FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 109 



Our coru is all planted with a two-row planter set to drop one or two 

 kernels every ten or twenty inches, varyin<>; aeeordins to the size of 

 the variety, in rows three feet eight inches apart. The subsequent slight 

 thinning by the weeders and drags makes the stand about perfect, being 

 practically the same number of stalks per rod as when planted in hills 

 by hand but distributed over the length of the row giving the individual 

 stalks more root and leaf space and consequently more strength. About 

 a three row space on each end of the field should be sowed both ways 

 to turn on Avhen cultivating the length of the rows with the two-horse 

 cultivators and it is better if these end rows are jdanted to beans or 

 potatoes or roots. We like to put in some early variety first and last 

 thus extending the harvest and planting season over considerably more 

 time. 



Now. with our corn in the ground, we continue our dragging with 

 spike-tooth drags and weeders, keeping the latter going until the corn 

 is several inches high, alternating with two-horse cultivators the way of 

 the rows. "We go over the tields just as many times as is possible until 

 the corn is tasselled out and the ears setting, making the cultivators work 

 shallower and wider from the rows as the season advances and the 

 roots stretch out and up. 



We have more than one reason for our ])articular care of the corn 

 ground and I may state that on our farm we have just two main crops — 

 corn and clover. The corn crop is the only crop for which we plow. 

 When we plow for corn we are plowing also for our wheat and oats and 

 barley which are grown always as side or catch crops after corn, the 

 wheat being drilled in the standing corn or stubble after cutting without 

 any special preparation of the mellow soil and the oats after the stubble 

 ground is loosened with the disc in spring. We plow for corn only when 

 a field has past its best as a pasture or has become what is termed turf- 

 bound, and always seed our wheat or oats with clover and all of our 

 corn ground is sowed to some one of these crops which serve as a nurse- 

 crop to the clover. 



Our regular rotation is corn, wheat or oats, clover, pasture, corn. 

 When we plow for corn, as I have said, we are plowing for our wheat and 

 when we cultivate our corn we are dragging our fallow and putting it 

 in the best possible condition for the wheat and the clover seeding to 

 follow. In this way all our wheat crop costs us is the price of seed plus 

 the expense of harvesting and threshing and we hav^e had no delay in 

 getting our land seeded to clover again. We use corn for our breaking-up 

 crop on sod and coarse manure and make it serve a manifold purpose 

 in the farm economy. 



When corn harvest comes we hurry. All is cut with harvesters, going 

 in long bouts the length of the rows across the forty-acre fields. Three 

 or four men set up after a machine and carry the bundles, which are 

 made as large as possible and already laid in rows, to the center— six 

 bundles wide from each side and making into great shocks of two dozen 

 bundles each. These shocks are set up compactly as broad-topped 

 wigwams — a fitting method in handling the Indian's own grain crop — 

 and are finished by bringing the tops forcibly to a small point with a 

 patent shock-compressor, when the.y are tied with twine each being in 

 itself a perfectly shaped little stack nearly if not quite air and water 

 tight at the top. 



