“The Grange meeting at a Mr. Worker’s farm, was held in a great barn. He had delayed the alfalfa cutting so that the barn might be empty. Some other farmers nearby had already cut. I had a chance to see alfalfa growing under what seemed to me about the toughest chance you can give a plant. The city of Syracuse is buying gravel from his field, to use on the street. The workmen are digging right into the hill, and it requires hard labor to pick up this tough, hard soil. As they dig they follow the roots of the alfalfa down. Some of the roots are quite as large as my thumb, and I am sure that many of them had gone down twenty feet at least into this tough soil. These big roots make plowing an alfalfa sod anything but fun. This is one of the few objections to the crop. I had supposed that the plant does its best where it can work down into an open or gravel subsoil. I have been told by one who is called an ‘expert’ that alfalfa cannot thrive on a hardpan subsoil, yet here it was going down into the toughest soil I ever saw, and covering the surface with a perfect mat of green stalks. Mr. Worker goes so far as to say that the tougher the subsoil the better the alfalfa goes through it, provided water does not stand about the roots. That is one point upon which all agree--the alfalfa cannot stand wet feet. It must have water enough; that is why its roots go down so far, but it will not thrive in wet fields where water does not run easily away. “On other farms I saw the alfalfa growing at the top of steep clay hills, which were formerly almost useless for farm purposes unless stuffed with stable manure. Now that alfalfa has been started these hill-tops have become about the most profitable fields on the farm. At another place I saw a fair crop of alfalfa growing in a thin streak of soil over a rocky ledge. There were not eighteen inches of soil covering the solid rock, yet the alfalfa was thriving. I have been told that this is the condition under which alfalfa will not grow, yet here it was giving more forage than any red clover we can grow. I have said that the spreading of these alfalfa fields is changing the character of farming in central New York. It is not easy to realize just what this means without visiting this favored section. This new forage plant brings fertility and feed to the farm. It is just like having a fertilizer factory and a feed store drop out of the skies upon the farm, to get this alfalfa well started. Of course as the farmer learns what the crop will do he uses it more and more to feed both stock and the farm. It would not be a very bright farmer who would continue to grow wheat or some other annual crop which brings him $25 per acre when a permanent crop like alfalfa will guarantee $60. Some farmers are quicker to see this than others, but in the end the majority of them see it and then we see a change. These alfalfa farmers are giving a great object lesson, and their farms are more interesting than any exhibit at the state