DOESN'T GOOD TRAINING PAY? Telling, in the Saturday Evening Post, how he aided in improving methods and production on the old home farm, one graduate of an agricultural school said: "My first efforts were along the lines of pure-bred farm crop seeds. The increase in yield and quality of our corn crops was so satisfactory that they are now in general use on our farms. For example, last season our yield of thoroughbred Reed's Yellow Dent corn, from a field of fifty acres, averaged eighty-six bushels to the acre by weight. Our best field, however, of thirty-eight acres, averaged ninety-two bushels to the acre. Naturally our neighbors were interested in results of this kind, and as a consequence came to us to buy seed corn. "In a comparatively short time farmers from distant points of the county were buying their seed corn from us, and now we have commerce outside the state. We have a call for all the high-grade seed-corn we can select from our fields, and this line of our work on the farm, which is directly a result of my scientific training, is a most decided and important source of profit." Nebraska is a corn state, boys! Another boy, a graduate of the Minnesota school, rented a small piece of ground and put it under a high degree of cultivation. He put in 17 acres in musk-melons, and prepared for early germination by buying some old glass and making an amateur hot-house. He says: "The land was sufficiently rich in potash and in phosphates, but not in nitrogen. Therefore I used three applications of nitrate of soda, thus forcing the vines in their early growth. By the time the ripening season was on, the nitrate of soda had done its work and left the fruit to ripen, where manure would have given the vines a tendency to keep on growing and producing new green fruit. "This crop of melons brought me three thousand dollars. Because I had the advantage of the early market, I was able to get for the most of my crop two and three dollars a bushel, whereas later in the season melons sold in my market for twenty-five cents to fifty cents a bushel. I do not think it would have been possible for me to have handled this crop successfully without the knowledge of fertilizers and of how to combat injurious insects which I obtained by my agricultural college course. "Other crops of the same season brought me equally good results, Fine melons can be raised in Nebraska, and there is a steady demand. Here is the same boy's experience with sheep: "From the proceeds of my melon crop, three thousand dollars, I bought an eighty acre farm which was considered very unprofitable, from the fact that it was hilly and overrun with quack-grass and wild oats. The tenant who had worked this farm before I bought it could scarcely get a poor living from it. Realizing that land so depleted as this must be abundantly fertilized, and must also be cleared of the obnoxious quack-grass and wild oats, I decided that my solution of this double problem lay in turning a large flock of sheep loose on the land. In the fall I bought about six hundred sheep and allowed them to roam over the fields. The result was that all the growth was closely clipped and the land was richly fertilized in the bargain. Then I fed the sheep hay and a little grain until they were fat enough for the market. "My first attempt in this line was so successful that I have twice repeated it, with the result that my average profit for three years has been three thousand dollars net. While this has required much hard work and application, it has been very satisfactory; and I do not hesitate to say that the same results would have been impossible without my education in the agricultural school." Sheep thrive excellently in this state, with intelligent care. Tiling of wet lands is growing in favor every year, and today a good many Nebraska farms are either wholly or partially tiled. Here is the experience of a third agricultural school graduate: "Since I left the agricultural school I have succeeded in paying the debt on the old homestead, besides making some valuable improvements, the most valuable of which is the tiling of the land. When the work now in progress is completed in the spring, the whole farm of two hundred and ten acres can be cultivated without any difficulty in the wettest seasons. The system of crop rotation that I have been practicing for several years is: Corn two 40s, oats one 40, wheat one 40 and meadow and pasture one 40. "All the stock kept is thoroughly high grade and some are thoroughbred, consisting of Percherons and Hambletonian horses, shorthorn cattle, Poland-China hogs and Shropshire sheep. Of all the stock I have raised the horses and sheep have given the best satisfaction.” Does tenant farming pay? Much, if not all, depends on the farmer. Following is some interesting testimony: "I came home from the agricultural school in 1905, and the next year rented twenty acres of badly-worn ground, putting in a crop of fall wheat, and attending it as near scientifically as I could. The yield averaged thirty-eight bushels to the acre, or six bushels more than any other yield in that neighborhood. On the score of this excess of one hundred and twenty bushels I credited my education with $96, as the wheat brought eighty cents a bushel. "Last year I put in forty acres of corn, which I cultivated, and secured an average yield of seventy bushels to the acre, which was fully twenty bushels more to the acre than corn on the same quality of land in my locality averaged. So this corn, at fifty-three cents a bushel, made another credit of $424 to the score of my training. "The excess of yield under scientific methods is where the agricultural training pays dividends. Besides a knowledge of why things are thus and so, I learned at college the valuable lesson of how to handle my time so that it would be well improved instead of wasted. Also a knowledge of the proper conversion of stock and of corn has been of great value to me, and so, too, is the crop rotation system which I figured out for this locality with the help of my professor. "In reviewing the results of my work it is only fair to bear in mind the fact that I am a renter and therefore could not handle the land to so great an advantage as I would have been able to do had I owned the farm myself." |