Norwich bulletin., 1917-01-20
FARMERS MUST GROW WHAT THEY NEED

out any grain at all. and with results better than were given by the common timothy-oats ration: producing equal strength, equal SpiritneSs, better look ing coats and decidedly better health Chickens will eat a, lot of tiff given a chance, and who doesn't know the proverbial happiness of pigs ln clover?"
 Ordinary fertilizers are high and not up to standard? Well, lime isn't very expensive. On three acres out of four a judicious application of cheap lime will not only produce good crops of clover from seeding, but will some times bring it in," as the saying goes.
 A neighbor of mine in the early ow with lime. The grass on it had run out' till it had ceased to be worth the labor of moving. So. far as he knew, there was no clover in 1t. But in the summer of Is he cut heavy burden of hay, mostly clover, on the whole six acres,-al1 except one corner which he hadn't time to lime. On that half an acre or so,-he got barely hay enough to make one hay cock. The rest averaged better than two loads to the acre And when I saw the field, in late October, there was a noble growth of rowen on 1t, everywhere except the unlined corner, which was so bare that the wind act
 
 This neishbor paid s2.5o ton for his ground lime and the only labor cost was that of hauling and broad casting it.
 Perhaps similar treatment would not bring equal results on your farm You don't know till you've tried. He didn't. He owned up to me that he was as much surprised as pleased. Don't never prophecy unless ye know" ;l "cant" raise this, that or the other crop till you've tried.-and tried the right way.
 If, after fair trials, you find that your land simply won't grow clover, oats and cow-peas, or oats and soy beans, or fodder corn and soy beans.
 These require more labor and there fore more expense, due to high wages. But their nutritive content is so great, once raised, that they will enable the farmer who has a supply of them to dispense with a very considerable per centage of his usual ground feeds.
 With the aid of modern tools and improved machinery the work of rais- ing corn is a great deal less than it used to be. The labor involved needn't cost anything like so much as some farmers figure Machine-raised corn, like any other crop, isn't apt to do quite as well as corn which is cod d1ed and hand-worked and kissed to sleep, every night. But most farms have on them fields where tolerable crops of corn can be grown without the hand-hoeing and individual hill handling which used to be the rule,- and which would still be advisable if one was aiming at a record. If such corn can't be grown at less cost per bushel than feed-store prices then there's something wrong which needs to be hunted down and remedied. Be- side which, if the corn is huSked and valuable addition to the winters SUD- ply of forage.
 IF you have a siio, that may be bet ter yet, as it will give you the needed grain food accompanied by a "succu- lence' which is essential to proper feeding.
 If you haven't silo, how about the old fashioned root crops?
 While silos are even more common in parts of Europe than in this coun- try there are other parts where the farmers raise and feed roots to an cx- tent which would make New England CTS open their eyes. |
 There is some work involved in raising mangels and rutabagas, just as there is in raising anything-ex- cept the d-l. But most farmers can grow them cheaper than they can buy gluten meal or Inseed meal or cotton seed meal, or even wheat bran. Years and years ago, Daniel Webster wrote: Chemists tell us that neither ruta- bagas nor salt hay are of much ac- count as food for cattle, yet we have never had oxen thrive better on any feed than on those two" In a recent l test by the Michigan Experiment Sta ton where groups of cows were fed all 1 on 90 pounds a day of siI- ] age and 30 pounds of sliced roots, in ! addition to dry hay and the usual one i pound of grain to four pounds Of 1 milk the difference was very slight 1 in production. But such difference a s l was found, not only in each group but | with each individual COW, was in i favor of the root ration. averaging seventenths of a pound per day, per 1 cow.
 Last season, owing to catchy veath- i CT and consequent reduction of avail l able time, the five rows of sugar beets | Tn my upper garden were sadly ne- Siected. They were horse e-cultiyated