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Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1870
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400 believing that no considerable portion of this part of the State needs drainage. I mole-drained land on my old place in Kendall county, where the subsoil was so tenacious that we could talk forty rods through the drains. There is an impervious clay under the soil on the coal fields that must be drained. Adjourned. THURSDAY AFTERNOON—2 P . M. Judge L. W. LAWRENCE, of Belvidere, one of the trustees of the University, read a paper on Manures. [Not received.] DISCUSSION. CAHOON—I spread dry straw four to six inches thick on a meadow just after cutting. It was a dry season, yet the meadow grew a foot of grass that fall, and seemed improved the next year. FITCH—I manured from an early day with rotten straw and manure of cattle and sheep. I left my farm six years ago. The man who followed me got some great crops, but has not attended to manuring; and the farm is now failing. It is better and easier to keep up a farm. Don't raise grain entirely, or you will come to misery, as many of our farmers have done. CHURCH—Is there any experience in applying straw in the spring ? CAHOON—I think it bad to put on straw before corn. LAWRENCE—The straw must be turned under in the fall, or it won't rot. Then it both warms and underdrains the land EITCH—It will do to plow in straw in the spring, but the corn looks poor until late in the season ; then it grows better. WILCOX—A neighbor of mine put straw on an exhausted field, and plowed it in the fall, and raised a good crop. He put 300 sheep on a field of fifty-three acres that had been seven years cropped, and was much exhausted, for three years, then plowed deeply, and raised the best crop of wheat in the neighborhood— 800 bushels; weighing fifty-seven or fifty-eight pounds to the bushel. By using a large amount of straw a wagon load of manure can be made to a sheep annually. CUNNINGHAM—My practice is to stack my straw well, and to keep cattle enough to work over the straw during the winter. I bed the cattle in the barn yard thoroughly with it two or three
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