Norwich bulletin., 1913-03-15

| them on. He mas got to raise lneiu dHu 1 sell them in order to obtain money l to buy other things. There is a long | list of grains and vegetables which can be raised on Connecticut farms as well as anywhere else In the world | Yet there are hundreds and thousands and some another of those things which they might raise.
 Pin one of them down to some particular crop, corn. say, and he'll | tell you that it would cost him more to raise a ton of corn and have 1t ground for his stock than it would to buy the ton of meal, ready ground out of Illinois corn.
 Worst of all, he'd prove it to you by figures from his own past experience. Whereupon he'd snap his fingers at you and demand to know if that wasn't exactly the condition you added to Dr. Knapp's ninth commandment.
 We'll, when we're talking about ten commandments, let's consider them as a bunch. Let's take this same chaps corn that cost him more to raise than he could buy it for. Did he start off pulverized seed bed"? Or did he turn over a field of tough sward, scratch the top an inch or two deep, and leave one end of the piece undrained for the water to settle on and sour?
 Did he use seed of the best variety. intellfgently selected and carefully stored?" Or did he take such seed as he happened to have and about whose germinating qualities he had more faith than knowledge?
 Did he use intensive tillage," or did he go over the patch about twice with an ordinary cultivator and then only when the weeds had got so thick he began to feel ashamed of himself?
 Did he economize in costly hand la bor by the use of the very best horse tools? Or did he make the old tools do" another year, and pay big wages to half competent hired men to finish up the work they failed at?
 No one would class you as a highly moral man if you tried to keep one of the real Ten Commandments and reg ularly violated four of. the most ir1- portant of the others.
 No one could truthfully call you 8 wise corn grower if you merely did one thing right in your corn field and four more important things wrong
 # you've ever seen a photoaraph of the roots of corn n-plant "dissected out from the soil in which they lived you'll agree that they want all the lose dirt they can have to ramble round in. Furthermore. experience and ex- pertinent combine to prove that oth- CT things being equal. the crop actually will do better in a deep. mel low seed-hed than in one where it has to waste all it's energy in corkscrewing
 
 an arduous search for nutriment
 Your crop might have been bigger had you given it better seed-bed. has been shown in scores of tests to result in an increase of yield of from ten to twenty per cent. Your crop might have been bigger had you used better seed.
 The practice of intensive tilIage has, likewise, been proved to be an almost invariable crop sweller. Your crop might have been bigger had you titled better.
 The wise and judicious use of horse drawn tools has, over and over again, been demonstrated to reduce the labor cost of the crop Your crop might have cost you less had you used better tools.
 The chances are, in my humble esti nation, that the Connecticut farmer who puts only the best seed, whether of corn or any other proper crop, in to the best prepared seed-bed and gives it the best possible tillage with the best horse tools will get very much bigger crop than the average at very much less cost, per bushel, than the average.
 I know. wherever I tried it out faithfully and consistently, I have found that 1 could raise things cheap- CT than l could buy them I think it would work out about the same in most cases.
 A Tennessee correspondent, who had twelve acres in corn last year. kept an exact account of the cost and the value of the crop, just to find out for his own satisfaction whether he could raise the corn he wanted for his hogs cheaper than he could buy it. He plowed his grass pasture in the fall stirring the dirt twelve inches deep. He narrowed it into an ash-hean he fore planting. He got the best seed atta1na hle and had it tested It wasn't a good corn season: the rains delayed planting and hindered cultivation Rut ne kept his horse tools going till in i to August. When the corn had been cribbed and measured he found he mad harvested 800 bushels off his twelve acres,-not big yield,-at an i exact cost of fifteen cents per busheJ 1
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