Rye and oats can be produced in abundance in this State. The latter 
often yielding as much as seventy and seventy-live bushels to an acre. 
Barley is not a very productive crop, for some reason unknown to me, 
it does not yield as largely as the other kinds of grain, that I have 
mentioned. 
One fact is now pretty well established, that as great a variety of grain 
.-crops, and products of the soil generally, can be grown in Wisconsin as 
in any other State in the Union, but many of our farmers are apparently 
unmindful of it, since they continue to try one crop year after year, on 
the same land. The consequence of this excessive cropping with wheat 
is, that ^.fter a few years the soil is greatly exhausted—the new farm 
becomes an old one in more senses than one. If buildings, fences, and 
cultivated fields, do improve its appearance the soil is badly worn. It is 
folly to say, as many do here, that our soil is inexhaustible, and may be 
cropped for years without making any material difference in its produc¬ 
tiveness. Three or four years cropping will not greatly impoverish the 
land, but continue it for ten or twelve years and it*will exhaust the strength 
of the best land in this or any other country, if nothing is done to re¬ 
plenish it from year to year. I hazard the assertion that the yield of 
wheat for the present season on ground which was broken up last year 
will exceed by ten and even fifteen bushels an acre, in many instances, 
that grown on land that has undergone this exhausting process for twelve 
years or more. This I believe to be a fact, and it is one which eastern 
farmers, so anxious to purchase improved farms in Wisconsin, would do 
well to consider, and reflect whether with the ample means which many 
of them possess they cannot take our wild lands and under better treat¬ 
ment, ere long, surround themselves with good substantial buildings, 
fences, &c., and also possess a farm in the full strength of its produc¬ 
tiveness, which by judicious management may thus be preserved. 
The cost of breaking up new land may now be set down at $3 per acre, 
on an average. The growth of wood has so increased since the settle¬ 
ment of the country, especially in the openings, that $1 per acre has been 
added to the cost of preparing the land for the first crop, and the cost will 
be increased rapidly for the future. The range of the autumnal fires is 
so restrained now, that they are not productive of much damage to the 
growth of young trees, t 
