FARM MANAGEMENT PRACTICE OF CHESTER COUNTY, PA. ) 
~ 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. 
uring the closing years of the eighteenth century a system of 
crop rotation began to be established, a good deal of enthusiasm hav- 
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Fic. 4.—Soil map of survey area. (Krom 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. * * * Wesow 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- 
