Then, when the clover was turned under, we usually got good wheat. This is fact, No. 2. On these two facts, hang many of our agricultural theories. We may state these facts in many ways. Still, it all comes to this: Clover is good for wheat; plaster is good for clover.
There is another fact, which is a matter of general observation and remark. You rarely find a good farmer who does not pay special attention to his clover-crop. When I was riding with Mr. Geddes, among the farmers of Onondaga County, on passing a farm where everything looked thrifty—good fences, good buildings, good garden, good stock, and the land clean and in good condition—I would ask who lived there, or some other question. No matter what. The answer was always the same. “Oh! he is another of our clover men.” We will call this fact, No. 3.
And when, a year afterwards, Mr. Geddes returned my visit, and I drove him around among the farmers of Monroe County, he found precisely the same state of facts. All our good farmers were clover men. Among the good wheat-growers in Michigan, you will find the same state of things.
These are the facts. Let us not quarrel over them.
[ CHAPTER XXIV.]
THE CHEAPEST MANURE A FARMER CAN USE.
I do not know who first said, “The cheapest manure a farmer can use is—clover-seed,” but the saying has become part of our agricultural literature, and deserves a passing remark.
I have heard good farmers in Western New York say, that if they had a field sown with wheat that they were going to plow the spring after the crop was harvested, they would sow 10 lbs. of clover-seed on the wheat in the spring. They thought that the growth of the clover in the fall, after the wheat was cut, and the growth the next spring, before the land was plowed, would afford manure worth much more than the cost of the clover-seed.