The ranch. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1902-1914, 1904-03-01

the Weld in actual cash value per acre.
He also contributes a half column ar
ticle exploiting the wonderful qualities
of the Australian salt bush, plant
which he advocates as especially valu-
able to the farmers of the Yakima
country. The fact is that repeated ex-
periments with Australian salt bush
in the alkali districts of the Northwest
prove it to be unable to stand our win
ters, and it is fat failure.
On January 18th we were told the
greatest and most nutritive forage crop
was COW peas. What are we to believe
about all his previous statements9 Are
they all overshadowed by the fact that,
as he claims, ga field of cow peas is
often the poor man s bank9" But Joel
Shoemaker evidently does not expect his
readers to remember anything he says
over three days. In the very next is
sue of the Twice-a-week Post-Intelli-
gencer he praises the new forage plant
teosinte with all the vigor at his COM
mand. The farmer can get $50 tons of
green feed per acre; it grows to, the
height of 10 and IL feet, and has two
crops annually. It will prove money
maker to dairymen and stock feeders.
AS ensilage it has few superiors.'
This is really remarkable. All the old
and tried standbys of the dairyman
and stockman are in great danger of
being replaced by this new, remark
able and untried plant-teosinte. What
do the agricultural college professors
know about itg
he 1oir 70 foi1 10 10
money out Of teosinte, perhaps he had
better pillow up the field and put it into
pecan trees. Joel Shoemaker, who con-
siders himself an authority on their
cultivation, says they are a remarkably
profitable crop and that the Yakima
valley is peculiarly adapted to their
production. The same may be said of
the SOFA bean, which, according to Sho-
maker, is going to replace the old fav-
orite of the dairyman-gluten or cot
tonseed meal. If, after experimenting
with all these plants you do not make
success, try, try again. Shoemaker
says the raising of squads for the city
market is going to be the salvation of
the Yakima valley farmer According
to his figures there is nothing that can
beat squads for profit. But he fails
to say how the farmer is going to ex
ist during all the years he is trying the
various plants and vegetables recon-
mended as the most profitable.
The persistency with which this for
age crop writer is telling his readers
about the chest and most profitable
CROP is worthy of a better cause.
Every thinking farmer knows that gin
seng is practically nothing in the farm
operations of the country, yet Shomak
or insists that there is going to be a
revolution in gardening in the Yaki-
ma valley and that ginseng will prove
the salvation of the gardener; ginseng
is going to make rich every one who
plants a plot of ground in this crop.
1t is remarkable with what sang froid
this writer deals with the subjects he
selects. He speaks as if everything
he says is the truth, and nothing but
the truth. Those horny handed tillers
of the soil, who have spent their lives
in close touch with nature and know
the exact conditions necessary to the
successful growing of a crop and what
crops are best adapted to different sec
tions and different soils, may prefer to
disagree with Joel Shoemaker, but they
are not to be taken into account. Sho-
maker knows all about it! 1t is really
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