Volume XV. No. 27. SATURDAY, JULY 9.1910.Weekly: $1 a Year.
Better Pastures, Better Live Stock, Better Farming.
have quoted be
fore that unkind
description of a South
ern pasture as “a place
where grass does not
grow," and we fear it
is all too accurate when
applied to many of our
so-called pastures.
Now, there may be good
pastures without grass
—pastures of cowpeas,
or velvet beans, or pea
nuts, or oats and crim
son clover—but these
are temporary pastures
lastingonlyafewweeks
and having to be re
nenewed each season.
A good permanent pas
ture, means gross, and
good grass, and plenty
of it.
A land of pastures
and herds and flocks
is invariably a pros
Courtesy of the Wisconsin Experiment Station.
perous land; and the people who feed good grass to good stock
are imvariably a contented and a thriving people.
We can have these pastures, too; and in this issue Mr. A. L.
French begins a series of articles telling how to get them. Mr.
French writes on this subject with even more than his usual en
thusiasm, and it is no wonder. He is a man who has made good
pastures, who knows how to keep them good and who appreci
ates their value. More than that, he is acquainted with con
ditions in our territory and what he says will deal with things as
they are on 'the farms of the South.
Once we come to anything like an adequate appreciation of
the value of grass- even of the despised Bermuda, of which
Prof. W. J. Spillman justly says that ‘ no grass bears pasturing
better, or yields more herbage in the farm of pasture"—we shall
get rid of the cattle ticks and the worthless dogs, raise our own
beef and milk and pork and mutton, stop the gullies that are
washing our cropped-out lands away, begin to enrich our
soils and make better crops and more money.
When we do that, horses and cattle and sheep and hogs as
good as the Wisconsin animals here shown will be common all
over the South; and we shall gain on, and then equal, and then
pass the States of the Northwest in the quality of our farming
and the porfits we derive from it.
When we say that farming in the South can be made even
more profitable than it is in the great agricultural States of the
Northwest, we mean what we say, too. Our climate gives us a
wonderful advantage in that it enables us to grow two crops or
more a year; we have the greatest money crop in the world; by
the use of the legumes and the raising of live stock, we can
build up our soils till they will produce fust as well as those of
any other section; we can raise livestock at the very smallest
cost, because we can grow feeds so cheaply and because we are
at such small expense for housing and shelter. But we must re- 1
member that all these go hand-in-hand—we must have more pas- *
tures so that we can raise more stock; we must have more stock
so that we can grow and consume more forage crops; we must
grow more forage crops so that we can feed more stock and im
prove our lands. Then we can produce cotton more cheaply and
have more control over it after it is produced. In short, we
must adopt a rational system of diversified farming, and good
pastures are one of the corner-stones of any such system.
FEATURES OF THIS ISSUE.
A Bulletin for Bee Keepers. 480
A Trip from Alabama to Virginia. 481
Farm and Garden Work for July.^78
Kafir Corn. 489
Keep Up the Fight Against House Flies . 491
Make the Idle Acres Grow Forage Crops.479
Practical Training for Busy Housekeepers. 483
Put Intelligence Into Road Making. 484
School Epidemics, And How to Avoid Them . 482
Short Talks on Rural School Problems . 492
The Sort of Immigration We Need. 484
What the Cattle Tick Quarantine Costs Southern Farmers.486