FARM MANAGEMENT PRACTICE OF CHESTER COUNTY, PA. 



9 



and manufactured here, and there is still a factory making certain 

 kinds of farm machinery at Kennett Square. 



Until some time after the Revolutionary War there were no well- 

 established and well-recognized rotations practiced by the farmers. 

 The soil had originally been covered by timber, and it was customary 

 to clear out an area of this, crop the land mainly to corn, wheat, 

 rye, barley, and garden crops for a series of years until the yields 

 became very low, when new land would be cleared and the old land 

 left to grow up in grasses, which were used for pasture. 



During the closing years of the eighteenth century a system of 

 crop rotation began to be established, a good deal of enthusiasm hav- 



Fig. 4. — Soil map of survey area. (From report of Bureau of Soils, U. S. Department 



of Agriculture.) 



ing been aroused for it, and much was said and written about "the 

 new way of farming." Thus in 1796 a Chester County farmer, 

 writing to a friend in England, said : " Where we had Indian corn 

 the year before is dunged by spreading this broadcast and planted 

 to barley, oats, and flax. * * * Barley ripens about July 20, flax 

 sooner, and oats later. We plow again in August, and sow to wheat 

 and rye in September. * * * We sow clover the following March." 

 It will later be seen that this is essentially the rotation which is now 

 practically universal in this region, the only change being the sub- 



