Oxford Democrat. [volume] (Paris, Me.) 1833-1933, 1902-01-07
MIXED 1--WE STOCK nuseANoRY.

sciences that relate to agriculture. She
gets her food from the Mississippi val.
ley, while her uplands are impoverished,
and wet lands are undrained. The south
has burned the humus from her soils by
perpetual cropping when her heavy rain
fall carries the loose soil to the ocean.
Farms are being abandoned in old Eng
land because her renters do not keep
pace with improved cultivation. The
western farmer has entered upon soil
robbing, and is making interesting head
way. The grain seller works at a disad-
vantage. He seldom gets anything from
his coarse folders.
Last summer was dry during the corn
growing season. Soils of equal strength,
originally, varied greatly at husking
time. The crop that grew on pasture
sod, thoroughly pulverized and well
cultivated, was better than the crop that
grew on old land for two reasons. First,
the organic matter from grass sod retain
ed moisture: and secondly, natures
laboratory had prepared more plant food
for the growing crop.
Moisture in the soil is necessary to the
formation of plant food, especially the
nitrogenous feature. The nitrate is the
form in which the plant uses nitrogen
and is natures supreme effort in her
soil laboratory. The nitrate cannot be
forced without moisture. The soil
bacteria that make nitrates cannot exist
in the ground without humus or decay
ing vegetation, and they cannot work
without moisture. You remember that
we had light corn crop in 1894 because
of drouth. The nitrates could not be
manufactured for want of moisture, but
here we find q peculiar value in dry
climate, in that the elements of plant
food were not lost, as they would have
been with heavy rainfall; they remained
until 1895, when moisture enabled the
process of forming nitrates to proceed,
in very heavy crop.
GRASSES AND CLovERs AS SOIL I'M
PRovERs.
Now we can secure proper soil condi-
tions by growing grasses and clovers, but
the domestic animal is necessary to
economic consumption. You can reduce
fertility by selling hay as readily as by
selling grain, but you do not reduce
organic matter so fast. Stock the farm
with first-class animals, never sell off re-
liable breeders when prices are low, but
hold steady hand, and the average will
pay we'll, and the farm will pay better.
If you must rent, still keep the grazing
stock on the farm. The renter cannot
by carelessness or want of diligence do
As much harm as he would as a grain
seller. Where cultivation is continuous
and organic matter is burned out of the
soil, the soil bacteria become fewer and
fewer until there are not enough to pre-
pare plant food. You must take care of
these co-workers, or 60 to poverty. All
the ingenuity of man could not change
one load of manure into plant food with
out soil bacteria, and the grain seller
grad ually units the soil for their habita-
tion.
The stock grower who has pastures
and feeds grains, and hauls out manure,
works in cooperation with nature, and
these agents she uses, and he need have
no doubt of nature doing her part. The
fact that he keeps stock saves the situa-
lion.
PLEA FOR BETTER ROTATION.
A well-arranged system of rotation
greatly to maintaining the
lniform fertility of the soil, and is also
,ne of the readiest means by which to
get rid of insect pests. The department
IF agriculture is searching the world
over for plants that may be useful in the
several states and territories of the
Union, to be used as features in systems
If rotation. When a locality becomes
addicted to the habit of growing one
,rop year after year, the average soil de-
.eriorates unless fertilizers are applied,
whether the crop be cotton or wheat, or
whatever is sold from the soil. One of
he most pressing questions we have to
leal with is the finding of plants that
,an be used in rotation in the drier por-
ions of our country. People of north
srn states that have rainfall around 80
inches have the least difficulty in find
ng crops that can be used in systems of
crops as can be fed upon
he farm to domestic animals with profit.
Farmers in the drier sections of our
country have more difficulty in finding
profitable crops for systems of rotation.
GROW MORE SUGAR BEETs.
1 have been urging the sugar beet as a
crop of this kind. 1t meets
many of the requirements. The by
product of the factory is an admirable
eature of the ration of all domestic
while the sugar that is sold
axes nothing from the soil, since it
zones from the atmosphere; that is its
principal recommendation. have been
stock breeder and feeder all my life,
md confess before you that / do not
Know how to winter domestic animals as
we'll without roots as with them.
Nothing that is as easily procured
axes the place of this nutrient. This is
10 we'll understood that most feeders
row roots for winter use, when the
PASTURES are bare or covered with snow.
t is found profitable in some parts of
he United States to grow rutabaga
urnips and feed them to domestic ami
nails. In other localities the mangel-
vurzel is most in favor. The cabbage,
,otato and other vegetables are useful
long this line when their price is low,
,ut it requires skill in the dairyman to
make first-class butter from some of
hese vegetables, as they possess volatile
Icids that injure the flavor.-James Will
ON in New England Homestead.
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