SEGMENT: CROPS, FARMING METHODS, & NEIGHBORS
Bert Aikman>UIS Collection A's>UIS Collection, Segment 1
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- CROPS
- Dad raised corn, oats, hay. Had 4 horses.
- NEIGHBORS
- Farmers always borrowed each other's equipment & pooled resources to buy equipment.
- FARMING METHODS
- Father bought machinery with neighbors. Used "check-wire" to lay out rows. Describes how check wire worked. He had check-wire system on planter he bought in 1910. Notes that now they understand that cultivating was cutting plant's roots. Discusses differences with modern drill-planter. Dad had 2-row planter. Sold a planter to neighbor & later bought another. Discusses need for crop rotation. Clover left over winter & bailed as hay in the spring. The next year the field was planted in wheat. Needed to rotate because no fertilizers, except some bone meal.
- CROPS
- Grew fulse wheat, a red wheat. Then experiment stations began putting out new varieties. Then started using a hard wheat, "the best flour wheat". But it had burrs that got into everything. Wheat was planted in fall (September) & stood over winter & cut with a binder & shocked up in early July.
