SPRING WHEAT — CLOVER. (367 



renders the land too wet in a wet season for grain, without 

 underdraining. Hence the necessity for the system which I 

 adopted, and have steadily pursued for the last fifteen years, of 

 underdraining the farm until it has now about nine miles of 

 underdrains. At first I used white pine fence-boards, free of 

 sap and rot, for drains, and some that have been made fifteen 

 years are yet sound and doing good service. But since the 

 manufacture of drain tile, tile only have been used. For all 

 drains, except the largest main drains, I employ two by two 

 and a half or three inch tile, and lay them at an average depth 

 of two and a half feet, at an average cost of about forty cents 

 per rod. 



Those portions of my farm on which crops would fail in a 

 wet season have now been made as productive as the best. 

 Not only does the drained land stand wet well, but it also 

 stands drouth, and the soil is more loose and friable, of fine 

 tilth, and much warmer than undrained soils. 



SPRING WHEAT. 

 Spring wheat is a leading grain crop, and on one hundred 

 and fifty acres sown yearly, I have had an average yield for 

 twenty years of twenty-two and one-eighth bushels per acre. 

 The lowest yield was in 1864, when the drouth and chinch 

 bugs cut the grain down to fourteen bushels per acre for that 

 year. The highest amount raised was in 1865, when one hun- 

 dred and eighty acres averaged thirty bushels per acre. 



CORN. 



All the corn I raise I feed to stock on the farm, and in 

 good seasons my average is from fifty to sixty bushels per acre 

 of corn. 



OATS. 



Oats I find more exhausting than wheat, and pay less per 

 acre than wheat. I only raise them for home use. 



CLOVER. 



Clover and manure are my dependence for preserving the 

 fertility of the land, I sow four quarts of clover seed and four 



