appreciable amounts of available nitrogen in the soil for the succeeding crops. There is some evidence that soy beans grown with corn in the hills or drill rows is beneficial to the growth of the corn. A few growers have been very successful with the mixed crop. It may be said that soy beans will thrive wherever the conditions are good for the growth of corn. The beans may be grown in separate fields and mixed with the corn at the cutting-box in the proportion of not more than one-fourth bean fodder for best results. This is the surest way of enriching the silage with soy

beans.

Early maturing varieties of soy beans may be grown for their ripe beans to be ground and used as concentrated feed, equal in nutrients to oil meal. For hay, those varieties which grow slender and rather tall are to be preferred. Maturity is not necessary for hay purposes. The best silage varieties grow to a height of three or four feet and branch freely. They need not be any riper than the corn fodder. For soiling, a succession of varieties which do not mature at the same dates will be found desirable.

The culture of soy beans for grain or for silage is very similar to that practiced with common field beans. To grow hay it is best to sow as much as two bushels of seed per acre with a grain drill, using every hoe. Phosphatic fertilizers are considered best adapted to the plant. Inoculation of the seed is comparatively easy with pure commercial cultures or those furnished by the United States Department of Agriculture. The soil transfer method is also used.

Crimson clover and cowpeas are two legumes which are adapted to a very limited use in New York. It rarely pays to sow them north of New Jersey. The first is an annual which is summer or autumn sown and completes its growth early the following spring. While it is a very valuable soil improver and may be used for soiling, it is not a good hay plant, because of the irritating blossom heads in the animal stomach. Cowpeas are a very tender annual and adapted to warm soils and locations free from summer frosts. Hay can be made from them where they will succeed.

SOILING, SUMMER AND WINTER

F. S. PEER, Ithaca, N. Y.

Author of Soiling Ensilage and Stable Construction

The most important question before American farmers today is how to redeem the fertility of the soil. There are at least two ways it can be done, either by buying it back in the form of commercial fertilizers or growing it back by a system of farming that makes the land richer with each succeeding crop.

Men with capital are buying impoverished farms at $100 to $150 per acre and are finding that the average yield of farm crops can not be grown on such land except at a loss. Some of them have been smart enough to see that by spending $50 to $60 per acre in commercial plant food that they have been able to increase the production of the land so that it pays a handsome per cent. profit on the increased cost where formerly it was worked at a loss.

On land costing $100 per acre that produces only twenty bushels of wheat per acre the crop is undoubtedly grown at a loss, but if the same acres can be made to produce forty bushels per acre at an additional cost of $50 to $100 per acre for plant food, the additional twenty bushels per acre should return a profit of 10 to 15 per cent. on land costing $150 to $200 per acre. When the fertility necessary to grow a crop with profit has been returned to the soil, if it is afterwards properly stocked, the fertility may be maintained by the additional number of farm stock the farm is able to carry. This fact is apparent to everyone and men of business experience in other lines are not long in making the discovery and acting accordingly. This simply means that farming on a fertile soil is a profitable business; whereas farming on an exhausted soil is unremitting toil. For men with the capital to invest this is perhaps the quickest if not the best way of turning a losing proposition to a paying one, but many American farmers are so deeply in debt, that they have not that extra $50 to $100 o any part of it perhaps to invest in soil fertility.

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Since the government has about come to the end of its profitable disposition of the public domain these conditions have been somewhat improved. The day when the government at Washington could set up 50,000 emigrants and others in the farming business yearly with 160 acres of virgin soil, has about come to an end although in their madness to give farms away they have been. spending millions in irrigating schemes in order to make it go. In spite of all that, we seem to have come to the return swing of the pendulum and it appears as if the day was dawning when agriculture, as a business, could once more hold up its head and be made to pay. When that day comes, and it is coming fast, farmers' sons and daughters and city gentlemen's sons and daughters with capital will return to the farm.

I will digress a few lines further, the better to show our real position and the necessity of winning back the fertility of the soil without further delay.

Between the years 1880 and 1890 the farmers' lands of the state of New York depreciated $14,000,000 and in the state of Ohio over $100,000,000, other eastern states in like proportions all in spite of the great increase in population. That was the state of agricultural decay in the eastern states and had been going steadily on for at least 20 years prior to 1890. The fertility of the soil was sold by the bushel and by the ton and delivered to market in the hope of tiding matters over until times were better. This in a word was the general state of the decay of agricultural in the eastern states principally as above stated by the shortsighted profligate land policy of our own government. The pendulum of oppression seemed to reach its furthermost limit about 1905 to 1907.

The year 1913 has come with a brightening sky and money to be made in farming if we only had the capital in the bank or the fertility in the soil.

I have shown how men with capital properly invested in plant food may succeed. We now come to the question of all questions: . "How are the ninety odd farmers out of the hundred who are deeply in debt going to succeed without capital?" I beg to submit the following solution-try soiling. This is not theory. I

advise it because it did for me and has done and is doing for others who have profited by my experience, just what so many farmers now require to turn a losing proposition and unremitting toil to one of success and profit.

Perhaps I can not do better than to state as briefly as possible my personal experience.

In the early seventies I inherited a farm in Wayne county, N. Y. of 127 acres (100 acres of tillable land). This farm had been worked on shares for fifty years. It was naturally a productive farm, but latterly it had been "cropped to death." The first wheat crop gave but fifteen bushels per acre and was grown, harvested and delivered to market at a loss of $1.695 per acre. There were sixteen acres in the field. I did a little figuring and found that at the same rate for expenses, if the field had produced forty bushels per acre there would have been a net profit of $23.05 per acre or a total profit of $368.80 against a loss of $27.12 for the sixteen acres. When one considers that the average yield of wheat in the United States is only about thirteen bushels per acre and sees that there must be hundreds of thousands of acres producing even less than this to bring the average so low, one need not be at a loss to know why such farming does not pay. This low yield of wheat per acre gives an idea of the general condition of the farming lands as to fertility.

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The former owner of the farm was able to get along on the income from government bonds laid aside during the war when wheat brought as high as $2 per bushel. This farm when I took possession carried but six head of cattle and four horses. wonder the soil was becoming impoverished. It required about. sixty acres of hay and pasture to support them summer and winter besides what straw and cornstalks they consumed, that was grown on the other forty acres which was devoted to wheat, oats, barley, corn and potatoes.

The fences about the fields were so broken down and the cattle became so breachy that by the middle of June we were obliged to shut them in the barnyard and feed them on clover cut green in the field. It was the only alternative. Farm work was pressing and no material at hand for repairing fences. This was the beginning of what proved to be a blessing in disguise.

For a few days the cattle seemed restless and homesick for the fields. We began feeding them in open racks in the yard, but this proved unsatisfactory. They drove each other about and hooked one another so badly that we finally shut them in their winter stanchions. As soon, however, as they become thoroughly filled, they were both reconciled and peaceable; there is nothing like a full stomach to make a cow quiet and contended.

I was sorry for them for it seemed so contrary to orthodox farming that if it had been possible I would have relented and turned them out. Fortunately there was no other way.

Presently, to my surprise, they began to increase in flow of milk and to thrive beyond all expectation. I was greatly surprised also at the very small piece of ground required daily to support them and in far better condition than at pasture. I was also surprised to find the extra labor was nominally nothing compared with the improved condition of the cattle and the increase in milk which I imagined was in itself sufficient to pay cost of cutting the clover and delivering it to the barn. Another thing, the best of all, we were collecting a fine lot of stable manure under cover. My faith in the redemption of the old farm was in barnyard manure from the first, but how to get it? We were four miles from town, so buying and hauling manure from there was out of the question.

A little later we darkened the windows to exclude the flies, kept them in their winter stalls day times and turned them out in a small grass paddock at night. Why not keep twelve cows instead of six; make twice as much manure in quantity, and make a business of soiling them altogether? It seemed just the thing to do and I did it. I turned the whole question to soiling and I found the system quite able to carry it and much besides. Soiling also settled the fence question.

Thus began what proved to be the most successful, most economical method of feeding farm stock, at the same time the most saving method of obtaining plant food (fertility) for the growing crops. It settled several other questions, especially how to obtain a full flow of milk from our cows during the entire season independent of parched pastures, hot sun and flies.