Part 32 (1/2)

Since cowpeas, clover, and alfalfa add atmospheric nitrogen to the soil and at the same time are the best feeding-materials, it follows that these crops should hold an important place in every system of crop-rotation. By proper rotating, by proper terracing, and by proper drainage, land may be made to retain its fertility for generations.

EXERCISE

1. Why are cowpeas, clover, and alfalfa so important to the farmer?

2. What is meant by the protein of a food?

3. Why is it better to feed the farm crops to animals on the farm rather than to sell these crops?

SECTION LXV. FARM TOOLS AND MACHINES

The drudgery of farm life is being lessened from year to year by the invention or improvement of farm tools and machines. Perhaps some of you know how tiresome was the old up-and-down churn dasher that has now generally given place to the ”quick-coming” churns. The toothed, horse-drawn cultivator has nearly displaced ”the man with the hoe,”

while the scythe, slow and back-breaking, is everywhere getting out of the way of the mowing-machine and the horserake. The old heavy, sweat-drawing grain-cradle is slinking into the backwoods, and in its place we have the horse-drawn or steam-drawn harvester that cuts and binds the grain, and even threshes and measures it at one operation.

Instead of the plowman's wearily making one furrow at a time, the gang-plows of the plains cut many furrows at one time, and instead of walking the plowman rides. The shredder and husker turns the hitherto useless cornstalk into food, and at the same time husks, or shucks, the corn.

The farmer of the future must know three things well: first, what machines he can profitably use; second, how to manage these machines; third, how to care for these machines.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 276. PROPERLY PROTECTED TOOLS AND MACHINES]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 277. UNPROTECTED TOOLS AND MACHINES]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 278. THE HARVESTER AT WORK]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 279. IN NEED OF IMPROVEMENT]

The machinery that makes farming so much more economical and that makes the farmer's life so much easier and more comfortable is too complicated to be put into the hands of bunglers who will soon destroy it, and it is too costly to be left in the fields or under trees to rust and rot.

If it is not convenient for every farmer to have a separate tool-house, he should at least set apart a room in his barn, or a shed for storing his tools and machines. As soon as a plow, harrow, cultivator--indeed any tool or machine--has finished its share of work for the season, it should receive whatever attention it needs to prevent rusting, and should be carefully housed.

Such care, which is neither costly nor burdensome, will add many years to the life of a machine.

SECTION LXVI. LIMING THE LAND

Occasionally, when a cook puts too much vinegar in a salad, the dish becomes so sour that it is unfit to eat. The vinegar which the cook uses belongs to a large group of compounds known as acids. The acids are common in nature. They have the power not only of making salads sour but also of making land sour. Frequently land becomes so sour from acids forming in it that it will not bear its usual crops. The acids must then be removed or the land will become useless.

The land may be soured in several ways. Whenever a large amount of vegetable matter decays in land, acids are formed, and at times sourness of the soil results. Often soils sour because they are not well drained or because, from lack of proper tillage, air cannot make its way into the soil. Sometimes all these causes may combine to produce sourness.

Since most crops cannot thrive on very sour soil, the farmer must find some method of making his land sweet again.

So far as we now know, liming the land is the cheapest and surest way of overcoming the sourness. In addition to sweetening the soil by overcoming the acids, lime aids the land in other ways: it quickens the growth of helpful bacteria; it loosens stiff, heavy clay soils and thereby fits them for easier tillage; it indirectly sets free the potash and phosphoric acid so much needed by plants; and it increases the capillarity of soils.

However, too much must not be expected of lime. Often a farmer's yield is so increased after he has scattered lime over his fields that he thinks that lime alone will keep his land fertile. This belief explains the saying, ”Lime enriches the father but beggars the son.” The continued use of lime without other fertilization will indeed leave poor land for the son. Lime is just as necessary to plant growth as the potash and nitrogen and phosphoric acid about which we hear so much, but it cannot take the place of these plant foods. Its duty is to aid, not to displace them.

We can tell by the taste when salads are too sour; it is more difficult to find out whether land is sour. There are, however, some methods that will help to determine the sourness of the soil.

In the first place, if land is unusually sour, you can determine this fact by a simple test. Buy a pennyworth of blue litmus paper from a drug store. Mix some of the suspected soil with a little water and bury the litmus paper in the mixture. If the paper turns red the soil is sour.

In the second place, the leguminous crops are fond of lime. Clover and vetch remove so much lime from the soil that they are often called lime plants. If clover and vetch refuse to grow on land on which they formerly flourished, it is generally, though not always, a sign that the land needs lime.