Across the
Editor's Desk
The following is a book review
by S. W. Martin in a column
called “Bifocals” in the summer
1971 issue of Better Crops With
Plant Food. While we can’t speak
on the book itself, we think the
WM
GARDEN SPOT UNIT
ANNUAL MEETING
Monday Evening, Nov. 15, 1971
7:30 Farm & Home Center
-Guest Speaker - Mr. George Steele, President of Agway
Board
-Election of four member committeemen
-Management Reports
-Selections by Marlene Hershey and Daughters.
DOOR PRIZES
As a beef operator you're interested in maximizing
your profit picture. You’re looking for new ideas, new
methods and new innovations that will help "beef up”
your profit. Here's a program worth looking into. It's
called "Van Dale Systems Feeding." It starts with
maximizing your production of total digestible nutri
ents with increased haylage and silage. This permits
the best use of your land and cattle coupled with a
fully mechanized feeding system. Van Dale has the
equipment and know-how for maximizing profits
through mechanized feeding.
FORAGE BOXES
So let's bring it in from the field with a Van Dale
Forage Box. These rugged built units are
equipped with exclusive auger-type “beaters”
that deliver all kinds of forage under all kinds
of conditions. No clogging at the blower, as
the forage is metered between the augers
—not over the top!
SILAGE DISTRIBUTORS
Van Dale distributors insure even
silage distribution throughout
the silo for a maximum fill
The 1640 Power-Fil’s unique
revolving deflector plate
diverts the explosive force
of incoming material and
spreads it evenly in a con
tinuous sweeping pattern
to the wall. The 538 oper
ates in an elliptical
motion, directing forage
-to the outside walls of
the silo. Varied spout
rotation speed allows for
even fills.
SILO UN LOADERS
There's a Van Dale unloader for
every feeding application. These high
performance twin-auger units can handle
virtually any silage or haylage under the most
adverse conditions... frozen, gummy or what
have you, and do it fast. The 1230 has been
customer-certified in the field to outperform,
and outlast any make its size. For hard work in
smallersilosthere’sthelo2oF. The Inch ' : il !
built for silos from 20 to 40'
has a capacity up to 40 tons per
VA3M DALE
book review represents a spirited
appeal for the attitudes and
values which have made our
increasingly efficient farm
economy possible:
GEORGE SHUMAN was not a
AGWAY
Non-StopTeeding
Box 337 • Long Lake, Minnesota
REFRESHMENTS
man of political or financial or
deucational prestige. He was
“just” an Illinois farmer.
No eternal flame or marble
shrine marks his grave in
Woodford County. But today’s
generation owes George Shuman
and his wife, Lucretia, a debt.
This Midwest couple embodies
that handful of stalwarts who
first trusted the early advice of
America’s agricultural
colleges—sturdy folks strong
enough to shed an open tear of
pride as their first son received
his college diploma 50 years ago.
For every Shuman there were
100 scoffers who would not listen
to science in the early days—so
stubborn many farm journals
would not put a scientist’s college
connection under his byline.
Not George Shuman. He often
lifted his son to his knee to read
him pamphlets from Dean
Davenport and Dr. Cyril Hopkins
at the agricultural college. In
1907, he took his young boy to
town to hear Dr. Hopkins.
There the great scientist used
potted plants to show corn’s
greedy appetite for NPK—a
CALEB M. WENGER
Drumore Center, RDI Quarryville, Pa.
Phone 548-2116
dramatic stunt for 1907. A half
century later George Shuman’s
son used the same tool to show
villagers m India how much their
crops craved NPK, especially on
soils weary from 3,000 years of
production
That son, Frank, has now
written a book he calls DRUM
BEATS OF CHANGE. On the
copy he sent us, this one-time vo
ag teacher, county agent, and
USA soils missionary scribbled m
one sentence the past and future
of mankind;
“The final crop of any soil is
PEOPLE and the SPIRIT of the
people.”
Frank Shuman’s book is dif
ferent —130 living anecdotes of
human nature at work in
America’s breadbasket and
among South Asia’s teeming
millions. But it is than
Illinois and India ’ and
Afghanistan. It is the- story of
mankind, in a sense.
The story of a boy whose father
worked all night with an untamed
filly to SHOW his son what
patience and selfdiscipline can do
. . who fed two fine shotes dif
ferent diets for 100 days to SHOW
him what deficiency and balance
mean . who used his new 1908
pocket knife to SHOW his son
nodules on roots of a new wonder
BULK STORAGE BINS
Supplementary feeds are easily
handled with Van Dale’s bulk stor
age feed bins. The Superstores are
available in A-Vz or 7Vz ton sizes.
These units are fiberglas con
structed. They won’t rust, dent, cor
rode or absorb heat from the su n.
CONVEYORS
Whether straight-out, incline, au
ger or chain, Van Dale conveyors
fit most any automated feeding
system. The SCCI4OO Cham Con
veyor is Van Dale’s highest capacity
conveyor. It handles all rations—
safely. The CT 2OO and 300 auger
type conveyors are adaptable to
any feeding system. They're
tough, efficient, easy to install
>d economically priced.
BUNK FEEDERS
Van Dale has a bunkfeederfor every
operation. The SCF 1400 Traveling
Bunk Feeder is a single chain unit
that will carry and feed virtually
everything. The Mammoth 14
Multi-Feeder is an auger type de
signed especially for multi-lot
operations. The 934 and 1234
Auger Bunk Feeders are the
sturdiest, smoothest operat
ing, lowest cost feeders ever
produced. Then, there's the
stainless steel Shaker Feeder.
A combination feeder and
bunk designed for single
lot operations.
Van Dale Systems Feeding
comes down to one word...
efficiency. Van Dale offers var
ious models and sizes of feed
ing equipment to most effici
ently match the needs of every
feed lot layout... old or new,
large or small. Check with your
Van Dale dealer to see what
you need to maximize your
profits. And ask him about
Van Dale’s new agri-leasing
program.
Lancaster Farming, Saturday, November 6,1971—1
crop called alfalfa . who helped
his son handhoe corn from
Monday dawn to Saturday dark
to SHOW him a tide of weeds
brought in by a 3-week rain could
not conquer the Shumans.
It is the story of a father who
used his end of a 5-foot saw at
post-cutting time to plant values
in his young boy’s mind: “Look
on your neighbor to find his soul
and not on his garment to detect a
hole.”
Simple, very square for today,
but a principle that made George
Shuman’s son a successful and,
more important, a happy man at
work for people
DRUM BEATS OF CHANGE
tells what a young vo-ag teacher
did when he found triangular hog
rings clamped to the eyelids of
chicken-eating sows at the home
of a poor student with a stubborn
father. What he did when an
angry dairyman turned his shot
gun on the county veterinarian
come to test cattle for tuber
culosis
Frank Shuman pulls no pun
ches —about the hurried
dairyman rinsing his milk
buckets in the green scum and
filth of the horse tank so he could
get to the Sanitary Milk
Producers meeting m time
Shuman helps the mature
remember and the young un
derstand what it felt like to wake
up in 1932 and find corn bringing
10c a bushel and hogs 3c a pound,
while two bankers waited for the
mortgage
He tells it in human terms, not
in cold statistics—of family
farms put under the auction
hammer, of cunning speculators
buying them up and getting
shouted out of farmers’ meetings
when griping about “government
in business ”
The cunning did not like a man
named Franklin Roosevelt' Mr.
Shuman does not mention this
president, but history does.
And Shuman explains why the
Production Credit Association
was created under FDR —in a
day when the only farmers who -
could get credit were those who
could prove they didn’t need
credit. Why Rural Electrification
(REA) was created under FDR —
in a day when “Electric Utilities
refused to service farmers until
they' were threatened with a
competitor whose arms were
held up by the Federal Govern
ment ”
Frank Shuman tells it like it
was—how scores of farmers, long
told they had enough “natural”
potash for 2,000 years, were
jarred when a potash demon
stration more than doubled the
corn yield on a leading farm
Neighboring counties started
hollering for potash trials, until a
state-wide chant made K no
longer a step child of the Illinois
fertility system
DRUM BEATS OF CHANGE is
the story of a county agent whose
mind was always open to change
To the Hopkins idea that we must
put back all, not some, not most,
but ALL the fertility our crop
takes off . to the Bray idea that
organic matter could be main
tained with continuous corn, of all
things, by plowing under stalks
and residue and feeding (fer
tilizing) the bacteria that rot the
stalks
A popular practice today—but
not the night Dr Bray advised it
in Frank Shuman’s county nor
the morning the newspaper
editor called Shuman for “a
statement.”
It is the story of a man who did
not fear . . the story of one of
God Almighty’s natural-born
teachers whose Maker ap
parently never freed him to
pursue positions and wealth and
power and the other phantoms
between the two childhoods of
man.
Instead this unfreed man found
himself standing on India’s
Gangetic plain one afternoon in
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