THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART II. 43 



And the increasing demand for corn for manufacturing purposes makes 

 the growing of corn profitable. 



The question has arisen in my mind; is there no way by which we 

 may take a crop of grain from the ground every year and retain the 

 fertility of the soil as we received it from the hand of nature. 



With these thoughts I began to look about to see in what way na- 

 ture supplied the soil with fertility. I noticed she made use of all dead 

 vegetation. The conclusion I drew was there is enough vegetation left 

 from every crop after the grain has been taken away, if properly saved 

 and returned to the ground, to retain its fertility. 



But how to apply this coarse manure, save the stubble and corn 

 stalks, and get a full crop the same year it was put on the ground has 

 been the source of much grief to me. I found that if I plowed under 

 coarse manure and a dry season followed, there was danger of shutting 

 off the supply of water from below, thereby injuring the crop for that 

 year, and to scatter it on top of the ground after it was plowed made it 

 almost impossible to tend a crop of corn. 



I once had a field of oats that was lodged so bad I oould not get 

 them with a binder, so I turned a bunch of hogs on them, expecting 

 to burn it off after the hogs had eaten the oats. The hogs rooted the 

 ground up and mixed the straw with the soil. I did not 'burn it, but 

 plowed it the next spring and planted it in corn. The summer was rather 

 dry, but that field had just as good corn as any in the neighborhood. I 

 have noticed that on low flat ground that has a heavy stubble the plow 

 will not scour, but only push through the ground leaving the stubble in 

 rows; that it did not make any difference how dry the season was the 

 heavy stubble did not seem to shut off the supply of moisture from the 

 subsoil. So I came to the conclusion that undecomposed vegetable mat- 

 ter of any kind plowed under did not necessarily shut off the available 

 water stored below, providing it did not make a complete blanket under 

 the furrow. 



It has been my plan for a number of years to disc the ground oefore 

 plowing. By so doing the undecomposed vegetable matter is mixed up 

 with the soil in such a way that it does not break the water connection 

 between the furrow and the under soil. 



The spring of 1901 I covered 10 acres with very coarse manure and 

 treated the ground as I have mentioned. This piece of ground was quite 

 high and sloped to the southwest. When the hot winds in July came 

 this 10 acres was the only part of a field of 90 acres that did not have 

 white or dead tassels in it. The corn was a darker color and grew about 

 one and a half feet higher than that that was not manured, and yielded 

 15 bushels more corn per acre. 



It is claimed by some that it is better to well rot all barnyard accu- 

 mulations before returning it to the soil. My experience has taught me 

 that manure spread upon the field as fast as made, will cover more 

 ground, and will enrich it more than manure that has lain in the barn 

 yard until it was thoroughly decomposed. 



