The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1892-03-25
INTENSIVE FARMING. g
That may be Realized from Sixteen Acres
of Land.

That may be Realized from SiAbooh Acreb
of Land.
Mr.. J. o. Sanford of Stamford
member of the Board of Agriculture
and practical farmer, among his sub
iects treated at the meetings of the
board has some on, "The Renewing of
Exhausted Soils" which contains many
excellent suggestions. This paper was
read at the meeting of the Dairymen's
Association at Brattleboro and printed
in the New England Homestead. In it
he tells how farmer can winter "a cows
from the crops grown on Is acres of
land
AS this explanation is not very lengthy
it is given here entire:
Under old methods he made butter
through the summer, selling it for very
low price. In winter his COWS were dry,
consuming two and One-half tons of hay
each, aggregating go tons, and requiring
go to so acres of meadow land for its pro-
duction. With modern methods, 16
acres of meadow land well farmed
will produce their winter fodder. Ten
acres of hay will give 80 tons and six
acres of corn 10S tons. The daily win
ter ration per COW should be hay, IL
pounds, silage 80 pounds, cottonseed
meal two pounds, and wheat bran five
pounds. This will require 30 tons of
hay and so tons of corn, five tons of cot
ton seed meal at $27 and seven and one
half tons of bran at 500, making the
cost of purchased feeds $500. This herd
should make through the winter IS
pounds of butter per day and for 210
days, or seven months $3.50 pounds at
| 25 cents per pound would be S945,
sDnn xunrfh of frpai1 loo
S645 as the feeding value of the pro-
ducts of 16 acres, an average S4O.3l per
acre. Now if this shows that farming on
land in a good state of fertility is remun-
erative, it also shows that the farmer
who is content in taking meagre crops
from rundown land is working his own
farm on shares and getting but a small
share at that. Two crops year from
the same field should be the rule. The
land should be always in a high state of
fertility and when it is once brought to
high state of productiveness it should
be kept constantly at work and never be-
come deficient in plant food.
The above figures are worth studying.
1t will require pretty good management
to secure the yields of hay and corn here
| given, but with the right kind of soil,
plenty of fertilizers and cultivation,
there is no doubt it can be done after
getting well started. There will natur-
ally need to be more of a rotation of
crop than the above illustration would
imply. Alternate crops of corn and hay
would hardly be practicable. In other
parts of this paper Mr.. Stamford tells
how to get poor land up to the above
point of production. 1t would be by de-
voting the best land to corn and growing
peas and oats and buckwheat. These
last are good preparatory crops and are
not as exhaustive to the soil as some
others.
The manurial resources must be made
the most of and some special fertilizers
used. These crops fed, with the addi-
ton of bran and cettonseed. will help to
make more manure. On fair kind of
land, rotation would be peas and oats
first year and corn the second, well ma
nured. The next year seed this with
peas and oats, and stock to grass with
clover, timothy and red-top.
DE sins ,SS ~ ard oats are made into hay
so long as large crops can be secured.
In pursuing this kind of farming the
idea would be to devote less land to the
cultivated crops and hay, aiming to oct
much larger return from that SO EN-.
ployed, and at less expense than the
same amount could be realized from
previous methods.
This changing from extensive TO in
tensive farming, will be a gradual pro
cess, as the prevailing sentiment has so
long been in favor of large areas, that il
Will require very plain and satisfactory
evidence to convince farmers that more
profit can be realized from so acres prop !
erly managed, than from double that
amount, as mole usually practiSed. But
tlme accomplisheS wonderful changes
and among them will doubtless be some. |
thing of the kind outlined by Mr.. Sanford |
in his paper.
AS far as the pTa GEda'is'In IRON tne DAIRY
omd0fe in the accomplishment The |
price Tor the butter is good, but the
yleld Is not above what the careful farm
er should secure. The amount given |
is only the returns from seven months
and wonld average 1914 lbs. per COW.
With proper care the year round itshould
be 200 pounds and that would make the
average per cow $50. instead of $40 for
the seven months.
That would not effect the average re-
turns per acre of $40.31. from the crops
as for the other five months of the year,
and that during the summer season, the
COWS would be in pasture. With the
kind of farming here descibed it will be
found necessary to turn some of the
poorest part of the meadow to pasture,
md that must be utilized to the best
purpose. To get better crops from the
and should be the constant aim, and
his means better cultivation, fertiliza-
ion and seeding.