5. The crops that will keep our soil in the best condition. A good farmer should always be thinking of how to improve his soil. He wants his land to support him and to maintain his children after he is dead.
Since cowpeas, clover, and alfalfa add atmospheric nitrogen to the soil and at the same time are the best feeding-materials, it follows that these crops should hold an important place in every system of crop-rotation. By proper rotating, by proper terracing, and by proper drainage, land may be made to retain its fertility for generations.
EXERCISE
1. Why are cowpeas, clover, and alfalfa so important to the farmer?
2. What is meant by the protein of a food?
3. Why is it better to feed the farm crops to animals on the farm rather than to sell these crops?
SECTION LXV. FARM TOOLS AND MACHINES
The drudgery of farm life is being lessened from year to year by the invention or improvement of farm tools and machines. Perhaps some of you know how tiresome was the old up-and-down churn dasher that has now generally given place to the "quick-coming" churns. The toothed, horse-drawn cultivator has nearly displaced "the man with the hoe," while the scythe, slow and back-breaking, is everywhere getting out of the way of the mowing-machine and the horserake. The old heavy, sweat-drawing grain-cradle is slinking into the backwoods, and in its place we have the horse-drawn or steam-drawn harvester that cuts and binds the grain, and even threshes and measures it at one operation. Instead of the plowman's wearily making one furrow at a time, the gang-plows of the plains cut many furrows at one time, and instead of walking the plowman rides. The shredder and husker turns the hitherto useless cornstalk into food, and at the same time husks, or shucks, the corn.
The farmer of the future must know three things well: first, what machines he can profitably use; second, how to manage these machines; third, how to care for these machines.
