486 CHEROKEE COUNTY, IOWA. 



finished up in the Winter by following the steers that I feed 

 every Winter on the farm. My experience has been that pigs 

 that follow the cattle all Winter, and are fed for the June mar- 

 ket, average better hogs at twelve months, than they would 

 ordinarily at a year and a half old. All hogs are raised on grass 

 in its season. 



BARNS. 



One of ray barns is thirty-eight by forty-eight, with stabling 

 on three sides ; the two other barns are built in the form of an ell, 

 one being twenty-four by thirty-six feet, the other twenty-four 

 by forty-eight. The smaller barn is used exclusively for stabling 

 below ; the other contains a corn crib seventy-two feet long, 

 with a meal room to hold feed for two stables. Sheds are pro- 

 vided for all stock not stabled, and in Summer time a portion 

 of this stabling is used for sows in farrowing time, and also for 

 shelter. 



[ coramenced operations on this farm twelve years ago, 

 and likes-all settlers in a new country began with limited means. 

 I therefore make no pretensions to being a model farmer. 



GEORGE W. BANISTER, 



CHEROKEE, CHEROKEE cr)UNTY. 



Historical — Descriptive — Improvements — Mctliods — Stock — 



Q-rain. 



HISTORICAL. 



I came into the Sioux Valley in the Spring of 1856. I 

 was then a young man. I preempted one hundred and sixty 

 acres, married in the Fall, and lived through one of the severest 

 Winters ever known in this part of the country, in a log cabin 

 with fire-place at one side and a snow-bank at the other. Pro- 

 visions were scarce and high, and during the Winter the Indians 

 killed one of my oxen. I fenced about twenty acres, and had 

 it under cultivation, but in 1861 I rented and went to Colorado, 

 returning in the Fall. In the Fall of 1862, came the news of 



