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Show Successful Preston Farmer Recognized In Article In September 16th 'Idaho Farmer' Gottfred Spatig, successful Preston Pres-ton farmer and dairyman, came into in-to the state and national limelight in the agricultural world this week when he was featured in the Ida-no Ida-no farmer, state farm magazine, in the issue of September 12. The article was headed, "Preston Dairyman Succeeds on 40 Acres" and read as follows: There are two things that worry Gottfred Spatig in connection with his 40-acre farming business near Preston. One is that he will fail to build up the maximum fertility in his soil. The other is that The Idaho Ida-ho Farmer, now that it has visited his plaice and inquired about his farming practices, will "blow him up" as being a better farm operator oper-ator than he is. Those two points perhaps are the clews to the reputation which caus. ed us to hear about Mr. Spatig in the first place, and to look him up. Where you find a firm belief !that the welfare of the Spatig family depends upon the amount of fertility that can be crammed into the 40 acres which provides their living, coupled with a humble desire de-sire to learn more about farming rather than to tell about it, is there anything very surprising in the fact that success is finding its way to that farm? "We started here in 1926," they recalled for our benefit. "The land had mostly been grained up to the time that we got it, and there wasn't a whole lot to be said for the state of fertility it was in. The first thing we did was to break out the old alfalfa, put in some beets and seed down new alfalfa." Their farming experience up to that time had been in the cash grain type of operation, and it was a few years before they established the rotation rota-tion which they found to be best adapted to irrigated farming. Once he got his plan of operation firmly fixed in his mind, Gottfred Spatig made the. building up of his soil the centerpiece about which all details of his activity were built. One of the obvious needs was fertilizer, and he began bring, ing that in from any place he could get it. Wherever there was a small dairy that had no use for their animal fertilizer, he would haul it off to his own land. A few years after becoming established on this land, the Spatigs started their own dairy. The manure byproduct by-product was one of the things they were after. The daily has become a story in its own right, and we will tell more about it later. The essential fact is that it was started to occupy a particular place in a well-rounded picture, and that is what it has done. Now for a quick once-over concerning con-cerning his plan of crop rotation, bearing in mind the thought that building up the productvity of the, soil is the chief aim; "For the first year or two we (Continued on page eight) MORE ABOUT ! GOTTFRED SPATIG RECOGNIZED (Continued from page one) grew quite a bit of grain," he ad-milted. ad-milted. "I was more acquainted with that kind of farming and I didn't think that grain would de- . plete the soil any more than any of the cultivated crops. I think now, though, that grain depletes the soil more than beets. They don't do so well following grain. We start our rotation with alfalfa and plan to get about three years' crops off of a stand. After that the dandelions get in and the yields begin to go down. "We crown the hay land, manure ma-nure and phosphate it, and then plant it to beets, which we grow for as many as three years. Sometimes Some-times we break up the beet planting plant-ing with a year of peas, and then back to beets again. I believe that peas are easier on the land than beets, and besides, they usually make us more money." The success of the scheme is at tested by the fact that the average yield of beets from this land in the j bad beet year of 1939 was 18 tons per acre. From fall-plowed land the yield was 21 tons per acre. However, the dairy is playing an interesting part in the scheme of things on the Spatig farm. "We'll probably be raising fewer beets hereafter," Mr. Spatig surmised, "and more hay and pasture." The present dairy herd consists of six high-producing cows they averaged 61.28 pounds of fat in March, 1940 and only two acres of the farm are now devoted to pasture pas-ture purposes. "We expect to build up to about 10 head of cows, and then we'll be able to make use of a milking machine," ma-chine," he added. "By cutting down on cultivated crops and getting get-ting the dairy herd on more of a mass production basis we'll be ablo to use our time more efficiently." Feeding at present is according to production of the individual cow in the approved manner. With their present beet-pulp drawback from the sugar factory, they are feeding an average of 46 pounds of wet pulp per cow daily and two to three pounds of grain, made up of about a third oats, two-thirds barley, with a small addition of ground wheat. The pulp is available avail-able during the most of the win, ter season, and when the supply is exhausted, pasture is available. In addition, the animals get all the good hay they can eat the year around, whether they are on pasture pas-ture or in the feed lot. "Under this system of management, manage-ment, I believe we get better production pro-duction in the winter time than we do in summer," Mr. Satig observed. ob-served. "The cows get a little better bet-ter care in winter and there aren't any flies to bother them." Development is being made hert on a firm foundation. The productivity pro-ductivity of the soil the Spatigs consider to "be the fundamental thing to build upon. Unless that is there, any expansion may be undermined. un-dermined. Now that they have that, and have a system of farming which is adding to the strength of that foundation rather than tearing it down, they are ready to think about some of the later steps. "We wanted to start our Improvement Im-provement work after we got on a profitable farming basis, and not before," Mr. Spatig reported. "We want to build a good barn and get a better house, but we have been willing to wait for those things until un-til we thought that we had the hight foundation under us." n r, |
