1909. 
A GREAT CORN STORY. 
Killing a Crop of Quack Grass. 
On page 50 an editorial asks “What about those 
famous western corn growers?” and states that at the 
great Omaha Corn Exposition a Connecticut man, 
N. H. Brewer, won the grand sweepstakes of the 
world on flint corn, on a yield of 133 bushels on 
one acre. I raised a crop of corn last season that 
beat Mr. Brewer’s record for prize-taking and then 
had some to spare. Six years ago I had a field of 
measured ground, 2 % acres, that had lain idle for 
some years. I broke it up in the Fall and sowed it 
to wheat on October 13, and in the Spring I seeded 
it to clover and Timothy and harvested wheat in July. 
I had 20 bushels to the acre, but the seeding proved 
a failure, so I again plowed it up the following 
Spring, and planted it to corn and potatoes. Before 
I could see the rows I commenced to cultivate it, 
for it looked very green all over the lot. I kept at 
it all the season, or as long as I could, but I could 
not make any impression on it, for the quack was so 
thick and tenacious that a cultivator would not take 
hold and would fill up in going its length, and slip 
and slide all over. I had to give it up in despair, 
and the corn and potatoes I got off the lot after all 
my hard labor were not worth the time I spent. The 
next Spring I again plowed the lot, and sowed it 
broadcast, for I could not drill it, to oats and barley, 
and sowed a double amount of grass seed as before. 
I had a fine crop of quack, but a very nominal yield 
of oats and barley. This 
so disgusted me that I 
made up my mind if I 
ever got rid of the quack 
1 would have to pursue 
a different course, so I 
covered the lot all over 
with good stable manure, 
so as to give the quack 
a good start, and I had 
then made up my mind, 
as this was to be a fight 
to the finish, not to take 
any undue advantage of 
the quack, but to give it 
a fair show. I took my 
flock of 20 fine-wool 
shc-ep, after it was all 
green and in a flourish¬ 
ing way, and turned 
them on to it and closed 
the bars. 
Right then the laugh 
began to be on the other 
side. The sheep at first 
did not seem to know 
what to do with so 
much green tender suc¬ 
culent food, but they 
pretty soon got down to 
business, and as the sea¬ 
son was long and pretty 
dry they were not long 
in getting the top of that 
quack and all else within 
reach that looked any¬ 
way green. Till late in 
the Fall they held the fort, so that when snow fell 
there was nothing green to show. Early last Spring 
I had k plowed again quite shallow, and all the quack 
roots to be seen were like snake skins, also elders 
and choke cherries, which I had been grubbing at 
the last five years; they all went at the same time 
one way. As fast as the lot was plowed I rolled it 
down and in a few days fitted it and marked it 
3x3^2, and planted it as I had five years before to 
corn and potatoes. I measured off one acre for the 
potatoes, leaving 1% for corn, and planted them all 
the same day, on May 15. The corn was of the 
White-cap yellow dent variety. 
Mongolian pheasants dug up a good lot, so I 
had to plant in white kidney beans. A hard rain, 
however, came before they were sprouted or up, 
and water following the marks washed out many of 
them. I cultivated the corn three times over and 
hoed it by hand once, and cut the whole amount 
before frost about middle of September. I drew the 
corn off the lot to the barn and husked it, and I had 
from this acre and one-eighth an even 200 bushels 
of fine corn practically all “cribbable,” an average of 
ITS bushels to the acre, and three bushels of white 
kidney beans in the skip' hills, and my mother, an old 
lady 87 years old, husked 150 bushels of this corn. 
Don’t you think I could have taken the sweepstakes 
had I been in Omaha, instead of Mr. Brewer? The 
potatoes, owing to the long-continued dry spell, were 
not a large yield, 60 bushels, but very high in quality 
and large in size. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
The corn and potatoes were not all that were 
grown on the 2j£-acre lot. On two sides of the field 
I sowed in drills# Champion of England peas and 
Black Diamond sunflowers; the former furnished my 
family with plenty of fine green peas and one peck 
of seed when ripe for the coming season, the sun¬ 
flowers furnished a good lot of cow feed when green 
and when ripe feed for 40 fowls a whole month, and 
we had also a fine lot of sweet corn, of which all are 
extremely fond, to eat green and to dry, and a bushel 
of seed. All of this was grown on the quack lot. 
Ontario Co., N. Y. m. m. p. 
ioi 
THE TRUTH ABOUT FLORIDA. 
I have been reading some of the letters from other 
residents in our State, and while I hope I have as 
much pride in our commonwealth as anyone, it cer¬ 
tainly makes me “tired” to see such gross exaggera¬ 
tions. Our climate is fine, best in the world, so far 
as I know, and I have visited every State in the 
Union and traveled over most of Europe, but our 
State is not a State where one can come and get rich 
in a single season, neither can we grow crops and 
have fresh vegetables the year round. In the North 
Winter is your resting time. In Florida we rest all 
Summer. Nothing will grow; it is too hot. Again, 
the claims of large amounts of money made from 
every acre are bosh. I venture to say you will find the 
Florida farmer as poor as the majority of northern 
ones, and you will find more successful farmers 
do North it would be all right, but a half acre here 
will only pick about 30 quarts a week. 
In this you have the whole-gist of the matter. We 
have climate and everything except soil. If Florida 
had the soil of New Jersey it would be an earthly 
paradise, and land would be worth $5000 an acre. 
It hasn’t, which is a good thing for me, for if land 
was so good and so high I expect I would be freez¬ 
ing North on one of your cold storage farms instead 
of basking in perpetual sunlight. 
Excuse this long letter, but I don’t want to see 
you the innocent cause of getting poor people down 
here. It costs more to truck in Florida than any 
other state, and a man without capital is not in it. Of 
course he can often get a few acres on shares, but . 
I never saw anyone trying this make anything but a 
bare living and often not that. a. \v. s. 
Florida. 
R. N.-Y.—It surely is refreshing to have a man tell 
the truth about his section. As we have seen Florida 
the above is a fair picture of conditions. Now we 
would like to have some one on the Pacific coast in 
the famous apple regions tell the truth with equal 
candor! 
A I OUCH OF SPRING. Fig. 73. See Ruralisms, Page 202. 
North pro rata than here in warm and sunny Florida. 
Florida is a good poor-man’s country. With a cli¬ 
mate Winter and Summer that leaves little to be 
desired it is certainly more comfortable than the 
North with cold and snow. We save money on fuel 
and clothes, but all our soil is poor, and it takes a 
good many pounds of fertilizer to raise a crop. Then, 
AN EXPERIENCE IN RENTING LAND. 
A little experience the writer had in farm renting 
may be of interest to some one, and perchance pro¬ 
duce results as satisfactory as came to me. With no 
thought of owning a farm in the West I loaned some 
money on a tract represented as part upland and good 
corn ground and some 
low land fit for coarse 
feed. Like many another, 
I had to take the farm; 
the owner died, a drunk¬ 
en son failed to care for 
the property, and it be¬ 
came mine at a cost to 
me of $5,700. I found 
upon inspection that the 
fences were down and 
mostly gone, the well 
caved in, house in Lad 
condition inside and out, 
•and the land “corned to 
death.” I also found 
that $1,800 was the best 
offer I could get for the 
property. A speedy can¬ 
vass of these conditions 
settled my plans. In the 
town near the farm I 
found an honest-appear¬ 
ing German with a wife 
and two children; took 
him to the farm, told 
him I would put the 
house, well and fences 
in good order, pay for 
the seed and of course 
pay the taxes on the 
property, and I wanted 
•him to move out soon 
as the house was in 
order, and farm the place 
as I directed and his 
best judgment warranted, 
farm produced the first 
not keep him well and 
He to have all the 
year, and if it did 
bring him out ahead he should have it the second 
year on same conditions that year. He was to agree 
to stay with me not less than five years, and I to 
have two-fifths of crop.each year after the first if all 
went well. The man commenced the second year on 
too, everything must be shipped North and you know the crop rental and remained with me, in all eight 
what that means. 
I saw a statement that with a 10 (or was it five) 
acre bearing orange grove one could sit back, enjoy 
life and live comfortably from its income. This is, 
I fear, an exaggeration. Ask most orange growers 
and they will tell you “There is no money in oranges.” 
I can buy oranges now on the trees for 50 cents a 
box, and I know we can’t'make much at that price. 
I love our State, and you could not get me to live in 
any other, but I dislike to see poor people brought 
here by false pretenses, people who sell their homes 
North and come here expecting to be able to retire 
years. At the end of the eighth year he had saved 
enough to enable him to buy a small farm farther 
west, and desired to leave and work his own farm. 
Before leaving he promised to, and did, find me a good 
German with family to go on my farm. The second 
tenant proved faithful for five years, when an oppor¬ 
tunity to sell the farm for nearly $6,500 cash came to 
me and I accepted it. Summing it all up I found that 
I had received all my original investment, taxes, ex¬ 
penses, including several trips West, and a trifle over 
5*4 per cent per annum interest on every dollar in¬ 
volved. The writer has had considerable experience 
in three or four years well off. These people come in employing men, women and youth, and has ever 
here, find out just how things are, lose all their money found that it paid not only in dollars and cents but in 
to some clever real estate agent, and finally go back an inward satisfaction to treat them fairly, liberally 
North not able to say bad enough things about our and in all things as human beings for whom he de- 
State. We manage to pull along down here just the sired the best possible success. . a. h. 
same as you folks do up North, and I think have a 
little the best of you, because while you are now 
chopping ice out of the pump we are eating straw¬ 
berries at 35 cents a quart, and fresh vegetables. But 
don’t think because strawberries are 35 cents a quart 
that there is a fortune in them. If they yielded as they 
Massachusetts. 
We favor playgrounds for children—city or country. 
When the writer was a boy he did most of his playing 
over a buck saw, but be wishes now he could have had 
more of the real article, if we had a piece of level ground 
large enough we would lay out a baseball diamond for 
the ooys! 
A 
