Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 February 1879 — MORE GRASS AND LESS GRAIN. [ARTICLE]

MORE GRASS AND LESS GRAIN.

BY C. F. CLARKSON.

[Read before the low* Fine-Stock Breeders’ Aseo elation.] It is not alone to the heavens that we must look, in the majestic and unfaltering march of the planets, for lessons of the fulfillment of the laws of the material world. All about us there are physical agencies just as exacting, and the violation of which are as destructive to our interests, as chaos would be in the terrestrial world. When a farmer violates the physical laws of vegetable growth, his feet become poison to the soil, and barrenness and desolation follow his footsteps. The richest parts of the earth, which were the gardens of the Old World, by man’s perverse system of husbandry have long since become a desert. Disobedience to God’s laws, whether they be moral, physical or material, are followed as inflexibly by expulsion from the garden as though it were specially enumerated in the decalogue. It is a matter of indifference, so far as the prosperity of the Northwest is concerned, whether, the 300,000,000 of surplus com and half that amount of wheat be shipped to our Atlantic States or to Europe. It is as certainly impoverishing the country as the steppings of time. The earth is unlike the sun, which is never exhausted by giving. It is undying, undecaying, and in perennial glory fructifies and vivifies the earth, and, like its Maker, changes not. We need not go to the Old World to illustrate the folly and wickedness of selling the cream of the earth to feed the hungry. Fifty-eight years ago I traveled through Western New York a d the Western Reserve in Ohio. On the newly underdrained lands of the former State, and the virgin soil of the latter, every farmer vainly imagined he was getting rich by raising the finest wheat and exporting it at enormous cost. At that period those soils were capable of producing large crops, especially of grass, an acre of which would pasture a cow or steer. The quality of that soil has departed with the annual shipments of wheat. Long since, however, the wiser and more prudent saw the inevitable result. They immediately commenced to bring it back to its original fertility by the use of commercial fertilizers, and the prudent accumulations and use of barn-yard and green manures. And this practice has had its partial success. But the largest portion of those beautiful sections of country under unwise management are still receding in productiveness. Lately a very reliable writer and close observer, of Ohio, informs us that now it takes five acres in the Reserve to pasture a cow or a steer.

The same policy which has rendered almost barren the fairest portions of the earth in other places is as certainly being done in lowa. Skimming the soil of lowa of its cream by shipping away millions of bushels of unprofitable wheat, and covering our farms with 10 per cent, mortgages, have already brought our people to the door of bankruptcy. To change our policy, it is not necessary that our farmers should rush pell mell, like a herd of frightened sheep, into dairying, or any other particular branch of agriculture. Taj ere are thousands of ways the energies of our farmers might be directed profitably. Not one-third pasture enough is now furnished to the 4,000,000 of hogs raised annually in the State. Too much grain is fed to them in summer for either health or profit. There is not one-tenth of the earlycut and sweetly-cured hay now fed to neat cattle that could be profitably done. Many of the idle hours in winter should be spent in manipulating and preparing such feed for stock in warm quarters. More flesh, bone, muscle and fat can be put on in this way than by feeding raw com, with stock standing in mud or snow, exposed to the Borean blasts. More steers should be raised and fully prepared for market on our small farms, instead of being sold in a lean and lank condition to large stock feeders. For this purpose the small farms must be radically changed and improved from their present condition. And this leads us to the main question of grass. The popular question is, what kind of grass seed should be sown for pasture and meadow? For pasture our experience, dearly learned, is to sow all kinds and varieties you can possibly obtain. Follow the lessons taught by nature. Truly in pasture “variety is the spice of life.” Abundantly larger crops can be raised, greater variety of food furnished, and diversity of grasses will almost certainly. guarantee a suc-

cession of good pasture from early spring to mid-winter. As to the quantity of seed per acre, the best advice is, sow all the seed you have, and be careful that it is not spread too wide. But the field here widens, and our limited time forbids us indulging in our favorite ideas on this subject. Grass is King. In its direct money value, and in all its collateral and indirect benefits, it is worth more to the world than all the cereal crops combined. Its direct is nothing in comparison to its indirect value in the influence it has in preserving the fertility of our farms by its mamirial wealth in all its forms. Without the modest grass which we tread under our feet, the earth would soon become a barren waste, uninhabitable for man or beast. And we are prepared to say that no man can thrive on a farm—no farm can be self-supporting—where grass is wholly neglected or advantage is not taken of stock raised on other grass farms. It is supposed by many that only such soil as is not fit for cultivation in the cereals or roots should be devoted to grass. This is a mistake. We can afford to take our best soils for the production of this crop, and this is the real plan of bringing them up to the highest point of fertility. It only pays to raise the best crops, and, with all the richness of our virgin soil, on our best farms we only attain to about half a crop in comparison with the farms that have been tilled for a thousand years in the Old World. And it will require only a few more decades at our present way of cultivating to render our farms equal to the mullein fields of Virginia or the Carolinas. Our salvation from such a result depends upon the practical recognition of the old Belgian proverb: “No grass, no cattle; no cattle, no manure; no manure, no crops.” A district of country like ours, which is capable of producing all the grasses, cereals and roots in prolific abundance, has within itself the elements of independence, as well as the sources of private and national wealth. It can live within itself, depending in a very limited degree upon other districts for the exchange of a few articles. On such a soil as burs the farmer has at hand the means to secure whatever he desires; or, to apply the proverb just quoted, he has corn, cattle and manure. Grass and stock husbandry, in a country prolific of corn as well as grass, is the most independent branch of man’s occupation on earth. And herein consist our great advantages over any nation of the Old World. The preservation’ of the fertility of our soils, and consequently the increased production of the cereals, can only be profitably secured by grass extensively. France, outside of her vineyards, is poor in comparison with England, Germany or Holland. The soil of England or Germany naturally is not equal in fertility to that of France, yet

their crops are nearly double per acre to that of the latter country. In France the manure of one acre of grass has to be diffused over two and a half acres of grain, while in England one acre of grain receives the fertilizing products of three acres of grass. England adopts nature’s laws in her system of husbandry, while France is robbing the earth of its fertility and starving her half-fed peasants. An intelligent system of farming must be adopted here. By a wise and thorough plan of stock and grain husbandry, there is no more limit to the capability of these rich prairie lands, that stretch away in almost endless perspective, than there is in the atomsthat exist in the atmosphere, the waters of the ocean, or the rocks of the solid earth. We must have more grass. Not the coarse, sour, useless grass of our sloughs, but sweet, nutritious grasses—grasses that make milk, butter and cheese. Grasses which make the higher order of beef and mutton. Grasses which will develop the highest type of that noblest of animals, next to man, the horse. Grasses which will produce that animal which is worshiped more than the bird of liberty—the hog.