452 BLACKHAWK COUNTY, IOWA. 



years, with very good results. At different times my crop has 

 averafed four to five bushels of No. 1 seed to the acre. One 

 year I realized eight dollars per bushel, and another year ten 

 dollars per bushel. The crop averaged sixty bushels. I 

 usually sow clover on the wheat land after the wheat is sown 

 in the Spring, and drag it with a chain drag. I have had a 

 volunteer crop by plowing the clover stubble down after taking 

 off the seed, and sowing the land to wheat. The following- 

 Spring it has re-seeded itself and produced a good stand. I 

 have also put the land into corn, then wheat, and it has re- 

 seeded itself. I have threshed the first, second and third crops 

 from the same land, for three consecutive years. • Twice I have 

 threshed two crops off the same land. I cut my first crop for 

 hay usually about June twenty-fifth, and it averages one and 

 a half tons to the acre. In September following I cut the 

 seed when it is a handsome brown, and when the dew is on, or 

 on cloudy days, with a self-rake reaper, and let it lie. If it 

 rains, a shower makes it thresh all the better. If I have occa- 

 sion to move it I do it with a barley fork, and do not turn it. 



Stack when well dry, and cover with wild hay. If it is 

 cold in December, I thresh. I never break my sloughs in the 

 pastures, but cover them with clover, by the application of 

 clover straw and manure from the barnyard, where the stock 

 had been fed clover hay. Clover does not exhaust the land, 

 and its roots keep up the fertility of the soil. The following 

 are the figures per acre, of an average of three bushels, at six 

 dollars : 



