118 LEE COUNTY, ILLINOIS. 



thirty bushels of good marketable wheat to the acre, and I 

 have as yet discovered no bad effect from the use of salt on the 

 growing of other crops. If I were to venture an opinion on 

 the result, I would say that all crops are benefited by the 

 use of salt. By cultivation, seeding to grass and pasturing, the 

 black prairie loam of the new country is fast changing into a 

 firmer soil on the surface, and either the mold is wasting 

 from the surface, or the clay is coming up from below, chang- 

 ing the former into the latter, which is annually reducing the 

 depth of the dark-colored soil. Recently Winter wheat has 

 stood the frosts of Winter, and produced good crops in this 

 section of country. The top soil is losing its greasy 

 nature when wet, and does not run together in Winter 

 like when the country was new. From the visible change 

 going on we are led to believe that Winter wheat will 

 become one of the staple crops, and a change in the manner of 

 cultivating the soil will take place. Deeper tillage will be 

 required, and more frequent seeding of the soil to grass in 

 ord^ to keep it from growing gristly and hard. 



' ROTATION OF CROPS. 



As the plat shows, my farm is subdivided into fields of 

 forty acres and less. The system of rotation of crops now fol- 

 lowed as a rule is, on breaking from a sod to take two crops of 

 corn in succession. The cultivation of these two crops effec- 

 tually kills the sod. Then a crop of oats is raised, the stubble 

 of which is given a coat of barnj^ard manure and turned under 

 in the Fall. The next year a wheat crop follows, and the land 

 seeded down to clover and timothy mixed. My manner of 

 seeding is as follows: If Spring wheat has been sown the 

 ground is dragged, then seeded, and again dragged. I mix the 

 seeds in equal parts and sow ten quarts to the acre. In twenty 

 successive years of seeding in this manner I have never failed 

 to secure a good set of grass, which prevented weeds from 

 springing up the first year as is usually the case with thin 

 sowing. In this way my land rests in grass for meadow or 

 pasture one-third of the time and it retains its fertility well. 



