The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1892-04-01
RENoVATING SOILS.


with "a Report of Results.
Four farmers living in the same COM
non school district furnish the subject
Of these remarks. One of them owns
1000 acres, the next farmer adjoining to
linn owns 200 acres, the next so acres,
and the fourth owns 800 acres. Farmer
No. top dresses with manure all his
lands when in grass. He keeps two
teams drawing the fresh manure from
his stable the whole year round, Farmer
No. 2 buys bone dust and sows with his
corn and wheat, and buys every year.
Farmer No, B farms his with hard
knocks and never places any manure
whatever upon his soil, Farmer No.
hauls out all his barnyard manure and
spreads il over his soil and sows in
clover one or two fields each year, for
the double purpose of pasture and fer
tilizing,
What are the results? No, has
brought his land up to Il fourfold yield
in productiveness, ana can sell it for
double as much as he gave for it five
years ago. No. 2 sowed field last sea-
son in fall wheat and realized twenty
three bushels per acre, sowing with bone
dust. No. 3, Immediately across the way
and on the same kind of soil as No. 9,
sowed fall wheat without bone dust and
got eleven bushels to the acre, No. 4
got twenty-five per acre on clovered land.
A similar difference is noticed all over
the country, yet one man adheres to his
own methods in the face of such differ
ences seen and observed all around him.
+ why is it," In reply to this natural
question, correspondent of The Prairie
Farmer, who related the foregoing, an
swers: Farmer No. reads agricultural
journals and gives his attention mostly to
fast horses, breeding and rearing the same
for market. Farmer No. . reads polit-
ical farm journal Farmer No. 3 reads
no farm periodical at alleges it as his
fathers did hundred years ago. Farmer
No. reads half dozen farm journals
and experiments besides Farmers and
4 are stock raisers and grow some wheat
and oats Farmers No. . and are grain
raisers for the most part. The farmer
who neglects to renovate his soil is sure
not to prosper. For every crop the soil
yields us we should restore as much as
we took from it, and the easiest method
for so doing is to SOW the soil in clover,
sow regularly and haul out all the ma
nure that accumulateS in the barnyard
and top dress your meadow and the thin
places in your clover fields.
Farmer No. was long while learn
ing the use of clover on his land. One
piece of worn out soil he sowed three
times under different circumstances and
failed getting stand. He concluded to
top dress it the fourth year and spread
barnyard manure over it, giving it a
moderately thick dressing. 1t was not
planted in am other crop, and this time
he secured "a splendid stand of clover.
Now whether it was the old seed or
the new found in the fresh manure, he
was unable to say. A neighhor had told
him that he had the same experience,
only he got his manure from an old sweet
potato plant pit which had laid there
eight years, and after spreading it on a
poor piece of land there came splendid
stand of clover. Farmers are learning
that there is no forage crop that is as
profitable as the clover, take it as prov
ender or as fertilizer.