PLOW TILL IT IS DRY, AND PLOW TILL IT IS WET.
Speaking of corn, a very intelligent gentleman remarked: “Well, by a five minutes’ talk, I made Mr. —— produce the best crop he ever had on a certain field.” He was looking over the fence where his corn was, at a flat field, upon furrows full of water; as I came by he said: “Well, I shall never get a crop off this piece of land; it’s going just as it always does when I plant here.” I told him of an old man in Indiana, who was a good farmer, to whom I once said when at his house one morning:
“Deafenbaugh, how is it that you always have good corn when no one else gets a half crop?”
“Why,” said he, “when it is wet I plow it till it is dry, and when it is dry I plow it till it is wet.”
The man to whom I told this anecdote, says our informant, tried the practice, and gained a fine crop.
Now the principle is good. Our Dutch friend would not, we suppose, plow a stiff clay in a wet condition, unless, possibly, to strike a channel through the middle between rows. But the gist of the story lies in this—constant cultivation. Stir, stir, STIR the ground.