61 



insures half of that with us it will be enough to bring it into 

 immediate and general use. 



I have given at some length the varieties of wheat now in 

 use among us, and it now remains for me to answer the 

 other questions of the Board in connection with their culti- 

 vation. 



The most general and approved plan of preparing our 

 ground is by summer fallowing; every other mode is an ex- 

 ception to this general rule among wheat growers. If time 

 and duties permit, the manure goes out on to corn ground in 

 the spring; if not on to the corn ground, then on to the 

 summer fallow, and plowed in with the first stirring imme- 

 diately after corn planting; it is then pastured until the 

 month of August and stirred the second time, lies a week or 

 two, sowed and the wheat either plowed in with the cultiva- 

 tor, shovel plow, common plow, or harrowed in, between the 

 first and 20th of September. If the ground is stirred three 

 times, and plowed deep, and the wheat put in early, with a 

 drill or a cultivator, it is all the better. And a still better 

 plan is, to have your fields so laid off, that by regular alter- 

 nate cropping of grains and clover, you can be able to put in 

 your wheat crop upon a clover sod every year. With this 

 kind of tillage, with what manure could be added, our lands 

 would grow more and more productive. The quantity of 

 seed averages about a bushel and a peck to the acre ; some 

 sows more and some a little less, according to the nature of 

 the soil and time of sowing. The average yield of the crop 

 in our county last year could not have fallen short much of 

 twenty bushels to the acre. Our prairie and thick timbered 

 lands went as high as from twenty-five to thirty bushels, 

 while oar openings ranged along between ten and twenty 

 per acre. Our time of harvesting now is much earlier than 

 it was ten or twelve years ago, for what reason I am at a 

 loss to determine; it begins the last of June and extends to 

 the middle of July. The wheat is principally cut with the 

 cradle, bound and shocked in the usual manner. It is suf- 



