334 ELEMENTS OF FARM PRACTICE 



Questions: 



1. What is the rotation practiced on the farm discussed above? 



2. How is the land prepared for potatoes? 



3. What crop follows potatoes and corn in this rotation? 



4. What crop follows the oat crop, and when is it seeded? 

 Arithmetic: 



1. If a farmer raises 15 acres of potatoes each year, how many 

 bushels will he have, if the yield is 165 bus. per acre? 



2. If Mr. Brown raises 15 acres of corn each year, how many bush- 

 els will he have, if the yield is 50 bus. per acre? 



3. If oats yield 48 bus. per acre, how many bushels will 30 acres 

 produce? 



A FIVE-YEAR ROTATION 



Rearrangement of a Farm. — A 160-acre farm in south- 

 eastern Minnesota, four miles from a good milk market 

 was cropped in 1904 as shown in Figure 147. This farmer 

 was carrying on general diversified farming, and without 

 changing the type of farming in the least, his farm was 

 replanned and a systematic rotation of crops arranged 

 that would certainly make the farm more attractive, more 

 easily worked, and more productive, if put in practice. In 

 Figure 147 note the small and irregular fields, the distance 

 some of them are from the farmstead, and the lack of system 

 in cropping. 



Without materially changing the amount of land de- 

 voted to each kind of crop this farm may be rearranged in 

 five uniform fields of convenient shape and size (27 acres 

 each) and one end of each field be as near to the farmstead 

 as is easily possible on such a farm. See Figure 148. The 

 12-acre field in the southwest corner is too wet to cultivate; 

 so it is left as permanent meadow. 



Rotation. — A five-year rotation would be well adapted 

 to such a farm, as it would provide about the same amount 

 of hay and pasturage as was formerly used. This rotation 

 would be corn, grain, meadow and pasture. That is, one 

 field would produce corn, two fields would produce grain, 

 one would produce hay and one would produce pasture 

 each year. The field that grows corn the first year would 

 produce grain the second and third years, meadow the 

 fourth year, and pasture the fifth year. 



The Grain Crops. — The first grain crop after the corn 

 would be sown on the corn land, usually without plowing 



