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SCENES ON DUCK ISLAND, FULTON COUNTY 

 Elavator above was used to store groin until high water 

 when it could be taken out on barges, is the neighborhood 

 com market today. The long horse bam. makes a good turkey 



laying house in winter, growing pen in summer. Lower views 

 show interior of the bam and temporary shelters on the turkey 

 range. Experience on the island indicates that permanent 

 buildings are not needed in modem livestock production. 



^:. 



MAP OF DUCK ISLAND 

 It is a bird sanctuary, too. Nearly 100 

 species have been seen there. 



L. WHITNAH and Oscar 

 Linn live on Duck Island lo- 

 _ cated between Rice and Big 



Lakes on the Illinois river bottoms in 

 Fulton county. Whitnah owns the 

 land, Linn supplies the tools and labor 

 to operate it. They raise turkeys, 

 not aucks. Although they raise little 

 corn, they feed 500 head of cattle a 

 year. And the island is not, strictly 

 speaking, an island. 



The tract, containing about 840 acres 

 of crop land presents many baffling 

 problems in farm management. The 



28 ';;-:'" 



Farming On Duck Island 



Where the Farm Bureau Goal§ of BeRer Farming, Better 

 Business and Better living Have 



Already Been Beached j 



very shape of the island, which is three 

 miles long by one-half mile wide, makes 

 practical field arrangements difficult. 



Former owners, fooled by the nature 

 of Duck Island soil, grew mostly corn 

 and wheat. Corn is a good bottom 

 land crop but this isn't bottom land. 

 It is a glacial deposit of almost pure 

 gravel, topped with a layer of mixed 

 clay and gravel with a sandy loam 

 top-soil. 



G>rn does well until late July or early 

 August. Then it fires and dies because 

 of lack of moisture. The soil produces 

 fine winter wheat because that grows 

 during the seasons of heaviest rain- 

 fall. Alfalfa, too, thrives. Until a dike 

 was built from the island to mainland 

 a few years ago, marketing grain was 

 a problem. Now wheat is trucked to 

 the Pekin market. 



Oscar Linn, 34, was born on a 

 Whitnah farm. Later his father farmed 

 the island. When Oscar finished sev- 

 enth grade he stayed out of school a 

 year during a help shortage caused by 

 the war. He held a man's job work- 

 ing with his father and Mr. Whitnah. 

 He has worked with the landlord every 

 year since except the winter that he 

 finished eighth grade. 



Working together, these men have 

 solved most of the island's problems. 



Their rotation is wheat, wheat, clo- 

 ver or alfalfa, corn and soybeans. Part 

 of the clover land is planted to corn 

 for silage each year, and part to soy- 

 beans which are plowed under and fol- 

 lowed by wheat. Some of the corn 

 used in feeding cattle is raised on 150 

 acres of botton land near the island. 

 Remainder of the corn fed, some 40,- 



vx : I. A. A. RECORD 



