368 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



being attended to by the hogs, no saving of stalks for 

 fodder, and as the land is as mellow as your garden, and 

 as free from all obstruction to the plow, is it to be won- 

 dered at even by your unbelieving neighbor, that corn 

 can be raised by the hundred of acres, upon such a sys- 

 tem, upon such land, without "a regiment of men and 

 boys." 



And in regard to wheat, it does not require a regiment 

 of men or teams, to put in 800 acres of wheat, upon land 

 as mellow as an ash heap, where the plowed lands are 

 a mile or more long without turning; and as the seed time 

 runs through a space of near two months, so the harvest 

 runs about half that length of time; and as to when it 

 is housed, I would answer that during the last fall, thou- 

 sands of acres of wheat were thrashed by a kind of ma- 

 chine that is fitted upon wheels and drawn about the 

 field by 4 or 6 horses, tended by three men, one of whom 

 takes the sheaves from the ground or the shooks, and 

 pitches them up to the feeder while passing along, and 

 the straw and a great portion of the chaff is blown upon 

 the ground, while the clean wheat is deposited in a reser- 

 voir, which when full, is expeditiously emptied upon a 

 sheet of canvass, and from thence is taken by a wagon 

 to the barn; so that the barns instead of having to hold 

 the sheaves, are only required to store the grain. And 

 thousands in this new country, who farm on a large 

 scale, have not even a barn for that purpose, but depend 

 upon a rail pen with the cracks corked with straw, or 

 some other equally primitive mode of storage. 



And those who do not thresh their wheat immediately 

 after cutting, stack it in the field or some convenient spot 

 for threshing, where, if it is well put up, it will keep far 

 better than in any barn. And the way the straw is dis- 

 posed of, I have hinted at in the first part of this letter; 

 and many contend that it is the best way, as it is not 

 wanted for manure, and cannot be consumed by cattle 

 in ordinary seasons, and certainly not as quick as by fire. 



That this is the best system of farming, or that all 



