Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 571 



of land impossible, summer fallows, as lias been intimated, were 

 necossar}' for the successful production of wheat. Eeally, three 

 plowings in those days did not cultivate the land as perfectly as one 

 does now that all these obstructions are away. To work amono; the 

 stumps, we necessarily used plows that were short and sharp in the 

 twist of the mold-board. ISTow our plows enter the ground at a more 

 acute angle, run deep, and not only reverse every part of the furrow- 

 slice, but they crack and pulverize the whole mass. ISTot a balk is 

 left by a good plowman, and every part of the soil is worked in the 

 most perfect manner. This being so, why waste the whole season in 

 the useless labor of repeated plowings and harrowings ? The only 

 answer that can be made is, our fathers did so, and taught us to do 

 so. 



To state this a little more fully : Let us suppose that we have a 

 clover iield that we intend to sow to wheat. One way of doing the work 

 will be to plow under the sod soon after corn-planting, say early in 

 June, harrow the ground down level and smooth. There let it rest 

 until after harvest, and then in August plow again and harrow as 

 before. About the first day of September plow the third time, har- 

 row and sow the wdieat. Thus we have the old fashioned naked 

 fallow, and have not only done much hard work and lost all use of 

 the land from the first of June, but we have exposed the soil by 

 repeated working to the air and sun, and killed all the grass and most 

 of the weeds that there were in it. This killing of foul stuff is the 

 gain we have made, and in cases where the land is very foul, this 

 great labor may not only be justified, but may be well laid out, as the 

 only means of getting rid of certain noxious weeds ; but this is the only 

 justification for a summer fallow of this kind, where there are no 

 obstructions in the way of thorough plowing. Let us compare this 

 with another way of treating the land. 



Plow early in the spring, if the land was not plowed the fall before ; 

 sow barley or oats on it. Harvest the crop ; glean up with a steel- 

 toothed rake, hung on wheels drawn by a horse and rode by the 

 owner, all the straw, leaving as little of the barley and oats as possi- 

 ble on the land. Plow at once, if the land is foul, and harrow well. 

 This will cause all the grain that shelled to grow, and also start the 

 seeds of weeds. From the time the spring crop of barley or oats is 

 harvested to the time to sow wheat, five or six weeks will elapse of 

 the best weather of the whole season to exterminate foul stufl:'. If 

 this time is well employed and the season is dry and warm, much 



