BREAKING PRAIRIE. 641 



exhausted. I know of some farms lying in small valleys, that 

 have raised successfully for twenty-two years wheat and oats 

 every year, and the crop has always been a good one. 



I am to-day farming sixty-five acres, which for the past 

 ten years have been sown to wheat alone, and all who have 

 had experience in wheat growing know how it exhausts the 

 soil. Tliis year this piece produced as well as the first season 

 I ever sowed it to grain. But I would not advise any farmer 

 to pursue this course, for when the land begins to be exhausted, 

 it goes down very rapidly, and then it is hard to raise it again, 

 without heavy fertilizing. 



BREAKING PRAIRIE. 



My first year here I bought me a yoke of oxen, costing 

 one hundred and twenty-five dollars. I bought them in prefer- 

 ence to horses, as they were so much cheaper, and it required 

 no grain to feed them, as our nutritious grasses were sufficient 

 to keep them in healthy condition while at work. They are 

 the team for the man who comes here with little or no capital. 

 I began to break prairie about the first of June, the breaking 

 season lasting two months, in which time the grass kept grow- 

 ing, so that when turned under it generated so much heat that 

 the sod by Fall was thoroughly rotted. One yoke of oxen with 

 a sixteen inch breaking plow, will break up from fifty to sev- 

 enty-five acres in the breaking season. The first year this 

 can be planted to corn, which yields from ten to forty bushels 

 to the acre, according to the season. The next Spring this 

 same ground can be sown to wheat, after clearing off the corn- 

 stalks, and then produces from twelve to twenty bushels to the 

 acre, which, marketed, brings about seventy cents per bushel 

 after all expenses are paid. If a man has broken with his 

 cattle sixty acres, and the first year raised nine hundred 

 bushels of wheat, you can readily perceive how he has got 

 along, and what he can have in a few years by economy and 

 frugality. While he is raising grain, he can at the same time 

 beautify his home and increase its value (adding to his comfort 

 by protecting himself from the inclemencies of our Winters 

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