Norwich bulletin., 1914-07-09
CORN IN NEW ENGLAND.
By GEORGE FRENCH.

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 By GEORGE FRENCH
 About the hardest thing for a bred New EngIander is to bring himself to realizing sense that he can possibly compete with the gigantic West in anything whatever. He looks upon the West through the very same eyes the Irish immigrants were said to look, in the old days, upon America. He thinks 1t a region of agricultural prodigies. When he is told that a watermelon broke from It's vine on a western hin- side, rolled down and hit the house, burst and drowned the whole family in the hopse, he is half inclined to be- lieve it. He thinks that everything that springs from seeds will grow out there if the seed is dragged over the fields. He seems to believe that when the farmers want some corn all they have 10 do is to drive out on the prairie and load up the carts. And. on the other side. he is skeptical of all claims for New England. Try it on any gath ering of New England rural people. Tell them perfectly truthful accounts of what some of the enterprising ones have done and look for the sarcastic grns and the disgusted scowls.
 The run of real New England farm CTS have not yet become reconciied to tho fact that they. can raise more corn to the acre than they do in any of the star corn states of the West, and better corn at that. But in ten years there was but one Western state (Ohio) that exceeded New England in corn yield, and that by only B of a bushel per acre. Of six corn states" so called, New England exceeded their ten-year average by 3.4 bushels to the acre and it exceeded the average of the United States by 9.3 bushels per acre.
 New England is some on corn, as we note by the record of youth of Mass achusetts who raised 12T bushels to the acre. or the New Hampshire man who got 133 Ia bushels to the acre or the other New Hampshire man who harvested overg190N bushels to the acre from a 40-acre lot. One hundred bushels of corn. with the fodder, is worth in New England in the neigh bor1n0od of $125- sometimes more, and sometimes a bit less. Where Is the Western corn farm that will produce &125 per acre, right in the midst of a market that is always eager for more A Connecticut man raised 112 bushels of shelled corn on an acre, and his boy beat him with 121 bushels. A scienti- fc test of one mans crop showed that 1t yielded s6S.76 per acre actual net profit, with every possible expense charged tip to it. This Is a rate that would make man with hundred acre corn patch rich in a few years, or even half of it. Sixty-f1ve hundred dollars a year from 160 acres is pretty good for the New England farmer. And the best thing about 1t is that he can do it. if he will. and if he has the corn land If he has not the corn more than 67 varieties of New England land. he can still get rich. if he will do what others have done.
 It need not be assumed that every man who plants corn Is to get $66 per acre profit. They won't. They don't. They can, if the conditions are right, and if they work. It Is un to the man to see that the conditions are right, and to work. There are other men in New England who have tested the value of their corn crops, and they have made all the way from $4926 to $a.S6 per acre. One Rhode Island farmer raises around 1000 bushels of corn every year and uses the stover for his silo. He figures that the stoyer pays for raising the corn and that his 2,l0e bushels are all clear profit. Ii means $500 of clear profit on the corn if it sells for as much as 75 cents per bushei He does not sell it, but feeds 1t to stock and gets his money in pay for milk and pigs. In mic Massachusetts a man made $50 pei acre on his corn.
 It may be thought that I have beer selecting prize corn fields to mention and I have. There is no reason why all corn should not be as good as tho prize fields, allowing for different land The prize fields were the ones that gavs the. big profits. But let us take an ex-
 
 least was not planted or raised wit1 any idea of making of 1t a prize field A man in weStern Massachusetts con cfuded to blow up a meadow that haa not been doing as well in grass as h, thought 1t should. He plowed 1t ani planted it to corn, giving it only or1in @xy care. Nature was on his side, an, in the fall he found that he actual, had champion field of cornr12 bushels of shelled dry corn to tn Tfa rIyoIa a1c HS gave 1t only ordinary treatment He rot the corn that really took s prise. as he entered it after he was al ready to harvest it, and when he ha, been for some weeks ignorant of it
 New England farmers are raisin more and more corn each year. The al most universal use of the ensilage fo feed has promoted the raising of corr For that feed it was for many year : tho custom to use green corn. with tn ears not grown But after whil ripe corn became to be used, the ear being allowed to nearly mature an being cut into the silo Then some body discovered that the fodder ( dead-rfpe corn makes good silage afte the ripened ears have been taken of and somebody discovered that th fodder was worth as much for feed ing as the cost of growing the cor leaving all of the corn for profit, whic the prudent and thrifty farmer feed to cows and hogs and takes his pay 1 milk and pork.
 Corn is fine, clean crop to rais Almost all the work may be done frol the seats of machines. The land ca be plowed with a sulky blow, the ma snure put on with a spreader, the hal rowing done with a harrow. which u farmer rides, the planting done by
 horse planter. the cuitiva4ing done M same way, the hnsking done by ma9fR4fn0, About all the fafraAT hg to do with his hands is to cut the stall and cart them to the silage cutter
 There is a large amount of very goo corn land in New England that is n now utilized for that crop, There
 money in it, from around $2o acre I to eeS. as we have seen, It is got