Title Registered Ik U. S. Patent Office.)
& h FARM AND HOME WEEKLJ FOR THE CAROLINAS, VIRGINIA, TENNESSEE, AND GEORGIA. j&
Vol. XXHL No. 43. RALEIGH, N. C, DECEMBER 3, 1908 ; Weekly:. $1 a Year.
Index to This Week's Issue.
A Fine Crop of Sweet Potatoes, W. H. Tur-
rcntine ... . . . i. . ....... 2
A Profitable Apple Crop, I. G. Ross .......... 2
A Good Cotton Crop, NY. Gulley. . .... .... 2
All Crops Satisfactory, S. C. Adams. . . . . . ... 2
A Situation More Hopeful Than Serious. ... . . 8
Afterthoughts on. Our Last Issue, W.F. Massey 9
Did You. Get Your Share of the Profits? ...... 8
Farm Work for December, W. F. Massey. . . . 9
Grow More Potatoes ....... . . ............ 15
How to Graft, W. F. Massey. . . . . . ... . . . . . 15
Is There Money in Sheep? H. C. Davidson. . . . 11
Organize a Telephone System. ..... . . . . . . . . 6
Plain Facts About the Hookworm Disease. . . 4
Rye a Good Cover Crop, W. C. Crook . . . 3
Sorehead and Chickenpox, Uncle Jo. ... ..... 14
The Middle-Aged Lady's Toilet, Aunt Jennie. . 7
Transplanting Evergreens, W. N. Hutt . . .... .15
The Cost of Feeding a Horse, G. C. Falconer. .10
Two Good Crops of Corn, A. C. F. and E. F.
Millsaps . ... ....... 3
This Week's Features.
OW I Made My Best Crop This Year" gives
thexperience of six farmers, telling just
how and why, their best crop was .the best.
"'"Spraying pays," says a man who increased his ap
ple crop 50 per cent in quantity and much more
than that in value. Five men remark especially
that it has paid them to have their soils well filled
with humus, one of them having changed a field
that would not pay for cultivation into one that
yields 400 pounds of cotton to the acre by the use
of carefully-saved yard manure. Notice also how
A .C."F. saved $3 a ton by mixing his fertilizers
at home. ,
Our Home Circle is practical this week, and
that advice about getting a telephone is meant for
you and your neighborhood. For why shouldn't
you have these advantages as well as farmers in
other sections?
Professor Massey's suggestive outline of the
farm work for December you cannot afford to
overlook, nor the very important paper on page
4, of which we have already made extended edi
torial mention.
We have tried, in short, to put something worth
your while on every page, and to serve it all up
in an attractive manner. It is for you to say
whether we have done it.
A MESSAGE TO SOUTHERN FARMERS
Drain Your Wet Lands.
70
IF YOU have low-land that needs drainage
now is - the time to do the work. Open
ditches are better than none, but under-
drains are far better. You can make these cheap
ly with skinned, pine poles laid side by side in a
ditch with a space between and a larger pole laid
on top of this. Then cover with pine straw and
nil in with earth. Where a low: piece of lane:
has hills around that have springs that keep the
low-land wet, cut a drain around the base of the
hills first to cut off the springs, ; and from this
take drains to the outlet direct. This may bea
stream or a main open ditch. .1 have drained in
this way and grown fine clover on a piece of bot
tom where the winter before the drainage they
cut Ice for storage. These pole drains last for
many years, for the piece I mention was drained
over twenty years ago, and is still drained.
W. F. MASSEY.
DR. HENRY WALLACE.
Editor of Wallace's Farmer. Des Moines. Iowa, and one of
the foremost agricultural leaders of 'America.
R. HENRY WALLACE, who is the editor of WaUace's Farmer, from which we have often
"had occasion to quote, and "the ablest agricultural writer in America" in the opinion of Sec
retary of Agriculture Wilson, is the senior member of the Country Life Commission which
has recently held sessions in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, and
Will later visit Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. As a life-long farmer and student of farming
conditions, Mr. Wallace has been greatly interest- -ed
in what he has seen of rural, affairs in the
Southland by request he gives us herewith a spe
cial message for the 25,000 farmers wjho make up
our great Progressive Farmer Family. ' Dr'. Wal
lace says:
"In reply to your request for a frank, friendly
message for the readers of The Progressive Farm
er based on my limited observation of your South
ern conditions, I will say that in my opinion the
first and greatest need of Southern farming is
humus. .
"Humus is the life of the soil, .and watchful as
we must be of its preservation in the North and
West, you have to be doubly watchful in the South '
where your open winters greatly facilitate the
leaching out of fertility. Contrast this with con
ditions in Iowa: our land is frozen two feet thick '
in winter, bacterial action stopped, the fertility
locked up, and cover crops kept on the land to
save any that wj)uld, otherwise be lost.
First of All, Get More Humus.
"It seems to me therefore that with conditions
as they are, the first and biggest thing for South- -era
farmers to do is try to get more humus in the
land, growing more cowpeas especially, with vetch
es and clover as cover crops in winter. The sad
dest thing I have seen in the Cotton Belt is the
washing away of so much land, and this is largely
due to insufficient humus. Without it the lands
cannot hold moisture nor give it out slowly.
"Dairying would be a great help to you, but you need cattle of better type and blood to make
it profitable. The best cow in my herd last year gave 11,300 pounds of milk. A rule with us is to
keep one head of stock to the acre all summer. .
Heavier Horses and More of Them.
"You need better horses,, in my judgment, and more of them. A one-horse plow in Iowa is al
most a curiosity, and so is a plow horse weighing less than 1,200 pounds. I bought a team last
spring weighing 1,600 pounds each. On heavy land we put In three horses.
"Another great need of the South is to break up your ruinous tenant system. You need to pray
to be saved from the farm-owner who lives in town and lets tenants butcber his land. The hope
of any State is in its prosperous farm-owners, each living under his own vine and fig-tree.
"You need better roads, too, of course, and I would especially commend to you the split-log
drag. It has been a great success in the West, the cheapest and most popular good roads-maker we
have ever found. It will not do on sandy land, as you know; but on clay $nd gumbo types it is
everything that is claimed for it.
Making Corn In Iowa.
"I am asked about the way we make our bumper corn yields in Iowa, and if there is much hand
cultivation. No, there is practically no work by hand from planting to shredding and husking. To
begin with, we usually have a clover or bluegrass sod and plow in fall before the ground freezes,
in the spring discing thoroughly. We usually plant 3i feet apart each way check planting and
harrow before it is .up. As soon as up, if land is weedy, we take one-horse or two-horse weeder
(with two-horse weeder we can cover thirty acres a day) and kill all small weeds in this way,
plowing afterward from three to six times. The corn breeding associations have done much to stim
ulate interest- in improved seed and the need of Improved methods generally in Ipwa, but it can
not be too often emphasized that the whole stalk, and not the ear alone, must be taken into con
sideration in judging the value of a plant and its desirability for seed purposes. This is one mls-
take our corn shows have not yet come to realize.
How the Iowa Farmer, Boats Us on Profits. -
"The price of farm lands in the South naturally interests me, as prices in Iowa range so much
higher from $75 to $150, with $ S 0 perhaps as an average As to how we make them pay prof
its on so much I would answer:
(1) We keep them full of humus, growing legume's and applying barnyard manure, so keep
them increasing in value while spending practically nothing for commercial fertilizers.
" (2) We grow stock and so make two profits instead of one on what we raise, farming twelv
months in the year. - ' '
(3) We practice careful rotation- for instance, com two years, then wheat, then clover.
"(4) We use improved labor-saving, horse-power implements and machinery, at once cultivating,
harvesting, etc., better and at less expense than by hand labor. - :
x - (Continued on Page 16.) "