16 THE FARM DAIRY. 



ing, having bought forty years ago a prairie 

 farm in Illinois that had been robbed for years 

 by growing wheat until it would not produce a 

 profitable crop of anything. The dairy cow 

 has brought the productive capacity of this 

 farm from a yield of corn of 30 to 35 bushels 

 per acre to where we now secure from 60 to 100 

 bushels. When we compare the profits then and 

 now the difference is greater than the compari- 

 son of yields, as there was no profit when we 

 produced 30 bushels of com. I discovered that 

 I might as well go to work for my neighbor by 

 the month as to farm on lands that would not 

 produce more than 30 bushels per acre. I was 

 forced to do some thinking and I discovered 

 that the most prosperous sections of the United 

 States were the dairy sections. Tliis fact de- 

 cided me to take up dairying and now after 

 forty years I am sure I made a wise decision, 

 that I could not have made a better one. If I 

 could have had alfalfa to aid in the building up 

 of the farm I could' have accomplished the work 

 in one-third of the time. 



Water and Drainage. — ^It is nice to have a 

 supply of spring water on a dairy farm, but it 

 is not necessa.ry, as water can be secured from 

 bored wells at a reasonable depth in most lo- 

 calities and with windmill or the gasoline en- 

 gine we can have water whenever we want it. 

 Stagnant pools or muddy streams are objection- 



