“It certainly is not a good show ear,” said Percy, “but what I want most is bushels of shelled corn per acre.  Perhaps these big kernels will help to give the young plant a good start, and perhaps the piece of cob extending from the tip will make room for more kernels if the soil can be built up so as to furnish the plant food to make them.  The cob is large but it is covered with grains all the way around; and, if those kernels of corn were putty, we could mash them down a little and have less space between the rows, but it would make no more corn on the ear.  However, my chief reason for planting the Champion White Pearl is that this variety has produced more shelled corn per acre than any other in the University experiments on the gray prairie soil of ‘Egypt.’”

There were only sixteen acres of corn grown on the entire farm in 1903 and this yielded thirteen bushels per acre, as Percy learned from the share of the crop received by the previous landowner.

In 1904 the Champion White Pearl yielded twenty bushels per acre, as nearly as could be determined by weighing the corn from a few shocks on a small truck scale Percy had brought from the north.  He numbered his six forty-acre fields from one to six.  Forty No. 7 was occupied by twelve acres of apple orchard, eight acres of pasture, and twenty acres of old meadow.  By getting eighty rods of fencing it was possible to include twenty-eight acres in the pasture, although one hundred and ninety-two rods of fencing had been required to surround the eight-acre pasture.  The remainder of the farm was in patches, including about fifteen acres on one corner crossed by a little valley and covered with trees, a tract which Percy and his mother treasured above any of the forty-acre fields.  While the week was always filled with work, there were many hours of real pleasure found in the wood’s pasture on the Sunday afternoons.

Forty No.  I was left to “lie out,” and No. 2 raised only twelve acres of cowpeas.  No. 3 was plowed during the summer and seeded to timothy in the early fall.  No. 4 was in corn and Nos. 5 and 6 were left in meadow, two patches of nine and sixteen acres previously in cowpeas and corn having been seeded to timothy in order, as Percy said, to “square out” the forty-acre fields.  About fifty acres of land were cut over for about sixteen tons of hay.  The corn was all put in shock, and the fodder as well as the grain used for feed, the refuse from the fodder and poor hay serving as bedding.  About three tons of cowpea hay of excellent quality were secured from the twelve acres, and fifty barrels of apples were put in storage.

Another cow and eight calves were bought, and during the winter, some butter, two small bunches of the last spring’s pigs, and the apple crop were sold.  A few eggs had been sold almost every week since the previous March.