Preparing for 'Winter "Wheat. 213 



Of course, it goes without saying that the seed wheat should 

 be entirely clean. Some will differ with me about being so par- 

 ticular, but it is business. Wheat will turn to chess when your 

 pig grows up a cow. You sow a little chess in your seed, hardly 

 enough to be noticed, and then an unfavorable season for the 

 wheat destroys more or less of that and leaves the more hardy 

 chess to grow; or else the seed of the chess is in your soil. It 

 will lie there dormant for many years. For at least fifteen years 

 I know there was no chess in a field back of my house. I never 

 had a grain in my wheat not one. Last year there was a half 

 acre of strawberries in this lot, and soon after the berries were all 

 picked chess came up all over. I know I had not put the seed 

 there. It was there when I came here, and for all these years had 

 remained in the soil in some way. We had a frost in the spring 

 that killed many of the strawberries. It would be just as plausible 

 to say they turned into chess as that wheat does. Remember this 

 and do not sow any foul stuff. I have picked over by hand fifteen 

 bushels of seed to get out a tablespoonful of cockle and chess 

 that my mill would not take out of as small wheat as the Fultz is. 

 A white sheet was put over a table and the wheat spread out on 

 this to a single thickness, a little at a time, to get out the foul 

 seeds. How many of you would go to that trouble? Well, my 

 wheat is all sold for seed and that makes a difference ; but I was 

 just as particular when selling at the mill. I do not like to stop 

 short of the best. And it is this that has made my wheat all 

 wanted for seed. Well do I remember the first car load I ever 

 sold for seed. It was to a stranger in another State. He had had 

 trouble in getting clean seed and was afraid of mine. After writ- 

 ing several letters, I at last told him that if he could find a tea- 

 spoonful of anything but wheat in the car load I would give it all 

 to him. I do not believe there was one grain. It is a pleasure to 

 have such wheat instead of quite a percentage of cockle and 

 chess. 



In a good wheat section, I do not believe anything is gained 

 by changing seed, getting it from a distance. I live in the best of 

 the winter wheat belt. I am unable to see anything to be gained 

 from getting seed from any other place for me. If I lived in 

 Southern Ohio or Kentucky, for example, where wheat does not 

 make as perfect a growth, I think it would pay me to get seed 

 from Northern Ohio. This is not mere opinion ; it is founded on 

 good sense, and is for the same reason that I send to Maine for 

 seed potatoes, when a variety has somewhat run out here, because 

 potatoes grow to greater perfection there. And then I have sold 

 my wheat in one locality in Kentucky every year for some ten 

 years. Why db they keep buying it ? It must pay, and from 

 reports received, I know it does pay. Do not think I am advertis- 

 ing my wheat. No need of that. The parties who have had it 

 engaged it all last fall for this year, and to date (July i) two other 



