Geography Shop
Today I learned about the Michigan State Agricultural College.
Twenty-Seventh Annual Report of the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan. 1888. Lansing, MI: Thorp & Godfrey.
The Agricultural Experiment Station employed professors from a number of departments at the College, signaling that the scientific division of knowledge was well encoded by 1888. It was the first year that the experiment station, a product of federal government funding (the Hatch Act) to increase the efficiency of agriculture, was underway at the Michigan College. Experiment stations have a more detailed story, and will be covered in another reading. Suffice it to say that they were part of state agricultural schools, and that their introduction - in practice and theory - was imported from Germany at around this time.
The office of the experiment station in this year employed:
Agriculturalist: Samuel Johnson
Horticulturalist: Liberty Bailey
Chemist: Robert Kedzie
Entomologist: Albert Cook
Botanist: William Beal
Veterinarian: E. Grange
When I visited Michigan State University in October, 2008, I saw many of the original buildings where each of these department were housed. The Agricultural College also had a Forestry Commission and a Weather Service. It was, by all accounts, a place of intense examination of the living and natural world - a geography shop. Of course the great contribution of geography is that it aims to synthesize and connect these divisions in order to say something more abstract about the environment we create and live in.
The farm department had accounts for a labor team, a farm house, cattle, sheep, swine, grain, produce, implements, wood, and fertilizer.
The horticultural department had accounts for a labor team, grounds, vegetable garden, fruit garden, orchard, implements, and ice. An immediate observation here is that there were separate gardens for fruit and vegetables - a separation based on botanical classification. This is an example of the spatial arrangement of a knowledge structure on the acrage of the agricultural college. The separations were made for the sake of life science specialists, and for the sake of specialized knowledge, as opposed to synthetic knowledge which had been the norm until the scientific revolution. Specialization was important because detailed reserach led to precision about the natural world. Precision gained the status of credible when it was observed that manipulation could occur at the invisible scales of the molecules in the soil.
The infrastructure of the college farm and park consisted of the following (not a complete list):
chemical laboratory
botanical laboratory
mechanical laboratory
veterinary laboratory
horticultural laboratory
farm house
herdsman's house
ten barns at professor's houses
horticultural barn and shed
cattle barn and shed
sheep barn
horse barn
piggery
corn house
green house, dwelling and stable
feed barn
grain barn
tool house
bee house
boiler house
observatory
water works
artesian well and connections
steam works
Annual report from Samuel Johnson, the professor of agriculture.
The College acquired a vacant nearby farmhouse to be used as a makeshift hospital. The Freshman class was adjourned 2 weeks early from their spring semester in light of a contagious disease.
Johnson attended a number of conferences, including the State Dairymen's Association, where he presented a paper on silos; the Michigan short horn breeders association, the Michigan merino sheep breeders, Teachers of agriculture and horticulture association; and he wrote a bulletins on steer nutrition, and one on experiments with potatoes and oats.
New implements included an Apsinwall potato planter (Three Rivers, MI), a clover and grass seeder (Ypsilanti, MI), a fertilizer sower (NY state), and a corn cultivator (Marseilles, IL).
The new silo: "the ensilage was most excellent, largely made from corn cut when the ears were in the milk." It held 150 tons.
The experiment station, having just begun, was focusing on trips to and observations of other experiment stations. Of particular curiosity was Johnson's trip to Iowa, where he learned about the success of Russian varieties of fruit in the cold climate. Of the Iowan horticultural professor Halstead: "the ocular demonstration he gave us in the shape of well formed, vigorous trees that had withstood the severe winters of Iowa and were ready to blossom, while the native varieties were generally killed." Here it is worth pausing to consider that the native plants are made to seem foreign, or out of place. Organisms were given a place by people in the natural world based on their usefullness: a Landscape of Utility was being created through the professionalization of agriculture.
The crop list for 1887 is presented by field number (plots).
field #3 - 23 acres - nothing
field #3 - 13 acres - meadow - 18 tons
Field #3 - 10 acres - experimental crops - roots & potatoes
Field #5 - 20 acres - nothing
Field #5 - 5 acres - meadow - 4.5 tons
Field #5 - 15 acres - wheat - 363 bushels
Field #9 - 23 acres - oats - 1208 bushels
Etc.
Twenty-Seventh Annual Report of the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan. 1888. Lansing, MI: Thorp & Godfrey.
The Agricultural Experiment Station employed professors from a number of departments at the College, signaling that the scientific division of knowledge was well encoded by 1888. It was the first year that the experiment station, a product of federal government funding (the Hatch Act) to increase the efficiency of agriculture, was underway at the Michigan College. Experiment stations have a more detailed story, and will be covered in another reading. Suffice it to say that they were part of state agricultural schools, and that their introduction - in practice and theory - was imported from Germany at around this time.
The office of the experiment station in this year employed:
Agriculturalist: Samuel Johnson
Horticulturalist: Liberty Bailey
Chemist: Robert Kedzie
Entomologist: Albert Cook
Botanist: William Beal
Veterinarian: E. Grange
When I visited Michigan State University in October, 2008, I saw many of the original buildings where each of these department were housed. The Agricultural College also had a Forestry Commission and a Weather Service. It was, by all accounts, a place of intense examination of the living and natural world - a geography shop. Of course the great contribution of geography is that it aims to synthesize and connect these divisions in order to say something more abstract about the environment we create and live in.
The farm department had accounts for a labor team, a farm house, cattle, sheep, swine, grain, produce, implements, wood, and fertilizer.
The horticultural department had accounts for a labor team, grounds, vegetable garden, fruit garden, orchard, implements, and ice. An immediate observation here is that there were separate gardens for fruit and vegetables - a separation based on botanical classification. This is an example of the spatial arrangement of a knowledge structure on the acrage of the agricultural college. The separations were made for the sake of life science specialists, and for the sake of specialized knowledge, as opposed to synthetic knowledge which had been the norm until the scientific revolution. Specialization was important because detailed reserach led to precision about the natural world. Precision gained the status of credible when it was observed that manipulation could occur at the invisible scales of the molecules in the soil.
The infrastructure of the college farm and park consisted of the following (not a complete list):
chemical laboratory
botanical laboratory
mechanical laboratory
veterinary laboratory
horticultural laboratory
farm house
herdsman's house
ten barns at professor's houses
horticultural barn and shed
cattle barn and shed
sheep barn
horse barn
piggery
corn house
green house, dwelling and stable
feed barn
grain barn
tool house
bee house
boiler house
observatory
water works
artesian well and connections
steam works
Annual report from Samuel Johnson, the professor of agriculture.
The College acquired a vacant nearby farmhouse to be used as a makeshift hospital. The Freshman class was adjourned 2 weeks early from their spring semester in light of a contagious disease.
Johnson attended a number of conferences, including the State Dairymen's Association, where he presented a paper on silos; the Michigan short horn breeders association, the Michigan merino sheep breeders, Teachers of agriculture and horticulture association; and he wrote a bulletins on steer nutrition, and one on experiments with potatoes and oats.
New implements included an Apsinwall potato planter (Three Rivers, MI), a clover and grass seeder (Ypsilanti, MI), a fertilizer sower (NY state), and a corn cultivator (Marseilles, IL).
The new silo: "the ensilage was most excellent, largely made from corn cut when the ears were in the milk." It held 150 tons.
The experiment station, having just begun, was focusing on trips to and observations of other experiment stations. Of particular curiosity was Johnson's trip to Iowa, where he learned about the success of Russian varieties of fruit in the cold climate. Of the Iowan horticultural professor Halstead: "the ocular demonstration he gave us in the shape of well formed, vigorous trees that had withstood the severe winters of Iowa and were ready to blossom, while the native varieties were generally killed." Here it is worth pausing to consider that the native plants are made to seem foreign, or out of place. Organisms were given a place by people in the natural world based on their usefullness: a Landscape of Utility was being created through the professionalization of agriculture.
The crop list for 1887 is presented by field number (plots).
field #3 - 23 acres - nothing
field #3 - 13 acres - meadow - 18 tons
Field #3 - 10 acres - experimental crops - roots & potatoes
Field #5 - 20 acres - nothing
Field #5 - 5 acres - meadow - 4.5 tons
Field #5 - 15 acres - wheat - 363 bushels
Field #9 - 23 acres - oats - 1208 bushels
Etc.
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