it is cut down, and not al- 44 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. ways on the next day, but as soon as it is dried it is placed on broad, low-platform wagons, each bed 16’ long and 7’ wide, with tight board floors; and taken to the barn where it is unloaded by horse forks. The farm possesses 7 of these wagons, so that each even- ing it is the daily duty to load up the 7 wagons with from 10 to 14 tons of hay, which are then drawn un- der shed ready to be unloaded in the morning. Not much is doing in the alfalfa meadows in the fore- noon; then is the time chosen for work in the corn fields, and cultivators are pushed steadily. These two crops, corn and alfalfa, constitute almost all that is grown on Woodland Farm, excepting a few acres of soy beans and the blue grass pastures, but as the alfalfa is cut three times during the season, and the corn cultivated at least five times, there is no dif- ficulty in keeping everyone busy. ‘The writer makes no apology for having devoted so much time to the operations on Woodland Farm, since he feels that in a sense this is a pioneer farm, and fairly prophetic only, of what will be very com- mon throughout all the region of the corn belt. Very certainly these two crops, corn and alfalfa, are by far the most profitable of any, and do most conserve the fertility of the soil, do best nourish all manner of farm animals, do most surely build the fortunes of the farmer. Deeply buried in the soil of the fields, the alfalfa roots know nothing of the vicissitudes of winter; as certainly they put out green as leaves up- on the oaks in spring, and drouths that wither up ordinary meadows have little effect upon them. INTRODUCTION. 45 Wheat, oats, potatoes, timothy grass and a hundred other things are uncertain, affected vastly by the vicissitudes of the weather. Alfalfa once rooted in dry rich soil has the permanence of the wild native things. Corn also planted upon alfalfa sod well cul- tivated mocks at seasons, for floods affect it not, since the land must perforce be well drained, and drouths and heats that sear other vegetation pass it by, leaving it fresh, green and undismayed. These two crops then are destined not to free the farmer from labor, for they bring abundant labor to him, but to take away from him the cares and perplexi- ties incident to the growing of uncertain things. HISTORY, The world is very old. For more ages than we dream men have lived and loved, toiled, sown and reaped. The history of the race is written in the form, variation and characteristics of animals and plants much more than in tablets of stone or pieces of clay. Would you ask how long men have lived on earth? Ask when first hornless cattle were kept. Records in Egypt show them to have been common thousands of years before the time of Christ. Ask when sheep were first tamed and their fleeces developed. The very race of wild sheep has per- ished from the face of the earth and the sheep of Abraham’s day were highly developed. Ask when wheat was taken from being a wild grass and made a cultivated plant; when the banana ceased to have seeds; the apple gathered sweetness and the vine began to hang down with luscious clusters of pur- pling grapes. Ask, too, when it was that animals became the subjects and friends of men; when men began to feed them, to gather forage for them, to cultivate plants for them, to perceive which plants were the best plants and which best fed the animals. Ask, too, when men first saw that soils grew worn, that certain plants fed soils, that other plants caused them to become infertile. (46) HISTORY. 47 All these things happened many thousands of years ago. The best things done by men are older than recorded history. The taming of the ass, the taming of the horse, the taming of the cow, the devel- opment of the milk-giving powers of the cow, the caring for sheep and goats, the breeding of sheep for wool, the spinning of wool and flax, the melting of ores—all these primal things happened long centuries ago. Since historic times man _ has learned very little indeed that ‘the needed to know; the important, primal, essential things were all worked out before men began to write upon stone and upon parchment. It is not certain that there exists today any wild al- falfa. There are places where some has escaped from cultivation and gone wild, but all alfalfa, so far as known, has so changed its form from what it would be in the wild state that it is doubtless bearing in its nature the very marked signs of the moulding hand of man. For example, all alfalfa so far as known today needs to be cut off from time to time to keep it in thrift. No wild plant requires that. Alfalfa that we know reflects a long line of civilizations, re- flects the habits of people who have kept cows and donkeys and sheep and horses, kept these and fed them, carrying their forage to them on men’s backs for ages untold. It requires no effort of the imag- ination when looking out upon an alfalfa field to picture the fields from which it sprung through the ages past. The little fields fair and green and fertile under hot glowing desert skies mostly. Little fields 48 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. for the most part walled often with walls of stone or of sun-dried bricks, lined with little canals of cool water with overhanging trees, fig trees or al- monds or palms, and brown men and women, lithe and strong, coming to cut the green meadow with curved sickles and scythes, gathering it in sheaves and carrying it on their backs through gates in the walls to the animals eagerly awaiting it in the en- closed corrals or stables. Alfalfa was developed in dry regions. It came, very likely, from southwest- ern Asia through Persia to Arabia, whence it got its name alfalfa, which simply means the best forage. The Persians grew it finely. Down along the rivers of Babylon in ancient Babylonia alfalfa was a stand- ard crop, most likely. Those river valleys are rich in lime and alkaline in their reaction, admirably suited to alfalfa culture, and there under irrigation alfalfa undoubtedly throve. The one reference to alfalfa in the Bible is found in the fourth chapter of the book of Daniel where in the thirty-third verse it is related of the king: “The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and did eat grass [alfalfa] as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hairs were grown like eagle’s feathers and his nails like bird’s claws. And at the end of the days, I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored Him that liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation.” The truth probably was that old Nebuchadnezzar, rich, spoiled, feasted and wined till he became in- sane, was turned out to graze in an alfalfa field till on this simple and nutritious diet his body was re- HISTORY. 49 newed, filled with health and vigor, when his reason returned and of course he did what any healthy man will do daily, blessed the Most High and praised Him and was humbled and glad once more. It is related that in the old kingdom of Babylonia wheat would yield 200 fold and sometimes 300 fold, which plainly indicates that it must have been sown thinly in drills upon alfalfa sod, irrigated from the canals with which that country abounded, and prob- ably weeded and cultivated by slave labor. About 500 years before Christ the Persians invad- ed Greece. Now, Greeks are stubborn folks, or were in those days, and many were the battles before the Greeks were even in part conquered. The Persians, aided by Greek factions and tribes, doggedly toiled steadily onward, taking city after city. Wherever they went they had chariot horses to feed and cattle —bulls, so legend says—for fighting, and cows no doubt for helping feed the army. With curious mix- ture of martial and agricultural zeal they brought with them alfalfa seed and wherever they conquered foothold they sowed alfalfa. An army travels, and fights, on its belly, so it was a mighty help to the Greeks to have the aid of the alfalfa. And without doubt it was eaten by the soldiers as well, since green succulent alfalfa has always been boiled and eaten as greens or pottage. Unhappily the Persians sent away hosts of the Greek subjects as slaves to Asia, else when they had gone on the people might have been almost benefited by the war, since alfalfa fields were left in the wake of the army. It must be 50 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. remembered that much of the land of Greece is formed from the decay of limestone and marble. Thus filled with carbonate of lime it is naturally fitted for alfalfa culture as well as for the production of such magnificent men as the Greeks undoubtedly were. From Greece alfalfa spread into Rome, just when we do not know. The first real farm books were written in the first century after Christ. One L. Junius Moderatus Columella, born in Spain but liv- ing most of his life in Italy, wrote twelve books which he called ‘‘De Re Rustica.’’ These books were written about the year 56 A. D. It would seem from dipping into the pages of Columella that about as much was known then of agriculture as is known today. Indeed, they knew then many things that we do not know today, and agriculture has lost many picturesque details by the pruning away little by little of agricultural fancies, by the accumulations of stern facts. But however much we may smile at some of Col- umella’s account of ancient Roman agriculture, we will respect him for his account of alfalfa and the way to grow it. Many forage crops are mentioned by Columella—medie (alfalfa), vetches, bitter vetch, chick pea, barley, oats and wheat. Speaking of the various sorts of fodders he says the herb medic (alfalfa) is the choicest, because when it is sown it lasts ten years. He continues: It can bear to be cut down four times, sometimes also six times in a year, because it dungs the land. All emaciated cattle what- HISTORY. 51 soever grow fat with it because it is a remedy for sick cattle, and a jugerum of it is abundantly sufficient for three horses the whole year. It is sown as we shall hereafter direct. About the beginning of October cut up the field wherein you design to sow medic next spring and let it lie all winter to rot and grow crum- bly. Then about the first of February plow it carefully a second time and carry all the stones out of it, and break all clods. After about the month of March plow it the third time and harrow it. When you have thus manured the ground, make it in the manner of a garden, into beds and divisions ten feet broad and fifty feet long, so that it may be supplied by water with paths and there may be an open access for weeders on both sides. Then throw old dung upon it and sow in the latter end of April. Sow it in such a proportion that a cyathus of seed may take up a place 10 feet long and 5 feet brcad. After you have done this, let the seeds that are thrown into the ground be presently covered with earth with wooden rakes. This is a very great advantage to them because they are very quickly burnt up with the sun. After sowing, the place ought not to be touched with an iron tool, but as I said it must be raked with wooden rakes, and weeded from time to time lest any other kind of herb destroy the f2eble medic. You must cut the first crop of it somewhat later, after it has put forth some of its seeds. Afterwards you are at liberty to cut it down as tender and as young as you please after it has sprung up and to give it to horses, but at first you must give it to them more sparingly until they be accustomed to it, lest the novelty of the fodder be hurtful to them, for it blows them and creates much blood. Water it very often after you have cut it. Then after a few days when it shall begin to sprout weed out of it all plants of a different kind. When cultivated in this manner it may be cut down six times in a year and it will last ten years. That instruction bears evidence of much famil- iarity with the alfalfa plant. It must not be cut too soon the first time, not till some seeds have formed. Tt is true here that young alfalfa is destroyed often- times if cut before the young shoots have put out at the base of the stems. Not having observed this perhaps the old alfalfa growers judged by the state of bloom or seeding when it should be cut. Note that Columella says ‘‘it dungs the land.’? Thus early they knew the practice of farming with legumes, 52 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. and that alfalfa was the best of the legumes for this purpose of enriching soils. Note too that he found it a good food for horses. It is said that the chariot horses were fed on alfalfa hay, and the colts destined to become war horses were raised largely on it because it made them larger, heavier and more impetuous. From Italy alfalfa naturally spread wherever the Roman farmer colonist penetrated, through France, Spain, England and doubtless Germany. It may be that Spain also received alfalfa from Africa through the Moors. The name alfalfa comes from the Ara- bic and means the best forage, and this name the Spanish people adopted. Through the introduction of the plant in America by the Spanish colonists and our taking it from them on our Pacific coast we get the name alfalfa. In France, England and most other European countries, and in Utah and formerly through all our eastern states, the name lucerne is in common use. This name comes from a river val- ley in northern Italy. Alfalfa throve in Italy, in much of Spain and in parts of France. Where it throve no other forage plant could compete with it. It was introduced Jong ago into England and there it throve in spots. It was much extolled by some, its planting advised, yet it never became common and today is seldom seen in extensive use on the British Isles. It was brought to America in two ways, from Spain to Mexico, Peru, Chili, Argentina, from Mexico to Texas, New Mexico and California; later from Chili HISTORY. 53 to California in 1851, which marked the really im- portant step in alfalfa growing in America. The other source was the bringing of lucerne seed to the eastern states of America from England, France and Germany early in the history of Ameri- can colonization. In the eighteenth century many men were experimenting with lucerne in Virginia, New York, North Carolina and doubtless other states. Some of them succeeded quite well and many of them doubtless failed. We know now the reason why many failed. Then the behavior of lu- cerne was a mystery to the farmer. We had not learned then the intimate connection between alka- linity of soil and presence of abundant carbonate of lime and alfalfa culture. It is all very easy to ex- plain this now—how alfalfa came from alkaline soils rich in lime down in Persia, into the alkaline plains of Babylonia, to the limestone soils of Roman lands, to the soils of Greece built on marble decay, to the limestones of southern France, to the alkaline soils of semi-arid north Africa, to the soils rich in lime and alkalies in Spain, thence to similar soils, yet richer in lime, in Mexico, Chili, New Mexico and Cal- ifornia. In England soils vary immensely as regard their lime content. Some are very rich in lime; on these lucerne throve: in others lime is very deficient ; here it failed. In France there is found a similar variability, so also there were found areas that grew good lucerne, and others that grew none at all. In eastern America, on the other hand, nearly all soils were from the first settling of the country deficient 54 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. in lime and thus unfitted for alfalfa. Yet the soils as our fathers found them were sweeter than they are today, and thus we often hear old men relate that in their boyhood their fathers grew lucerne and that their daily task was to cut it and feed it to the cows; this on land that will not today unaided grow alfalfa at all. In reading over the written accounts of how to grow lucerne published in the last century one is amazed to find how much the authors knew of the habits of the plants, and as much astonished to per- ceive that few if any of them understood the vital connection between alfalfa and a large percentage of carbonate of lime in the soil. One of the good old books on agriculture is ‘‘The Dictionary of the Farm,’’ by the Rev. W. L. Rham, Vicar of Wink- field, Berkshire, who died in 1848. The article on lucerne is strikingly good, so good, indeed, that had the author known two facts of which he seems to have been unaware there would have been left little to add. He evidently had not traced the relationship between thrifty lucerne and a strong lime content in the soil, nor had he seen the harm that comes to lucerne when it is mown off too early, before it has made sufficient growth to start the little shoots at the base of the stems. Ignorance of the latter fact is very universal in England at the present time and leads to much lack of thrift and falling away of the alfalfa plants that are usually cut with the scythe bit by bit, and fed to horses green, just as Rham advised. The writer has indeed pointed out to Eng- HISTORY. 55 lish farmers that the lower sides of their lucerne fields remained thrifty after the upper ends were half destroyed, just because of the fact that the man with the scythe commenced on the upper end before it was time to cut the immature plants, and by the time he had reached the bottom of the field it was sufficiently mature, so remained in vigorous condi- tion. The article follows from ‘‘Rham’s Dictionary of the Farm,’’ published in 1853: Lucerne is a plant which will not bear extreme frost nor super- abundant moisture, and its cultivation is therefore restricted to mild climates and dry soils; but where it thrives its growth is so rapid and luxuriant that no other known plant can be compared to it. In good deep loams lucerne is the most profitable of all green crops; when properly managed the quantity of cattle which can be kept in good condition on an acre of lucerne during the whole season exceeds belief. It is no sooner mown than it pushes out fresh shoots, and wonderful as the growth of clover sometimes is in a field which has been lately mown, that of lucerne is far more rapid. Where a few tufts of lucerne happen to be, they will rise a foot above the surface, while the grass and clover which were mown at the same time are only a very few inches high. Lucerne, sown ina soil suited to it, will last for many years, snooting its roots downwards for nourishment till they are alto- gether out of the reach of drouth. In the driest and most sultry weather, when every blade of grass droops for want of moisture, lucerne holds un its stem, fresh and green as in a genial spring. The only enemies of this plant are a wet subsoil and a foul sur- face. The first is often incurable; the latter can be avoided by good cultivation. It is useless to sow lucerne on very poor sands or gravel or on wet clays. The best and deepest loam must be chosen, rather light than heavy but with a good portion of vegetable earth or humus equally dispersed through it. If the ground has been trenched, so much the better; and if the surface is covered with some inferior earth from the subsoil it will be no detriment to the crop, for it will prevent grass and weeds from springing up and save much weeding. The lucerne will soon strike down be- 56 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. low it. It is not a bad practice to cover the lucerne field with a coat of coal ashes or poor sand, merely to keep down the weeds, where this can easily be done. The soil in which it is intended to sow lucerne seed should be well prepared. It should be highly manured for the two or three preceding crops and deeply ploughed, if not trenched. It should be perfectly clean, and for this purpose two successive crops of turnips are most effectual. The turnips should be fed off with sheep. In the month of March, the land having been ploughed flat and well harrowed, a very small quantity of barley, not above a bushel to the acre, may be sown, or rather drilled on the ground, and at the same time from 30 to 40 lbs. of lucerne seed sown broadcast and both harrowed in and lightly rolled. If the land will not bear to be laid flat without water-furrows, it will be useless to sow lucerne in it. As the crop comes up it must be carefully weeded: no expense must be spared to do this effectually, for success depends upon it. When the barley is reaped, the stubble, which will probably be strong, should be pulled up by the hand hoe, or by harrowing, if the plants of lucerne be strong, and at all events the ground must be cleared of weeds. It must not be fed off with sheep; they would bite too near the crown. Lucerne should always be cut as soon as the flower is formed. If it is kept clear of weeds the first year, there will be little difficulty with it afterwards, when the roots have become strong. The second year the lucerne will be fit to cut very early, and in a favorable season it may be cut four or five times. After each cutting it is useful to draw heavy- harrows over the land, or an instrument made on purpose resem- bling harrow teeth, the teeth of which are flat, and cutting the soil like coulters. It will not injure the plants, even if it divide the crown of the root, but it will destroy grass and weeds. Liquid manure, which consists of the urine of cattle and drainings of dunghills, is often spread over the lucerne immediately after it has been mown, and much invigorates the next growth; but if the land is rich to a good depth this is scarcely necessary. The lucerne will grow and thrive from seven to twelve years, when it will begin to wear out, and, in spite of weeding, the grass will get the upper hand of it. It should then be plowed up, all the roots carefully collected and laid in a heap with dung and lime to rot, and a course of regular tillage should succeed. The same land should not be sown with lucerne again in less than ten or twelve years, after a regular course of cropping and manuring. Cattle fed upon lucerne thrive better than on any other green food. Horses in particular can work hard upon it without any corn, provided it be slow work. Cows give plenty of good milk HISTORY. 57 when fed with it. In spring it is apt to purge cattle, which with a little attention is conducive to their health. If it is given to them in too great quantities, or moist with dew, they run the risk of being hoven. These inconveniences are avoided by giving it sparingly at first, and always keeping it twenty-four hours after it is cut, during which time it undergoes an incipient fermenta- tion, and the juice is partially evaporated: instead of being less nutritive in this state, it is rather more so. An acre of gocd lucerne will keep four or five horses from May to Octcher, when cut just as the flower opens. If it should get too forward, and there be more than the horses can consume, it should be made into hay; but this is not the most profitable way of using it, and the plant being very succulent, takes a long time in drying. The rain also is very injurious to it in a half dry state; for the stem is readily soaked with moisture, which is slow in evaporating. The produce in hay, when well made, is very considerable, being often double the weight of a good crop of hay. Many authors recommend drilling the seed of lucerne in wide rows, and hoeing the intervals after each cutting. This is the best way with a small patch in a garden, and when only a little is cut every day; but in a field of some extent, the lucerne, when once well established and preserved free from weeds by hand weeding the first year, will keep all weeds down afterwards, and the heavy harrows with sharp tines, used immediately after mow- ing, will pull up all the grass which may spring up. No farmer ought to neglect having a few acres in lucerne on his best land. Note carefully that Rham says, ‘‘If the ground is trenched so much the better, and if the surface is covered with some inferior earth from the subsoil it will be no detriment to the crop.’’ The fact is that earth from the subsoil often, in fact usually, has in it much more lime than surface soil, so that bringing it up is sometimes equivalent to a fairly good liming. It is a little difficult to explain the general neglect of alfalfa in England, since there are many soils there admirably suited to it and almost any of the well-drained English soils would now grow it well if they were well limed and enriched with even bare 58 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. mineral fertilizers. It may be the uncertain weather of British hay-making times has had a deterrent effect to the alfalfa growers, though it would seem more probable that the mere lack of knowledge of the subject was tlhe main factor responsible for the fewness of alfalfa fields there. The writer has seen as thrifty alfalfa in Kent as he has seen anywhere in the world, and has marvelled at its small extent till he was told that the entire crop was fed green to the work horses. In America a number of men wrote enthusiastic- ally of the lucerne plant. It is certain that George Washington grew it at least to some extent, and Thomas Jefferson, on a kindlier soil, grew it so well that in one of his letters he mentions the joy that contemplation of his fields of lucerne gave him. To- | day no alfalfa is grown on either of these farms, nor in their neighborhood. Is it that eastern farms are less fertile now, or is it that their owners are less prudent, enterprising and careful? In New York Robert Livingstone wrote of it and many men experimented with the plant, some with success, some without. In few localities in the east- ern states, however, did it gain a permanent foot- hold. There were several reasons for that. One principal reason was that alfalfa does not mature seed along the Atlantic seaboard except during very dry summers; thus it was necessary to import fresh seed from Europe constantly at considerable trouble and expense. Then the plant’s nature was not un- derstood, its lime requirement was not known, much HISTORY. 59 land was badly drained and fields were ruined by not being cut at the proper time. Thus the enthu- siasts gradually became discouraged and it became a settled belief that lucerne could not profitably be grown in eastern America outside of a few re- stricted neighborhoods. As indicating the sentiment of the friends of alfalfa in those days we quote a letter published in the ‘‘ American Farmer’’ of 1823, the letter copied from the ‘‘New Brunswick Times.’’ The method of sowing advised is curious, to sow in the spring with fall rye, and there may be a hint in this for others living today in similar conditions. Note the excessive price of the seed—50c per lb., or $30 per bushel. The letter written by ‘‘A New Jer- sey Farmer’’ follows: It may materially promote the interests of agriculture to offer through the medium of your paper a few remarks on the culture of lucerne. This article (frequently denominated French clover), I have found by experience to be not only one of the most con- venient, but also the most profitable of any grass which can be eultivated. It vegetates quicker in the spring than any other grass, it resists the effects of drouths, it may be cut four or five times in the course of the season, and it will endure for at least twelve years without being renewed. Of all other grass it is the most profitable for soiling. I am fully of opinion that one acre properly got in would be sufficient to maintain six head of cattle, from the first of May until November, for before it can be cut down in this way, the first part of it will be ready for the scythe. English writers have recommended the drill system for this arti- cle, but in this climate I have found this to be entirely fallacious. The proper mode to be adopted is to have your land in good order, to sow it broadcast, and to get the seed in during the month of April or May. The plan I would recommend would be to sow fall rye at the rate of 15 to 20 pounds to the acre with it. The effect of this is that the rve vegetates quickly, and serves as a nurse to the young grass against the heat of the scorching sun, and by the time the grass attains sufficient strength to protect itself, say in four or five weeks, the rye withers and apparently 60 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. dies. In the spring, however, the rye will again come forth mixed with lucerne, will add much to the quantity on the ground, and prove a most excellent feed for cattle. The rye cut green in this way and before getting into seed will admit of being cut two or three times in the course of the season, with the lucerne before it decays. The kind of soil most suitable for this culture is a dry mellow loam, but a sandy or clay loam will also answer, provided it is not wet. In a favorable season, the lucerne may be cut the next fall after sowing. After the first season you may generally be- gin to cut green for cattle by the first of May, which saves your. young pasture and is in every respect a very great convenience, as hogs and every description of animals devour it with equal avidity. Backward as this season has been, I have been furnish- ing a copious supply every day to seven cattle, since the 5th of May. The seed can be procured at Thornburn’s or other seed stores in New York, at 40 to 50c per pound. The following notes on the culture of alfalfa and sainfoin are from a book called ‘‘ Practical Farmer’’ published in 1793 by John Spurrier and dedicated to Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Spurrier was a transplanted English farmer. It is curious to note how nearly he came to knowing how to grow each of these crops, and how vitally he failed to grasp the truth that these plants thrive on ‘‘gravels’’ when these gravels are composed of limestone pebbles, not necessarily when they do not! This quotation is presented through the courtesy of J. M. Westgate: Saintfoin took its name from the French; for the word Saint- foin, translated into English, is Holy-Hay, which name they gave it from its excellent nutritive quality. There may be more benefit reaped from this grass than any other; as you may get a very great crop in the most dryest land, on hills, gravels, sands, or even barren ground; and it will so improve all those lands in such an extraordinary manner that théy will bring great crops of any sort of grain after it. The stalks of the plant in poor land will be two feet high, and in rich land it will grow as high as six feet. It has tufts of red flowers, of three, fanr, or five incbes in length of the honey- suckle kind: they are so beautiful and sweet that 1 have seen HISTORY. 61 them much esteemed in a garden and called the French honey- suckle. This plant will make twenty times the increase in poor ground than the common turf; and this is owing to its having a long perpendicular root called tap roots, as well as numbers of hori- zontal ones; the perpendicular ones sink to a great depth to at- tract its nourishment. The length of this root is scarce to be credited by any but those who have seen it; I have drawn it out of the ground near fourteen feet; and some have told me that they have traversed it to double that length. This is the reason I presume why this plant will bear drouth, when all other grasses have been burnt up by the excessive dryness of the sea- son. I have at one cutting got two tons of this hay per acre. Cold, clay, or wet land is not suitable for this grass, as it would chill and rot the roots. The long root of Saintfoin has near the surface many horizontal roots issuing from it, which extend themselves every way; there are of the same kind all the way down, as the roots go, but they grow shorter and shorter all the way. Any dry land may be made to produce this valuable and use- ful plant, though it be ever so poor; but the richest and best land will produce the greatest crops of it. The best method of sowing it is by drilling, but the earth must be very well prepared and the seed well ordered, or else very little of it will grow. The heads of these seeds are so large and their necks so weak, that if they be above an inch deep, they are not able to rise through the incumbent mould, and, if they are not covered, they will be malted; that is, it will send out its root while it lies above ground, and be killed by the air. The best season for planting it is the beginning of spring; and it is always strongest when planted alone. If barley, oats, or any other grain sown with the saintfoin, happen to be lodged afterwards, it kills the young saintfoin. The quantity of seed to be drilled or sown broadcast upon an acre of land will depend wholly on the goodness of it; for there is some seed, of which not one in ten will strike; whereas, in good seed, not one in twenty will fail. The method of knowing the goodness is by sowing a certain number of the seeds, and seeing how many plants are produced by them. If it is above two years old, it will not grow. The external signs of the seed being good are that the husk is of a bright color rather of a purple, and the kernel plump, of a light grey or blue color. If the kernel be cut across, and appear greenish and fresh, it is a certain sign it is good. If it be of a yellowish color, and friable, and looks thin and pitted, it is a bad sign. The quantity of seed allowed to the 62 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. acre in the drill way is much less than by sowing broadcast. A bushel of seed to an acre of land is 20 seeds to each square foot of land if sown broadcast, which would be sufficient; but there must be an allowance made for casualties. The quantity of good seed I have found by experience is for sowing broadcast, two bushels, and for drilling, one bushel. And as .the saintfoin does not cover all the ground the first year, which spaces are generally occupied by weeds, to remedy this, when I have sown it broadcast, I have sown four or five pounds of clover seed with it to the acre, which has answered a very good purpose, as I have then had a crop the first year. The saintfoin is but a slow grower at first; the second year perhaps will not exceed a clover crop, but afterwards it increases every year for six or seven years before it comes to its full per- fection; and as that increases, the clover goes off, and makes room for it. This valuable plant will keep in perfection for twenty years, if you only give it a slight top dressing with soot or ashes, once in four or five years. The first summer, nor early the next spring, it should not be fed, because it will be apt to bleed itself to death; for the sweetness of it is such, that it will entice cattle to bite into the knot in the ground and spoil it; but afterwards, when it has gathered strength, the best method will be to mow the first crop, and seed it after, which is excellent for cows and sheep. This plant, as well as trefoil, will not thrive in a wet moist soil; and as saintfoin thrives best on high grounds, it is a great advantage in the article of making it into hay, as it has greatly more advantage of the sun, and less to fear of mischief from wet, than grass which grows in low grounds. On the high grounds, the wind will dry more in an hour than it will in meadows that lie low in a whole day; and often the crops of saintfoin make a very good hay in the same seasons in which all the grass hay is spoiled. The sun on the high grounds has also a more benign influence, and sends off the dew there two hours earlier in the morning, and holds it up as much longer in the evening; by these advantages the saintfoin has more time to dry, and is made with half the expense of common hay. Saintfoin for hay should be cut when it is half blossomed, ana managed the same as before directed for clover. If saved for seed, it must be the first cutting. You may know when it is ripe by the seeds coming out easily in your hand. Dry it in the field, and thresh it there on a cloth, as it will shed and you will lose great part of the seed if you carry it to the barn. The straw will be as good as hay for horses; and the hay, when it has been HISTORY. 63 well got in, my horses that have worked hard have been kept on it alone without any grain, have been so fond of it that they have refused beans and oats mixed with chaff in the common way for it. Sheep also will be fatted in pens in winter, with only this hay and water, better than with corn, peas, oats, and the like. In short, there is no hay that is made is equal to it, and the produce will be double that of clover. The land where it is sown should be very clean from weeds, under a fine tilth; which is best done by a turnip fallow. Lucerne is the plant which the ancients were so fond of under the name of Medica, and in the culture of which they bestowed such great care and pains, Its leaves grow three at a joint, like those of the clover; its flowers are blue, and its pods of a screw-like shape, containing seeds like those of the red clover but longer and more kidney shaped, and the color all yellow. The stalks grow erect, and after mowing they immediately grow up again from the parts where they were cut off. The roots are longer than the saintfoin, and are not single, but some times they run perpendicularly in three or four places from the crown. It is the only plant in the world whose hay is equal to the saintfoin for the fattening of cattle; but its virtues in that re- spect are very great. It is the sweetest grass in the world, but must be given to cattle with caution, and in small quantities, otherwise they will swell, and incur diseases from it. Though the common methods of husbandry will not raise lucerne to any great advantage, yet the drilling and the horse- hoe husbandry will raise it, annually increasing in value to the owner, and make one of the most profitable articles of his busi- ness. The soil to plant it on must be either a hot gravel, or a very rich and dry land that has not an under stratum of clay, and is not too near springs of water. The natural poorness of gravel or sand may be made up by dung, and the benefit of the hoe, and the natural richness of the other lands, being increased by hoe- ing and cleansing from grass, the lucerne will thrive with less heat; for what is wanted in one of those qualities must be made up in the other. The best season for planting of it is early in the spring, the earlier the better; for then there is always moisture enough in the earth to make it grow, and not too much heat as would dry up its tender roots, and kill it after the first shootings. About a pound and a half of seed will be enough for an acre. The planting it in autumn in some climates might do; but here the winters are too cold, which would kill great part of the tender plants, and greatly stunt and injure those it does not kill. 64 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. The number of the lucerne plants should be less than those of saintfoin to an acre, because they grow much larger in this way of management, and each occupies a greater space of ground, and produces a larger quantity of hay. The quick growth of this plant requires that it should have large supplies of nourishment, and good room to grow in; and it is better in all things of this kind to err in setting the plants too far distant, than in setting them too near. The most fatal diseases incident to lucerne are starving and smothering; for this reason good cultivation is necessary to it, and the often turning the earth with the hoe all about it. By this means, a plant that in the common way of sowing would not have been more than eight or nine inches high, will be four or five feet, and will spread every way so as to produce a quantity of hay, more like the cutting of a shrub than a plant. The plants should stand at five inches distance in single rows, and the intervals between these rows must be left wide enough for the use of the hoe plough, (if managed according to the horse-hoe husbandry); but if hand hoed, one foot between the rows will do: for which I will refer you to my experiments on fallow crops, where you will find that by this method I had at the rate of four tun lucerne hay per acre. But lucerne sown in drills so near-will in a few years meet in the rows, which will hinder the mould heing stirred, when it will starve for want of nourishment, and thereby wear out. Lucerne is of much quicker growth than saintfoin, or any other grass. I have cut it four times in a season, whereas the others are seldom cut above twice. Lucerne is to be made into hay, the same as saintfoin or’clover; but this must be observed, that it is always to be cut just before it comes to flower. It is a fine food, if cut for the cattle green, it is so sweet and full of nourishment but it must be kept clean from natural grass, as that soon choaks and kills it. Of the introduction of alfalfa into the Pacific coast region we have less recorded. Naturally the people of Spanish blood, settling California from Mexico, brought their favorite farm seeds with them, seeds of their best suited farm crops; among these was alfalfa. Not much alfalfa was grown in California by the Spanish colonists, enough probably to give them credit for the introduction there, as they cer- HISTORY. 65 tainly must claim credit for its introduction into southwestern Texas and probably into New Mexico and perhaps into Arizona. It took the keen prophetic insight of the Ameri- can, however, to see in the alfalfa plant the wonder- ful possibilities that lay within it. Gold was discov- ered in California in 1547 and immediately began a great rush for that land. Many men went by the long route ‘‘around The Horn.’’ In Chili a good land and fertile, with well developed agriculture, ships tarried often for a little time. The passengers wearied with the long sea voyage took themselves with delight to the fields. There they saw alfalfa for the first time. Some of them took seed of it with them to California. Others sent back there for seed and sowed it in California, land of promise. Cali- fornia proved to have suitable soil and climate, and alfalfa throve there astonishingly. Gold could not always be found with pick and shovel, it could with- out fail be found by alfalfa roots. For the first time in its history alfalfa became a great crop and men began to plant it largely. to talk of it and write of it. Probably no one knows more of the early history of alfalfa in California than E. J. Wickson, Director of the California experiment station and dean of the agricultural college. fy letter to him containing questiors and his answers thereto is presented: I am delighted that you will undertake to help me in my alfalfa investigations. I know of no man better fitted than you. The points I particularly wish to know are not very difficult of answer. Question: On what date did the real introduction of alfalfa in California take place, and where was it sown? Answer: I have record of sowing alfalfa by W. E. Cameron, 66 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. near Marysville in the Sacramento Valley in 1851, who continued until he had 270 acres in 1858. Question: What was the source of the seed? Answér: From Chili and the plant was called Chili clover until its Spanish name alfalfa was taken up. It was some time later when its botanical identity with lucerne was known. Question: Were there many alfalfa fields or patches in use by the Mexicans, or earlier Californians, prior to the occupation by the United States? Answer: I never heard of any. Introduction is believed to have been by Americans from Chili with which country there was much trade and where stops were made coming round The Horn. Question: What is the oldest alfalfa field that you know of to day, and about how many years? Answer: I have no definite instance. The plant on good soil— that is free soil where no root injury comes from standing water —is counted upon for more than 20 years of profitable growth. Question: About what percentage of carbonate of lime exists in the most productive alfalfa soils of California? Answer: We are now growing alfalfa on nearly all productive soils, the acreage on the heavier soils, formerly held to be un. suitable, increasing every year. The average lime in California soils (average of 262 analyses) is 1.25%. Question: What would you consider an average yearly pro- duction per acre of alfalfa hay? Answer: Five tons. Question: What is the maximum that you have known? Answer: I cannot be sure but think it has gone up to 12 tons, Question: We hear very astonishing stories of long alfalfa roots; how long a one have you actually seen measured, or had knowledge of that you considered authentic? Answer: 24 feet but others claim up to 30 feet. Concerning Henry Miller’s alfalfa I wrote in ‘‘The Breeder’s Gazette’’ in September of 1900 as follows: Away back in 1850 there landed in San Francisco a lad with fifty cents in his pocket, a brave heart and a determination to work and succeed in this new world. He went to work in a butcher shop. Soon he had a small shop of his own. Then it was a large shop. Then he bought, in 1858, a little land on which to hold some cattle. In 1860 he bought land in the San Joaquin AN ALFALFA HAY HARVEST IN THE CORNBELT. HISTORY. 67 Valley. li was dry semi-arid land. Some of his associates won- dered what he would do with it. He bought more. After a time, I think in 1872, he took out a canal to water it. In 1873 he im- ported some alfalfa seed from Chili. He sowed 7 acres, a large operation at that time. Gradually the holdings of land and of cattle increased. Today the firm owns about a million of acres of land, most of it in California. They have about 100,000 head of cattle. They have about 120,000 sheep. This growth all repre- sents the profit made in growing, killing and selling cattle and sheep. Henry Miller is one of the wonderful men of our time. He is one of the men with foresight and faith. His manager, Mr. Schmitz, of the Poso ranch at Firebaugh, has been with Mr. Miller for thirty years. He told me many incidents that showed the kind of stuff of which the man is made. Here is an instance: When the water was out Mr. Schmitz was instructed to irrigate and sow barley. The land was not prepared for irrigation. Mr. Schmitz and his Irish laborers knew little or nothing of the art. They had a tremendous time of it. Mr. Schmitz lived night and day in the fields, trying to manage the elusive water. The crop was a fair one, but netted a loss of some $2,000. Mr. Schmitz re- ported and asked to be allowed to resign. ‘What for?” asked Mr. Miller. “Well, it does not pay. I would not mind working if I could see that it was a success,” he replied. ‘See here, Mr. Schmitz, suppose you look after the work and let me do the figuring,” said Henry Miller. When alfalfa proved the success that it did the solution of the problem was in sight. After that it became a simple matter of steadily enlarging the areas of irrigated lands, of alfalfa fields, of cattle. Today on Mr. Schmitz’s division of Poso farm of 160,000 acres there are 20,000 acres of alfalfa. There are 25,000 acres of irrigated native grasses. He cuts 15,000 tons of alfalfa hay. He grows 50,000 sacks of barley and 5,000 sacks of Egyptian corn. His tenants grow some 100,000 sacks of wheat and 20,000 sacks of barley. Poso farm carries about 25,000 head of cattle. It has about 40,000 sheep and ships about 5,000 hogs each year. Do those figures make you dizzy? Well, I will not deal much in figures from this time on. You can get the idea that it is not merely a ranch, a farm, but almost a state, certainly a prin- cipality in itself. If there is anything like it in the world I have not heard of it. We rode up the great weir in the San Joaquin River, whence the canal starts that leads off westward and divides the watered land from the dry. A lovely river is the San Joaquin at this time of the year. Calm, neither hurrying 68 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. nor loitering, it sweeps on toward the bay, flowing under cool shadows, stretching out wide over shallower reaches, and em- bracing tree-embowered islands. It bears water enough to make .@ garden of the entire valley, could it be held back until needed. The canal is large enough for steamships at the head; it divides after a time, and divides again and again as needed, until there is a vast network of ditches, hundreds of miles, so much that Mr. Schmitz declined to even guess the total length. Italian laborers take the water from the ditches and spread it over the land. Dikes, following the contours, make it spread over all. The alfalfa fields are irrigated three times each season. There is so large an area to water that it is not practical to get over them oftener than that, yet it would doubtless be better if it could be done. And the cattle graze the alfalfa, except that one crop is taken from the field and made into hay for winter feeding. Alfalfa grows rank over here. It is the best that I have yet seen in California. The cattle thrive on it as a matter of course. They are careful not to turn hungry cattle on alfalfa pasture. They must be first filled up with hay or grass. After once be- coming accustomed to green alfalfa they are never taken away, so do not get hungry, gorge themselves and bloat. That seems the explanation of it all. They graze it with many thousands, yet lose hardly any at all. And sheep are treated the same way. I never saw such lambs as these alfalfa lambs. They are born early, in February generally, and they run on the alfalfa until they go to the butchers. Often their mothers are fat enough to go also in a short time after the lambs are taken away. The herder merely restrains them from roaming about over the fields and trampling down too much at a time. The alfalfa is not grazed short, there is no chasing the sheep away after they have eaten a little, there is no running them about to keep them from ploating; they are simply gotten used to it and left alone until they get fat. And the loss is very light indeed. Shropshire rams are mostly used. The ewe flocks are largely kept up by purchase of range ewes. The increase reaches as high as 120%. The quality of the Miller & Lux cattle is very good—much better than the average. Very many registered and more pure-bred but unregistered Short-horns are used, but the California idea pre- vails that a Short-horn is not good unless he is red. And, by the way, there are no Short-horns in California; there are only “Durhams.” This term is also used in Utah and Nevada. At present the cattle are kept until they are three and four years old. The question of early maturity seems to have been little considered. I saw them dipping cattle as a preventive of Texas fever. The HISTORY. 69 dipping vat is made exactly on the model of a sheep-dipping vat. It is about 75 feet long and the cattle are put through very rapidly and without loss. The lime and sulphur dip is used, to which a quantity of crude petroleum is added. This certainly destroys the ticks if any exist and for a time keeps off the flies. As to the ultimate benefit, as they are put back on supposedly in- fected pastures, I think it a matter of experiment. It costs about five cents to dip a steer. It makes a few orphan calves, that is the worst of the practice. About 3,000 can be dipped in a day at one of these plants. The getting of the cattle to the dipping vat is the main part of the work. As a matter of dipping, this is entirely successful. None of the loss or difficulty that the Goy- ernment dipping experiments reported are encountered here. And I have no doubt that the dipping removes the ticks. Winter feeding is carried on here in an immense way. There is quite an elaborate plan cf procedure. In order to understand it you must consider two propositions: one that the hay has in it more or less of “foxtail” grass, which has on it disagreeable barbs, and that it is desired to mix with the hay a very small amount of grain. The problem is to get rid of the danger of the foxtail, and to mix four pounds of ground barley with some 30 pounds of alfalfa hay and make a ration for a steer, All the hay is cut through great Ross cutters, then it is put on the floor of the great feeding barn and wet down. This barn holds no cattle. Then the ground grain is mixed with it. It stands for about forty-eight hours, until it becomes soft and slightly fermented, then it is taken out and fed. It is in the same condition as alfalfa silage. The cattle thrive better on 34 pounds a day of this ration than on 50 pounds of uncut alfalfa fed out of doors on the ground. That is what these men believe, and who will argue against so much experience? But the amount of labor in- volved would stagger an ordinary mind. Imagine handling 12,000 tons of alfalfa in this way, as Mr. Schmitz must do on his own farm. The amount of grain fed in proportion to hay is very small, it would seem. Yet the hay is of prime quality; it is as rich as hay can possibly be. The method of making hay on this ranch is interesting. It is cut and raked with ordinary tools. It is then caught up by large buck rakes on wheels that carry about 700 pounds to the stack. It is lifted by a great sling, and swung over the rick by a sort of crane. Or it is loaded on wagons and hauled farther and lifted by a Stockton fork. These forks are 5, 6 or 7 feet long; they take up enormous loads and are distinctly better than the harpoon or grapple forks used East. I mean to have one on our own ranch and one in Ohio. The ricks are not left sharp, and 70 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. in our wet Ohio climate would spoil badly. The haymakers are largely Italians; the irrigators are Italians. Spaniards do some of the work. Basques do some of it, Mexicans do a part, Portu- guese do a part, Chinese do the cooking and gardening. Ameri- cans do a little of everything, and are often foremen. Mr. Schmitz speaks three or four languages, and finds them almost indispensable. Things must go wrong very often on such a vast ranch; there must be perplexities and vexations enough to vex a saint. Think then how convenient to have three or four lan- guages in which to express your disapprobation with things in general and the case in particular! This much for one man’s fortunes as built on al- falfa roots. But other men were awakening to the value of the plant. Soon it spread over much of California, and thence eastward into Utah where it was called lu- cerne and where it throve as well as it could thrive anywhere on earth. In Utah were many small farm- ers, careful men, keeping cows and horses and pigs with poultry and bees. To these men alfalfa was a god-send. The Mormon farmers began to cut alfalfa for seed. From Utah seed nearly the whole west has been planted. Colorado took alfalfa next; fields of good size were being sown in 1886 when first the writer traveled through that state.