188 IROQUOIS COUNTY, ILLINOIS. 



help during the growing season. Each desired to get the 

 largest rieturns for his labor, and was willing and able to do a 

 large amount of work. 



We met at a picnic on the 4th of July, and the conversa- 

 tion naturally turned to the subject we were both most inter- 

 ested in, our crops. lie asked me how much corn I had in? 

 I answered, " Sixty acres ; how much have you ? " " Thirty ! " 

 " What have you been doing all Summer?" " I'll show you 

 when we get to husking ! " He then went on to say, " I have 

 ten acres that I have worked six times, and twenty acres, four 

 times. I intend to go through it all once more, and lay it 

 by " I worked all of mine twice, and a part of ii three times. 

 I did not think it necessarj'- to cultivate corn much when the 

 land was clean, for I had the idea that the main object in cul- 

 tivating was to kill weeds. When the crop was ripe, my 

 neighbor procured help and cribbed his corn before bad 

 weather came on. His ten acres produced about one hundred 

 bushels per acre, and his twenty acres, sixty bushels ; in all 

 about 2,200 bushels of corn from thirty acres. I was all Win- 

 ter husking, and did not have from my sixty acres over 2,000 

 bushels After that I tried his plan, and have raised as high 

 as ninety bushels an acre, simj^ly by thorough and frequent 

 cultivation Actual results are more convincing than any 

 theories or arguments unsupported by such evidence. Many 

 assertions have been made, as to how cheaply corn can be 

 grown on these prairies , cases in point have been given on 

 experimental cultivation of small patches, but I will now 

 give the results of a good system of cultivation on a fair-sized 

 scale, how it was done, and with what kind of tools, so that 

 any one can "go and do likewise." 



D. K. Pearson's corn farm. 



D. K. Pearsons, of Chicago, has a farm of a section (640 

 acres) not a day's ride from this place-. It is managed by one 

 of the most practical corn growers that I know of. In 1872 

 he told me that he cribbed twelve thousand bushels of corn 

 grown that season from one hundred and sixty acres of land. 



