Alfalfa needs no top-dressing with fertilizers and manure, but simply a severe cross-harrowing with a very sharp-toothed harrow, bearing the weight of a man. The more the Alfalfa is torn and split up the better it will grow. This harrowing should be done in spring before it commences its first growth. After growing a few years, the stools project, in many places, above the surface of the ground. If an implement could be devised for the purpose of cutting off all these old stalks just below the surface, then seed lightly, giving a good harrowing, the plants would be renewed, and would thicken up rapidly, for wherever a stalk or root is cut off, dozens of new shoots spring up in its place. However, I advocate a change of diet for brutes as well as mankind, and therefore take for the family cow a half acre of most excellent ground. I will suppose that one half of it—that is a quarter acre—is well set in Alfalfa. The rest I would have plowed twice, very deep, smoothed and laid off in drills for carrots, which, at the proper season (with us in February or March), I would enrich in the furrows with any well-rotted manure. For Alfalfa almost any good soil suits, for I find it adapts itself to various soils and endures a great deal of rough treatment, but in order to get the best results it should be well treated. I prefer a moderately sandy soil, which is naturally moist. On dry, mellow ground, it will send down a tap-root ten feet. I have drawn roots out of very sandy soil when digging post holes that would measure six feet. They seek moisture during dry weather, and although I have had Alfalfa die down, the ground being parched and cracked, yet when the fall or winter rains begin, it springs up in a few days. As soon as the Alfalfa comes in, feed it alone, salting as suits one’s own idea. When the first scattering blooms appear I would cut the remainder—namely, that which had not been cut each day for the cow. I would then cure it as rapidly as possible, and put it under cover, sprinkling salt over it. I now advocate and practice feeding the cured hay in preference to the green. By the latter you obtain a greater flow of milk, but with the former I consider the milk richer, and this is the experience of dairymen with whom I have conversed. A cow learns to eat the cured fodder almost as readily as the green, and all danger of bloat is obviated. Some may think because I am in California that irrigation makes some difference, but my Alfalfa grows without it. I cut mine six times last summer, 1879, and it was an exceptionally dry and hot season. Our rains fall mostly in winter, and that has to do us until the next winter.