Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1868 [PAGE 255]

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the sower. The best harrow is a 32 tooth drag, with the hinges running through the drag, and a cast roller is very much the best. All grain wants to be cut early. M. Pim?e.-<-Both White and Yellow Dent corn. Club wheat has the most admirers; common white oats ; no rye ; very little barley; don't sow buckwheat, it is so hard to kill out. Fall plowing, with heavy harrowing, is best for all crops. Sow as early as we can work the ground for wheat and barley. Plant corn from 15th of April to 15th of May. Cultivate corn with wheeled cultivator. Riding is preferred by some, but both are about equally used here. Lay by wUh common plow. Pull all corn here. Heaping machines alone are used. Shock of 10 bundles, capped by 2 more. Stacks are put up with from 150 to 300 bushels in each. Average yield of wheat, about 15 bushels per acre. J. Tefft.—Corn is smallJDent; plant as early in the spring as frost will admit; cultivate early with small plow by turning away from hill as close as can run plow without disturbing it, for the purpose of letting in sun to warm the land. Then, in a few days, turn furrow back and cultivate afterwards with cultivator. This, with buckwheat, which we raise in orchards, is all the grain usually raised on the farm. S. Reynolds.—Ground for wheat is best plowed in the fall, not very deep ; pnd sowed very early in the spring. I use Brown's drill, made in Ohio. Sow from one and a half to two bushels per acre; oats, three bushels. Like the A harrow or double A best. Have seen very good corn raised with the drag, double shovel plow; and the best way to shock grain is as follows : set ten sheaves on the ground, then lay one or two on top. Largest yield, 90 bushels; average 35, oats. Wheat, largest yield, 30 bushels; average 15. J. Schoerileber.—The best variety of corn here is the flesh colored ; it gives the most abundant yield. For five years I raised the Velvet Winter Wheat; two years since 13 acres produced 100 bushels of wheat and 200 bushels of chess. Last year I sowed 12 bushels and my crop was but 6 bushels; part of that ground I covered in the fall with prairie hay to keep it from freezing out in the spring, but it did no better than the rest. That was the last winter wheat seen in this township. Of spring wheat, the soft Siberian has been used longest but is now run out. The Rio Grande, Canada Club, Scotch Fife, Bull, Tea and Rhode Island are used. The last two kinds are used most at present, but seem to run out like the Siberian. Last spring I sent to Wisconsin for White Fife. I sowed 45 bushels on 30 acres, on an 80 acre lot, cornering on the north west of the above described farm. The yield was 410 bushels, about 80 bushels to the acre. The ground was broken with a Rod plow in July; in the Fall it was plowed again ; in the Spring harrowed, then sowed, and then harrowed double, both ways. Last Summer, I broke again 25 acres, plowed it again, and shall sow it in wheat and keep account. In 1857,1 had 31 bushels to the acre, on four acres, and on 16 acres the yield was 25 bushels to the acre, but since that the yield has never been over 18 bushels to the acre, and sometimes only *1 bushels, owing to injury from the chintz bug and wet, sultry weather about ripening time. In the cultivation of corn, I have used the Brown 'Planter, the D Planter and Cultivator combined, and at present I use the Union Planter, which I like the best. The D Planter I used two seasons, and it was at least one thousand dollars damage to me, as I could not raise more than two-thirds of a crop. The Planter and Cultivator is a nuisance; as for a cultivator, if labor was only cheaper, I should