Norwich bulletin., 1916-02-12
UNsCIENTIFIC ADVICE FROM A SCIENTIFIC
 SOURCE

product" that it will make an "ex- cellent food for fattening swine and cattle"
 Now, just stop and think a minute. Do you suppose that this drying process adds anything to the value of cun potatoes? Anything to their val ue as fodder, I mean.
 Don't we all know that something of flavor and SucCulence and nutritive value is inevitably lost from every substance we have to dry for fodder? That we dry it, not to. increase it's value, but solely to save fraction or that value for use when the green fodder is not available?
 Is there a dairynan in New England who would feed hay or stOver or even ensilage, if he could turn his cows out into lush pasture in winter as well as summer? We dry our grass into hay, not because the drying makes it any better, but because the cows have got to have something to eat in January as well as June, and we can't keep the grass till then without drying it. So we accept the inevitable and great loss involved on the ground that a half loaf is better than no bread.
 But cuII potatoes don't need to be dried or canned to keep in a frost proof cellar, any more than market able potatoes, or carrots or turnips or
 
 in all their natural fulIness of juice and nutrltive value through the whole winter. So stored, they may be fed out, day by day. and every bushel so fed will manifestly be worth more as fodder than the same bushel would be if dried and ground into some sort of potato meal
 If farmer wants to feed cuI pota- toes to his stock, what's to hinder his picking them up and storing them and feeding them out, 'au natural and getting from two to ten times as much value out of them as he would if they had first had their sap dried out in an evaporator and their flavor ruined in some patent crusher?
 if farmer would like to save his small potatoes, sees their usefulness, deplores their waste, yet, neverthe- less, lets them lie on the ground to rot. it isn't necessarily because he's a dunn fool or a wastrel. It may be be cause the labOr-cost of picking them up and storing them is greater than their food value, even in their natural, undessicated state.
 In such a case, where in heavens s name would be the profit of picking them up and shipping them to a fac tory, paying the factory for drying and grinding them, paying freight both ways,-apd then getting a product worth less than the culIs were when 1 they were picked up?
 l Some years since a neghbor left all the cuu potatoes from a six-acre 1 patch lying on the ground to rot on l a field adjoining me. 1 sought him l out and asked him why He answered ! that he had to hire ali his help, that ! he couldn't sell them for enough to i pay wages for picking them up, and 1 that they weren't worth, as stock feed l for his own use, what It would cost i him, in wages, to pick them, haul them l to his cellars, bin them, etc l happened, that year. to be "out of ! active service; just able to potter i round" but not to do any real work. 1 With his permission, I picked up and | bagged some twenty-five bushels. As real cost to me, therefore, was the 1 time which Hank took to haul them to l the cellar and bin them. Next winter I run them through the root-cutter, a I! half bushel at a time, and the cows 1 were glad to get them. I think it i paid me. But whether 1t would have 1 been profitable to pay Hank full wages for all the time needed to pick them up and bag them, too, I was never sure.
 This idea thae we farmers are tc save money by spending money to dry and grind a crop of culls which some of us can't afford to pay wages ever | to pic.s up and cellar is certainly abou he lOoniest idea I've chanced across 1 lately.
 THE FARMER.