Buffalo County, Nebraska - Chapter 59: Introduction of Alfalfa Into Nebraska and Buffalo County - Report by, 1916

INTRODUCTION OF ALFALFA INTO NEBRASKA AND BUFFALO COUNTY - REPORT BY DR. C. E. BESSEY - REPORT BY PROF. C. L. INGERSOLL - REPORT BY C. Y. SMITH -

The plants which we cuUivate and grow upon our farms has much to do in the development of our agricultural resources, and also in the growth and development of civilization among a people, a nation.

The history of no people is complete which does not include a history of its cultivated plants, and especially those which have proven most useful and helpful.

No plant has done and is doing more to transform Nebraska from what was in years gone by termed a "short grass country," that is a country producing forage of short growth and in very limited quantities, to a land upon whose cultivated fields there is being produced in great abundance forage of highest feeding value for our domestic animals.

A history of the introduction of this valuable plant into the state and the preservation of such history in the archives of our State Historical Society, that it may be of use to coming generations and in the writing of a satisfactory history of our state, is certainly of importance, and with this object in view the writer ventures to contribute the little which he has been able to learn of the matter with the hope that others may be induced to add of their knowledge of the subject.

In the 1890 annual report of the State Board of Agriculture Dr. C. E. Bessey, writing of alfalfa, says: "It is said the Greeks and Romans grew it, and that to these countries it was brought from Persia, and possibly from regions still farther east. Its cultivation certainly dates back two thousand or twentyfive hundred years.

Dr. Bessey mentions, "Upon the soils of Nebraska it has been shown to grow with great readiness, and when once established is likely to endure for a long time."

In a paper published in the 1894 annual report of the State Board of Agriculture, Prof. C. L. Ingersoll, director of the state experiment station, mentions that alfalfa was first planted on the state experiment station farm in the year 1892.

In the 1895 report of the State Board of Agriculture C. Y. Smith, of the state experiment station, in a paper entitled '"Alfalfa in Nebraska," writes, "Alfalfa has no equal today among the forage plants of Nebraska, a statement substantiated by reports on file in the experiment station office of nearly one thousand farmers in the state. Although the last two years have developed a large increase in acreage, alfalfa is by no means a plant of recent cultivation in Nebraska. In 1876 S. P. Baker, of Curtis, Frontier County, received some seed from California costing $22 per bushel. This he sowed at the rate of ten pounds per acre.

"In 1878 he obtained more seed and experimented on a plat of sixteen acres. In 1878 J. C. Mitchell, of Alma, Harlan County, tried it on upland and got a good 'catch.' From this time on others took, hold of it and in 1882-83-84-85 we find it growing with good success in the south and southwestern part of the state." Mr. Smith also adds, "At the present time, 1895, it is found in nearly eighty counties of the state. Boone and Scott's Bluflr's counties are well to the front with alfalfa and Valley County is doing well."

In the year 1895 (see 1895 report of State Board of Agriculture), on the state fair gounds, at the suggestion of G. W. Hervey, an alfalfa palace was erected, the building itself being of baled alfalfa, and in the building was exhibited the plant in all stages of its growth, roots of alfalfa more than thirty feet in length, and also alfalfa seed.

The baled hay used in the erection of this palace was largely furnished by C. H. Ballinger, of Dawson County. Mr. Ballinger was at that date engaged in breeding registered sheep of the mutton breeds and found himself unable to compete successfully at the great state fairs of the western states knd at the International Fat Stock Show held at Chicago until he began to grow and feed alfalfa to his sheep. No one in the state engaged in the breeding and exhibiting of thoroughbred sheep ever captured as many prizes for sheep exhibited at the great state fairs of the West as has Mr. Balliner, and he attributed much of his success to the feeding of so succulent and valuable a plant as alfalfa. Mr. Ballinger was among the first to grow alfalfa in Dawson County, he having about the year 1890 some four hundred acres devoted to this crop, and in the growing of which for both forage and seed he made a marked success.

J. P. Nead of Riverton writes that he first grew alfalfa in that county in the year 1882. H. W. McFadden, in a letter recently published in the Independent Farmer, writes: "I saw an ad in a Denver paper (this nearly thirty years ago, making it about the year 1885) of a dry land forage. I sent and got two bushels of alfalfa seed, costing me $30. I sowed eight acres near the public highway, now near Hollbrook, and got a good stand. Some three or four years later I got a seed crop of eleven bushels per acre, which I sold at $5 per bushel. I sold twenty bushels to a banker, also several of my neighbors bought one, two or three bushels and that crop of seed brought more money than the land was valued at. I would like to know if any one (in the state) preceded me in the growing of alfalfa as a field or acreage crop. I now have fields of alfalfa sowed over twenty years ago that have never been reseeded and produce good yields of feed and seed."

the year 1887. This field was both mowed and pastured during the fall and winter months for a period of twenty-six years, the field being plowed up in the year 1913.

H. D. Watson, of Watson Ranch, Buffalo County, found twenty acres of alfalfa growing on this ranch when he took charge in the year 1889. He increased the acreage on the ranch into one thousand and was at one date the most extensive grower of alfalfa in the state. Pat O'Shea, of Stevenson Siding, Buft'alo County, sowed five acres of alfalfa in the year 1891. Robert Oliver, of Shelton, Buffalo County, began growing alfalfa in the year 1890. Michael Mousel, Cambrige, Furnas County, began growing alfalfa in 1891.

John S. Marsh, Guide Rock, Nebraska, writes : "Dr. Joli" 1^- Smith seeded a field to alfalfa in the spring of 1877. This field was about three miles west of Guide Rock, on land forty feet above the level of the Republican River. To my personal knowledge it stood in alfalfa till the spring of 1907, when it was broken up and reseeded to alfalfa."

Thomas M. Davis, president of the First State Bank, Beaver City. Nebraska, writes: "In 1876 Capt. J. H. Freas sowed a small patch (of alfalfa) in his dooryard, obtaining the seed in some way, and it grew from year to year and fell down, they not knowing just what it was, nor understanding its use." (This was about four miles from Beaver City.)

Mr. Davis adds : "I have heard the legend that the first sown in the state was down near the forks of the Sappa and Beaver, seed being sent by some of the Forty-niners from California in a small sack like a tobacco pouch, to a friend who sowed it, and that it was then called lucern."

J. H. Gishwiller, of Carancahua, Texas (formerly of Kearney County"), writes as follows : "In the spring of 1875 I sowed one pound of seed which I purchased from the D. M. Ferry Seed Co. Richard, or as he was commonly known, 'Uncle Dick' Curry, of Neighborsville, Norton County. Kansas, did the same. We both lost our seed, which cost us, by mail, 75 cents per pound. During the summer of 1875 I made a trip to Utah and Nevada where T saw the plant growing, and being so highly spoken of by the growers, I secured too pounds of seed at a cost of 25 cents per pound. This I .shij^ped to Kearney, Neb., and then took it to Almena, Kans. I sold James O'Kane. of Kearney, seven pounds of the seed and Alexander Kearnes of Nemaha County. Nebraska, eight pounds, but what success they had with it I never heard. The remainder of the seed (eighty-five pounds) I sowed on section No. 13. town No. 2. range No. 22, in Norton County, Kansas, in the spring of 1876. This proved a success and from that sowing I furnished seed to the whole country. Sold seed to Preston & Manning, of Orleans, Neb., in large quantities as early as 1880; also shipped seed to Trumble & Allen at Kansas City in t88i. Sold seed to several of the farmers on the Sappa early, but have forgotten their names. Of my 1876 sowing some of it remained growing on the ground for thirty-two years before it was plowed up."

A. R. Clark, of Red Willow County, sowed two acres in the spring of 1892 and ten acres in 1893. B. A. Robberts. of Boone County, states that Adolph Vincent, of that county, sowed 300 acres to alfalfa about the year 1890. Mr. Robberts sowed nine acres, Mr. Free forty acres and Mr. Brewster nine acres in 1893. In the 1895 report of the State Board of Agriculture W. S. Delano, of Custer, writes : "Alfalfa is already successfully grown in Gage, Webster, Red Willow, Frontier, Furnas, Dawson, Buffalo, Lincoln, Dundy, Hitchcock, Harlan, Hayes, Nuckolls and Custer counties, without irrigation, and where the permanent sheet water is from 5 to 125 feet below the surface." Mr. Delano first grew alfalfa in Custer County in 1891. Mr. A. J. Leach, in his history of Antelope County, states that Farmer's Bulletin No. 255 of the United States Department of Agriculture relates that alfalfa was introduced into California in the year 1854. Mr. Leach further adds that M. B. Huffman, of NeHgh, began experiments in the growing of alfalfa about the year 1892, and that in the year 1900 he had 1,600 acres in cultivation in Antelope County.

J. C. Mitchell, of Alma, Neb., writes of his experience in substance as follows: "Located in Harlan County in 1872. In 1875 sent to California for 100 pounds of alfalfa seed, costing $25. Sowed the seed in the spring of 1876. By July 1st it stood six inches high and I never saw a finer prospect than that fiveacre field was at that time.

"Drouth and the grasshoppers destroyed the crop. In the year 1885 seeded eisfhteen acres one-half miles south of Alma, the first field seeded in this section of the country. Twenty-five years later this field was producing more than three tons of hay annually."

From information collected and authorities quoted in this brief history, it appears that alfalfa was first introduced into California in the year 1854, and introduced into Nebraska in the year 1875; that in the years 1882-83-84 it was being grown in several counties in the southwestern part of the state ; that by the year 1890 its cultivation had extended in an experimental way as far north as Boone County; in 1895 it had been introduced into eighty counties, and as far to the west as Scott's Bluffs County.

The first statistics as to acreage in the state appear to be found in the 1910 United States census returns, which give in Nebraska for the year 1909 : Alfalfa grown on 49,495 farms; number of acres 685,282, producing 1,500,000 tons of hay.

The 1914 annual report of the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture gives as the acreage in the state for that year 1,022,485, and the number of tons of hay 3,208,955, an increase in acreage of more than 45 per cent in five years.

In 1914 alfalfa is being grown in every county in the state, approximately 7 per cent of our cultivated lands being devoted to this crop, or approximately y/2 per cent of our farm lands.

Buft'alo and Dawson counties in the year 1914 were among the leading counties in the production of alfalfa, Buffalo being credited with 45,914 acres, yielding 137,832 tons of hay, 9 per cent of tillable lands of the county being devoted to this crop.