40 PUTNAM COUNTY, ILLINOIS. 



income has been $490 per year, besides paying taxes, living of 

 family, and hired help. (I have had no boys of my own to 

 help me.) My farming operations give the following results 

 this year : 



12 acres in pastures, 10 acres being in yards and lots. 



34 " corn, estimated at 60 bushels per acre. 



7 " oats, 449 bushels, machine measure. 



8 " rye, 210 " " 

 4i " wheat, 97 " " 



4| " clover, two crops, 14 tons of hay. 



1 acre in potatoes, 115 bushels. 

 On tile drainage I am quite enthusiastic, and advise farm- 

 ers to put in but little two-inch tile, as I had to take up my 

 two-inch and replace it with three-inch. My motto in farm 

 work is to do ever^/ thing well. 



HENRY K. smith's HOG HOUSE. 



I am now stocking my own farm of eighty acres with hogs. 

 I am breeding twenty sows now, to come in last of March next. 

 Will sow the whole farm down to clover as soon as possible. I 

 have forty acres in grass and clover now, and will sow twenty 

 acres move in the Spring. My plan is to build a good hog 

 house in the center of the farm, at the junction of four fields, 

 run 200 or 250 pigs on the four fields of clover, with plenty of 

 good slop, until they are about eight months old, and market 

 them. From experiments I believe that twenty acres of clover 

 is as valuable for hog feed as twenty acres of corn. And I 

 am convinced that wintering stock hogs is not profitable, and 

 that a hog, if hurried, is more profitable at eight or nine months 

 than at fifteen or eighteen months. All that a growing pig 

 needs beside good clover is plenty of good slop, made from 

 ground oats with the hulls sifted out and plenty of milk. I 

 believe, with such treatment, a pig at eight months would 

 weigh 300 pounds, which is only a gain of one and one-quarter 

 pounds per day. Of course, to obtain such results, the owner 

 must be with his pigs and attend to them closely. It is evident 

 that something of the kind must be done in order to stop the 



