The Estancia news. [volume] (Estancia, Torrance County, N.M.) 1904-1912, 1907-09-13
CONTINUED from last week.


Now if you will follow the plan am
going to outline little more in full de-
tail you will get a big crop if you get a
big year, and a good crop if poor year
To do this you must anticipate what
you are going to get next year. In
other words, prepare the ground this
year for the larger part of next years
crop, by furnishing fertility by double
disking early in the spring. Now take
your conditions as they are as soon as
your crop is cut. If it is possible for
you to 80 it, disk that ground, double
disk it, single disking does not seem
to be sufficient to loosen it up. Then
later on if heavy rains should come you
should harrow it. If 1hey do not, let
it 60 until spring, then double disk and
harrow until the latter part of June,
or as long as you can keep the weeds
down. Do not let them get the start of
you. Then plow in depth to the pro
portion of the machinery you have to
plow your ground with. If no surface
packer is used | would not plow more
than five to six inches. Now / am as
suming in my talk here with reference
to the soil that it is what is commonly
called sandy loan, which is most of the
soil notice here. In farming in san
dy soil it is we'll to plow little deeper.
A soil that is as sandy as perhaps in
the vicinity Of Willard would bear deep
er blowing. The little harrow works
down, but the heavier soils do not do
this. Then plow if you have no packer.
AS l said take the disk and set it straight
and go over the ground that you have
to plow. That plowed in the afternoon
should be packed before leaving the
field at night, and then the narrowing
done. Do notlet it lie there to dry out,
because when it once gets dry, this is
soil that has a fair per cent of clay in
and if you let it lie until it gets dry
then you can't work it down, and moth
ing will help you out toa degree, but a
very heavy pouring rain which you can
not depend on.
| would not advise putting wheat on
ground this fall that has been broken
this year unless it has been very thor
oughly cultivated. l would not put very
much on. l would rather put on a
spring crop, and as much as possible
carry over until next fall. Now / real
ize just how you take it. You say,
"Now | have got to have some money.
I must build, and put in a pretty good
CROP" Gentlemen you want to weigh
this thing carefully. | know what a
man can do on almost nothing, because
I h,ve done it. When we were in Da-
kota after the first early success we
made which I referred to, we came up
against five consecutive years of failure,
the first one following a year of very
good crops and fair price and we had
gotten pretty independent. When the
first failure came the railroad shipped
in free coal, and the county bought free
seed for us, but the next year the rail
road did not furnish free coal, and the
county did not buy seed for us but we
got along some way, and we had another
one and got through it, and another, unit
we had five. l would not want to give
you the formula we followed exactly,
but can say this. Had l known ther
whatI know now Iwould not have beer
suffering. Now gentlemen will you
give us some questions?