184 RURAL MICHIGAN 



ran into six figures outside of the four southerly tiers, 

 where alone was a county yield of at least one-half 

 million hushels. Here the clay and clay-loam soils 

 were favorable to its growth^ and the climate was 

 considered to be so, although the freezings and thaw- 

 ings, light snowfalls and occasional icing of the land 

 surface, were in reality frequently detrimental to the 

 growing crop. Winter wheat was commonly groAvn, 

 although spring wheat was sometimes planted in the 

 pioneer period. In the Upper Peninsula, as might 

 be expected, it has been more common to plant spring 

 wheat, although the abundant winter snows have 

 demonstrably been favorable to winter wheat, when 

 the crop has been sown sufficiently early, usually in 

 August, to gain a good start before winter has set in. 

 In the pioneer days, wheat was often planted year 

 after year on the same field without rotation, a prac- 

 tice which brought its inevitable result of depleted 

 soil and diminished product to the acre. At first 

 yields ran from thirty to forty bushels to the acre, but 

 in the eighth decade thoy had fallen off to half this 

 quantity or less, attributed to non-rotation, non- 

 fertilization, greater severity of the winters and the 

 increase of insect pests; so that wheat, which was at 

 one time regarded as the surest of all cereal crops, 

 suffered seasons of quite complete failure in the late 

 nineties, and farmers began to consider whether it 

 was desirable to plant it at all.^ Production has by 

 no means ceased, and the yield for the State in 1920 

 was 13,795,000 bushels of winter wheat and 480,000 

 ^ "Kept. Mich. Bd. Agr.," 1876, 390. 



