Show k RKJLTURY I The Help of Machinery There was a time when tho farmer worked all by himself a small farm and found It profitable to do all of his work by hand Had there boon machinery at that time It would have possessed little value for him as ho could not havo disposed of his surplus for enough money to pay for his machinery and leavo a balance on tho transaction The transport by sea was then by sailing vessels and tho transportation over tho land by means largo of ox teams Wo cannot can-not Imagine tho great grain crops of today being moved by such means If great grain crops had been raised tho grain must have fallen In value till It would not have paid the cost of raising or much of It would have molded In tho bins With tho progress prog-ress of tho world camo tho necessity neces-sity for tho use of farm machinery Tho motive power on tho water changed to steam and great barges wero constructed with enormous carrying car-rying capacity These could carry the grain around tho world at small cost per bushel On tho land hundreds hun-dreds of lines of railway opened up the country and trainloads of grain are now moved In any direction night and day It is no longer possible for a community to produce so much grain that it cannot bo shipped out Tho commerce of tho world will tale all the grain tho farmer can grow It is therefore necessary for tho I farmer to take advantage of tho existence ex-istence of machinery for farm use Tho price of grain has fallen greatly from what It was a hundred or so years ago and each aero of land must therefore bo worked at a less cost than formerly This the farmer can do only by tho use of machinery and tho more Improved tho machinery machin-ery the less per acre Is tho cost of handling the land Every farmer should therefore study the machine question and learn If he is using fairly fair-ly good machines or whether 1e Is using machines that aro expensive of labor and effective to a less degree than should be found In farm machines ma-chines It is sometimes cheaper to throw away an old machlno than It is to keep it Is Iron a Fertilizer It has not been bellevcii that iron In any form is what wo might call a real fertilizer In the soil although wo know that Iron gives the color both to the soil and to all the plants produced pro-duced upon It There are somo experimenters ex-perimenters however who believe that iron sulphate is itself a fertilizer Ono of these men Is a Belgian who has been making some experiments on oats and other cereals Ho applied 250 kilograms of Iron sulphate and by it produced tho samo effect on oats as did 150 kilograms of nitrate of soda In addition many weeds were destroyed by tho iron sulphate Tho author attributes tho general effort of the iron sulphate solely to tho iron and not to the sulphuric acid Wo are sure however that most of our experimenters ex-perimenters at least those on this sldo of the water will bo very slow In accepting ac-cepting tho conclusions of this experimenter ex-perimenter While Iron docs enter Into the formation of plants yet It is to a very limited extent The advantage advan-tage resulting from tho application as i recorded may be due to somo other i element rather than to the application of iron Buy Clover Seed Early I Usually clover seed Is sown very early In the spring or oven late in the winter In northern localities It is sown on the snow In March and further south Is put In in February The clover seed should bo purchased a considerable consider-able time before It Is used so that It may bo tested This testing should be done by counting out a hundred seeds and placing them between be-tween damp woolen cloths inclosed in reversed plates to keep In tho moisture mois-ture If tho germination is low now lots of seed may have to be purchased pur-chased and this is the moro reason for buying the seed early In tho winter win-ter Also tho testing is moro likely to bo dono if tho seed Is purchased early than if it is purchased late Tho latebought seed Is too apt to be scattered scat-tered on the land without tho farmer far-mer knowing whether It is fairly good or not If It falls he does not know whether the failure Is duo to poor seed or something else Care In Experiments In the making of farm experiments great care needs to be exorcised to havo all possibility of error eradicated Many of tho socalled experiments carried car-ried on on farms are really not experiments experi-ments at all Thoy arc so carelessly conducted that no scientist would accept ac-cept their conclusions Such an experiment ex-periment Is that In which tho farmer to test his land or a manure puts tho fertilizer on a field but has no check plot with no treatment Ho makes a comparison with what the field did when tho fertilizer was not used It should bo evident to him that any Increase of harvest may bo duo to something else than the fertilizer Such experiments mean little or nothing noth-ing As fine a quality of silage can bo made from sorghum as from another an-other crop and there seems to bo lit tlo difference between tho feeding values of sorghum and corn silage for beef production In fall and winter plan tho work for spring and summer M |