472 BUENA VISTA COUNTY, IOWA. 



hoi-ses can break from one to two acres a day, and if broken in 

 May, flax can be sown on the sod which will yield from seven to 

 ten bushels seed to the acre, worth one dollar per bushel. This 

 will pay all expenses of breaking the ground, and puts the 

 ground in fine condition for a wheat crop the next season. 



HERDING CATTLE. 



Those who wish to raise stock must provide sufficient yards, 

 to properly shelter and prevent the cattle from roaming in 

 Winter, when the grass starts in the Spring. I am but a few 

 miles away from the herding grounds, where our stock are 

 taken care of for the season for fifty cents per head. Such 

 herds are kept every season in different parts of the county^ 

 and kept together by the herder who contracts to salt once a 

 week ; and sucli grounds are selected near a supply of water, 

 so that their every Avant is supplied. Thousands of cattle are 

 shipped from northwestern Iowa every season to Chicago 

 maiket without having been fed any grain, getting very fat on 

 prairie gr.tss alone. There are some fine dairies started lately 

 in this cbunty, 



CROPS 



have never been an entire failure in the ten years that I have 

 lived here. In a few instances my wheat crop has partially 

 failed, so that my average yield was small — from seven to ten 

 bushels — but my general crop in fair seasons for wheat has 

 been from fifteen to twenty-five bushels. I average from thirty 

 to sixty bushels of oats per acre, corn from thirty to seventy- 

 five bushels to the acre. This latter crop has never failed in 

 any season, except once when grasshoppers injured it some^ 

 I have never had grass fail to any extent. 



ROTATION OF CROPS. 



First, on newl}-- broken prairie, sow flax, .about three pecks 

 to the acre. I sow as earl 3'^ in the season as the land is in good 

 condition to break, which is when the grass gets well started 

 to growing in Spring. 



