104 SAND, OR HAIRY VETCH 
grains in the hill, but too often dropped four grains, 
which made the corn too thick, and this condition fully 
reduced the yield ten or more bushels to the acre. But 
think of 72 bushels of corn being grown on land that 
had not for twenty or more years produced more than 
20 bushels to the acre, and this feat accomplished in so 
short a time and with so little expense, as the cost of the 
seed was but $3.50 per acre. 
This experiment with vetch made the author a vetch 
enthusiast. 
In August of the year 1908 he planted thirty acres, 
and notwithstanding the extreme dry fall, there having 
been no rain for eight weeks after it was sown, it grew 
nicely. 
In the spring ten acres of it was plowed for field 
corn, seven or eight acres for potatoes, and the balance 
for sweet corn. 
The illustration in the front of this book shows a 
view of the poorest part of the field of corn taken Sep- 
tember 7, 1909. 
Upon this particular spot of ground shown in the picture 
corn had never grown to exceed a height of four or 
five feet, with a correspondingly poor yield. Here the 
vetch was the heaviest, being four or five feet in height 
when plowed under in the middle of May. The soil on 
this particular spot is a sandy clay, the remainder of 
the field is a black gumbo soil; the whole having been 
farmed for a half century with a rotation of corn, oats 
and wheat, a greater majority of the years in corn, and 
every year the stalks were burned. In recent years the 
yield of corn had been from almost a failure to 40 bush- 
