Some of the farmers down here tell me confidentially that “hardpan” has been found on their neighbors’ farms, but I have not talked with any one who has any on his own farm.  I am very glad the University has settled the matter very much to the comfort of us “Egyptians,” by reporting that no true “hardpan” exists in Illinois, although there are extensive areas underlain with tight clay, “of whom, as it were, we are which.”

I am glad that the nitrogen-fixing and nitrifying bacteria do business chicfly in the surface soil, because we are not prepared to correct the acidity to any very great depth.

The present plan is to practice a six-year rotation on six forty-acre fields, as follows: 

First year—­Corn (and legume catch crop).

Second year—­Part oats or barley, part cowpeas or soy beans.

Third year—­Wheat.

Fourth year—­Clover, or clover and timothy.

Fifth year—­Wheat, or clover and timothy.

Sixth year—­Clover, or clover and timothy.

This plan may be a grain system where wheat is grown the fifth year, only clover seed being harvested the fourth and sixth years, or it may be changed to a live-stock system by having clover and timothy for pasture and meadow the last three years, which may be best for a time, perhaps, if we find it too hard to care for eighty acres of wheat on poorly drained land.

In somewhat greater detail the system may be developed we hope about as follows: 

First year:  Corn, with mixed legumes, seeded at the time of the last cultivation, on perhaps one-half of the field.  These legumes may include some cowpeas and soy beans and some sweet clover, but that is not yet fully decided upon.

Second year:  Oats (part barley, perhaps) on twenty acres, cowpeas on ten acres, and soy beans on ten acres.  The peas and beans are to be seeded on the twenty acres where the catch crop of legumes is to be plowed under as late in the spring as practicable.

Third year:  Wheat with alsike on twenty acres and red clover on the other twenty, seeded in the early spring.  If necessary to prevent the clover or weeds from seeding, the field will be clipped about the last of August.

Fourth year:  Harvest the red clover for hay and the alsike for seed, and apply limestone after plowing early for wheat.

Fifth year:  Wheat, with alsike and red clover seeded and clipped as before.

Sixth year:  Pasture in early summer, then clip if necessary to secure uniformity, and later harvest the red clover for seed.  Manure may be applied to any part of this field from the time of wheat harvest the previous year until the close of the pasture period.  Then it may be applied to the alsike only until the red clover seed crop is removed, and then again to any part of the field, which may also be used for fall pasture.  To this field the threshed clover straw and all other straw not needed for feed and bedding will be applied.  The application of raw phosphate will be made to this field, and all of this material plowed under for corn.