Preparing for Winter Wheat. 209 



good. You see, what I do is to plow my clover sod in the spring 

 for wheat and work it all summer, much like the old-fashioned 

 summer fallow, but meanwhile I get $100 per acre more or less 

 out of the potatoes that are grown incidentally, and do not decrease 

 the yield of wheat particularly by taking off the potatoes. The 

 clover has left something in the soil for the wheat, but the tillage 

 all through the season has also helped get plant food ready. The 

 same if it had been a corn field. When we do thorough tillage 

 and follow it up properly, \ve are helping more than the present 

 crop. In fact, it is hard to say just where the benefit will end. 



But now let us speak of the more immediate preparation, 

 after the previous crop is removed, whatever that may be. I have 

 preached for many years that one or two dollars' worth more labor 

 per acre, judiciously expended in extra work on the wheat ground, 

 in better preparing it, would bring the farmer a much larger per- 

 centage of profit than what he had already done, in a great many 

 cases. I believe it fully, and shall continue to preach it ; and still 

 this extra labor and all may be lost from lack of drainage. I 

 think I have told you that good farming may be thrown away on 

 wet land. How all improved methods link in together and depend 

 on one another ! Drain your land and then work it as much again 

 as is commonly done, and do it understandingly, and you are on 

 the road to getting plenty of available plant food for a maximum 

 crop. I want my land just as fine and firm as I can get it, and I 

 pay little attention to the number of times it is harrowed, but 

 just keep agoing until it is right, feeling entirely certain of good 

 pay. 



When I began farming I have told you, I think, that it was 

 with only a plow and a straight-toothed harrow and roller to pre- 

 pare the land for a crop. With these I did the best I could. But, 

 particularly when I was preparing a field for wheat, I never felt 

 satisfied. If it was for corn or potatoes and not well fitted, the 

 deficiency could be partly made up afterwards ; but with a wheat 

 crop, the tillage must be given before the crop was put in. One 

 fall I was preparing a clover sod for wheat. It had been plowed 

 and harrowed and rolled and perhaps harrowed and rolled again , 

 until pretty well settled. The harrow would no longer take hold . 

 I felt as though I wanted something to tear that soil up so I could 

 harrow and roll more. I was not satisfied with its condition, but 

 I had no tool to do it with. In town one day, I met a man with 

 a sulky cultivator, the first I had ever seen. It was a heavy, 

 complicated affair, but from the first moment I thought it would 

 do just the work I wanted to do on my wheat field at home, and 

 it had a seeder attachment that would put in grain better than I 

 had been doing it. Well, as badly in debt as I was, I gave my 

 note for it for $50, and took it home. Then I rode it lengthwise 

 and crosswise of my field, and harrowed and rolled, and then cul- 

 tivated again, tearing the ground up most thoroughly. When it 



