292 
STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
better price it brings in proportion to cost of transportation. 
Our wheat is pronounced as good as goes into the Milwaukee 
market; specimens of which often weigh 69 pounds to the 
struck bushel. The usual yield is about 25 to 30 bushels per 
acre, and often more. Sparta is our market. We raise mostly 
spring wheat, of the Club variety. Of late the Fife, Rio Grande, 
and other varieties have claimed some attention, but the first 
three are generally preferred among our farmers. Not much 
extra pains is taken in its cultivation. The ground is gene¬ 
rally ploughed in the fall, and the wheat is harrowed in with 
a common square harrow in the spring, which finishes the work 
until harvest. 
We have excellent crops of oats, rye, barley, potatoes and 
fair corn. Potatoes with us are generally large and mealy, 
yielding from one hundred to four hundred bushels per acre. 
The rot is not much known, except among the Meshannocks. 
We often get 80 bushels of oats to the acre; 50 bushels, how¬ 
ever, being about the average on the heavy lands. These 
crops are mostly consumed in the lumber woods adjoining our 
county, and in Clark County, where a great amount of fine 
timber is cut for manufacture in Jackson and La Crosse Coun¬ 
ties, and for mills on the Mississippi. 
It is calculated that Black River and its tributaries will have 
at least 50,000,000 feet of lumber put in them this winter, 
which furnishes employment for a great many men in cutting, 
hauling, driving, rafting and manufacturing. 
We have 22 saw mills, small and large, and 8 flouring mills, 
most of which have two or three runs of stone, and three or 
four of which are fine mills, capable of doing a great deal of 
work, and of doing it well. 
We have iron works one mile above the Falls. The iron 
is of the finest quality and in the greatest abundance. The 
chief difficulty with the workers has been to get some material 
for fluxing, the ore being so rich that it seems almost impossi¬ 
ble to separate the iron from the cinder; but I leave this to 
some one w T ho understands it better. 
The general surface of the county is good; the western and 
