Connecticut western news., 1882-01-18
A THIRTY ACRE CORN FIELD.
A Statement of the Result of Five
 Years Experiments.

Years Experiments.
 A. W. Ross, North6eld, Mass, after five years successive experiments on a field of thirty acres, planted with corn, sent the following statement of the re. suits to the Department of agriculture at Washington
 "In different sections of the field the soil is light sand, sandy loam, clay loam and a vet, heavy, cold, black soil, thus giving quite variety to work on. My method of preparation was, the first year, to blow in the fall and cultivate in the spring before planting. The second year I plowed late in the fall and cul- tSvated before planting. The third year I plowed in the spring; the fourth year I plowed in the fall, and the fifth and sixth years in the spring, in all cases preparing the ground we'll before plant ing. Manure from the barn is always spread broadcast; if old stubble land. and there is time, it is plowed in; ii not, it is spread after blowing and cultivated in. Always spread the manure qalte iberally as far as it goes, and generally use wood ashes for the remainder of the piece. l never have used much of fer tilizers which are manufactured for sale, excepting in the drill, with the seed when planting. from 100 to 200 pounds per acre. as might happen. The ashes and other fertilizers used outside of the drill are spread broadcast and cultivated in the same as barn manure, but never plowed under. The manures from the barn are used on the wet, heavy soils i; the ashes on the lighter soils. The manufactured fertilizers do best on the moist land, unless there is plenty of rain. After the land is prepared it is planted with the Ross horse-planter, which moves all the rubbish out of the way, prepares the seed-bed, makes the furrow, drops the seed, fertilizes, covers and rolls the land over the seed. It also marks for the next row. If the land is weedy and requires early cultivation, I use the Ross hand wheel-hoe, by which 8 man can hoe from four to six acres a day if not, when the corn is large enough I use the Ross horse -cultivator first and afterward the hilling- machines. The work is done better with these machines than men can do it with hand-hoes.
 'The above is my method of raising corn. It never fails. For fifteen years no drought has troubled my crops. The first year used no manure, and the yield was not over thirty bushels shelled corn per acre. Since that time there have been barn manure, ashes and some superphosphate applied every year, and the result has been yearly increase of the crop. As we raise corn it does not cost over $1.2 per acre to plant and hoe 1t through the season. Do you ask how it was doneP I pay my hired man $15 per month and board him on the farm. He will plant and hoe, with little as- sistance, the thirty acres, and do enough other work to nearly or quite pay for his board. We are thus able, on good farming land not worth over $75 per acre, to produce corn at a very small expense. In the New England States the fodder, if properly managed, will about pay the whole cost of raking the crop aud leave the corn for net profit.
 "When corn is grown, cut up, bound and stocked in the field it is then raised and ready for feed. Then commences another branch of the business-that is to say, marketing. We may waste the whole crop, or feed or dispose of 1t in such way as to nearly or quite double its value. From my own experience for fifteen years past I am satisfied that to husk, bin, shell, carry to mill, pay the miller for grinding and return to the barn in meal, costs from thirty to forty cents per bushel, according to wages, the distance from mills, etc. That be- ing the fact, if is really worth but little at the present prices of fifty or fifty-five cents per bushel. have for two years past used a husking machine in the barn and done the smelling and grinding by horsepower, and yet am of the opinion that there is more net profit in feeding corn and fodder in the bundle and buy ing Western corn than in husking and grinding our own corn in the Eastern States. We have for six years fed much of our corn in that way and used the money it would have cost to harvest and get our own corn into meal to buy surplus meal for our extra feed and ma nure heap, which has a great tendency to improve the farm"