The Kadoka press and Kadoka reporter. [volume] (Kadoka, S.D.) 1910-1923, 1911-08-18

and finally, when her usefulness is
over as a producer of the one food
that alone will sustain the human
race the longest, she meekly walks
out into the pasture and builds up her
/ body into the second best food known
to man, beef" and uncomplainingly
lays down her life on the altar of
mans appetite.
Statesmen grow grey in trying to
explain the merits and demerits of
the tariff silver tongued orators spell
bind the world in eulogizing our war
heroes; poets go wild over the use
fulness of the horse and the sagacity
affection, and so forth, of the dog.
But permit me to take off my hat to
the old brindle COW that has nourish-
ed the world for ages.
The most important factor in con-
sidering the value of the COW is the
feed. Stanley county has been noted
for years as the ideal feeding ground
for her majesty, but nature has pro-
vided for beef more than milk, and
when man wishes to benefit from milk
more than beef it is up to him to as
sist the soil to bring forth the milk
producing feed. Alfalfa is our hope
and as a mortgage litter and a life
saver alfalfa stands in the same rela-
tion to the vegetable kingdom as the
COW to the animal kingdom; and if
our country is the natural home of
the latter, it is also NATURES own gar
den spot for the former.
In Iowa and other states the soil
must first be inoculated with certain
bacteria, (which the government has
furnished Free" before it will por-
duce the plant at all, but after it is
thus treated Iowa soil will produce
the plant. Yet. although it is plant
that requires some moisture in fact
the more water it get the more hay
it will produce. In wet country it
is almost impossible to cure the hay
and it will not yield and seed. The
ideal climate is dry one, where the
land can be properly irrigated and
properly drained. Stanley county
has thousands of quarters where a
little labor will dam up little draw,
where at least few acres can be
profitably irrigated and perfectly
drained, and even this is not necessa-
ry. Our so-called gumbo will absorb
moisture and hold it better than any
| ever saw and if the homesteader
will notice now when it rains where
the soil on his quarter takes water
the best and deepest and quickest, he
can picK out the best spot on which
to plant alfalfa. Then if he will pre-
pare few acres right now, if no more
than five, and get all the moisture
that comes between now and next
spring into the soil, unless it is very
limited he can get a little start
next spring that will do more to hold
the present settler here, more to de-
yelop the country and more to ad-
vance the value of his land than any
thing he can possibly do.
Do it now 1t will keep on from
getting the blues. Get part of the
proceeds from those fall rains that
we are mighty certain to get this
year-after everything has dried up
down into a few acres of your best
land. Do it even if you haye to &c
out onto some plowed ground ano
plow out some deep bitches to keel
the water from running away-mak
ing them of course at right angles to
the pitch or grade of the land. Then
if we do get some rain this fall ano
it gets dry again before it freezes
level this off with the harrow ant
break up the surface before it does
freeze, and in the spring you can ge
a crop started that will raise you
mortgage, feed the goose that lay
the golden eggs, and establish an EN-