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Show FARM OF FORTY ACRES Equipment, Management and Income In-come of Small Place. Convenient Scheme for Dividing Land Into Five-Acre Tracts One of These Utilized for Homestead Home-stead and Garden. (By W. J. SPILLMAN. Chief of United States Bureau of Farm Management.) Mr. H. H. Mowry of the office of farm management, has been making a special study of the equipment, management man-agement and income of a large number num-ber of small fruit and truck farms, many of them run by people who have recently come from the city. This study has given us somewhat a new point of view. In general these small farmers are not successful. This fact has led us to study the .question more closely, and as a result a scheme for the management of a forty-acre forty-acre farm is outlined below, which seems to be practicable. Figure 1 shows a convenient scheme for subdividing forty acres to fit it for the cropping system to be outlined below. It will be observed that the forty acres are divided into eight five-acre five-acre tracts. One of these is set aside for what may be called the "homestead." "home-stead." These five acres are at the 16 , 16 O O IT) . , in B C D E F d-H 1 26; I i- I 26 Pasture 2 A 2 A, KtlOrchard G g ifeA .A i Garden I I ;WIiP A I Forty-acre farm subdivided into eight five-acre tracts. This shows a convenient method of subdivision which gives access to all the fields without wasting much land in roads. Length of lines given in rods. center on one side, and It is supposed that a public road passes this side of the tract. Of these five acres half an acre is utilized for the house and yard and the barn and barn lot. This space is ample for what we have in view. One-half One-half acre is devoted to garden, one and one-half acres to orchard and the remaining two acres for a paddock into which to turn the stock for exercise. exer-cise. By judicious management these two acres can also be made to furnish some pasture and some soiling crops. The other seven fire-acre tracts are to be devoted to a seven-year rotation. rota-tion. When this rotation is in full swing the crops on the farm for a given year will be as follows: Field A, potatoes; field B, three acres of cabbage cab-bage and two acres of onions; field C, corn; field D, cowpeas; field E, corn; field F, clover; field G, clover. The next year each of these crops would move to another field as follows: fol-lows: The potatoes would go to field G, which was in clover the year before. be-fore. The cabbage and onions next year would go to field B. The corn on field C would go the next year to field B. Cowpeas in field D would go the next year to field C. The corn in field E would go to D, while E would be sown in clover and F remain in clover. The next year each crop would move to another field in the same manner, so that each year potatoes are sown after second year clover, cabbage and onions are planted after potatoes, etc. The potatoes, cabbage and onions on this farm , would form the market crops. The two fields of corn, the field of cowpeas and the first year's seeding of clover would furnish twenty acres of forage for the live stock, while the second year clover would furnish pasture for the live stock during dur-ing the summer. In each of the two corn fields some winter grain, such as wheat or rye, could be sown early in August at the time when the corn is laid by, that is, when cultivation of the corn ceases. This wheat would furnish fall and winter pasture for the live stock. In the corn field which is to be followed fol-lowed by cloyer the wheat would be turned under very early in the spring in preparation for sowing the clover. In the corn field which Is to be followed fol-lowed by cowpeas the wheat could remain re-main until the second year clover field is ready to turn stock on, at which time it might be plowed up and sown to cowpeas. We thus have pasture during the whole year in sections where the seasons permit winter pasturing. pas-turing. In states that are too far north for . the cowpeas, soy beans may be substituted sub-stituted for them, and in regions too far north for soy beans, oats can be used on this field, the other crops in the rotation remaining the same. Commercial Com-mercial fertilizers wTould be required for the potatoes, cabbage and onions. There is plenty of good literature published by the department of agriculture agri-culture and by a good many of the state experiment stations relative to the cultivation and fertilization of potatoes, po-tatoes, cabbage and onions, and the reader is referred to this literature for further information concerning the growing of these crops. One fact to which I would call attention at-tention is that in the marketing of potatoes, po-tatoes, cabbage and onions it is not necessary for the farmer to run to market every day for several weeks, as would be the case with most other kinds of truck crops, especially strawberries straw-berries and tomatoes. |