COST OF BUILDINGS. 285 



My dwelling house has a stone foundation (basement) and 

 the front is of pressed brick, and finished with the modern 

 improvements, at a cost of about 812,000. My cattle barn is 

 one hundred feet long and fifty-eight feet wide. It also has a 

 stone foundation with brick floors, and is finished in the most 

 convenient manner, at a cost of $4,500. These, with the sta- 

 bles for horses, scale house and other out-buildings, comprise 

 the buildings of my farm. 



GEORGE A. TRUE, 



WALTHAM, LA SALLE COUNTY. 



Com and Manner of Culture — Never Lost a Crop in Twenty 

 Years — How to Select Hogs — Their Feed and Care. 



CRYSTAL SPRING FARM 



is situated in the town of Waltham, La Salle Co., four miles 

 from Utica, seven and a half from LaSalle, and twelve miles 

 from Ottawa. All of these towns are on the Illinois and 

 Michigan Canal and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific 

 Railroad, and are surrounded by the finest farming sections of 

 country to be found anywhere. 



During the twenty-one years that I have lived here, we 

 have never lost a crop. Of course the yield has varied, but 

 has never been anything like what could be called a failure. 

 My smallest crop of corn averaged twenty-five bushels per 

 acre. The best crop was in 1860, when the warehouse receipts 

 showed an average of sixty-five bushels of sixty pounds, or 

 what would be, at fifty-six pounds per bushel, about sixty-nine 

 and a half bushels per acre. For all my crop accounts the 

 ground was measured and the crop weighed ; I do not believe 

 in guess work. 



The principal reason I have had no failures is, that my 



