. Clay County. Agriculture. 30 CLAY COUNTY ILLUSTRATED. Margaret L. Lofgren, Who Won a Trip to Washington for Bread Making Since its earliest settlement. Clay County has been known for its large wheat fields. For the past twenty years the potato crop has been in- creasing in importance until at the present time it almost equals the wheat in acreage and exceeds it in number of bushels produced. The improve- ment most needed seemed to be the introduction of diversified farming with more live stock and a regular rotation of crops. The first undertak- ing of the Bureau was, therefore, a campaign t
. Clay County. Agriculture. 30 CLAY COUNTY ILLUSTRATED. Margaret L. Lofgren, Who Won a Trip to Washington for Bread Making Since its earliest settlement. Clay County has been known for its large wheat fields. For the past twenty years the potato crop has been in- creasing in importance until at the present time it almost equals the wheat in acreage and exceeds it in number of bushels produced. The improve- ment most needed seemed to be the introduction of diversified farming with more live stock and a regular rotation of crops. The first undertak- ing of the Bureau was, therefore, a campaign to increase the acreage of corn, alfalfa and clover, and the num- ber of silos, realizing that nothing could be gained by increasing the number of live stock until better and more economical methods of feeding were adopted. Another reason for urging clover and alfalfa was to build up the sbil that had been impoverished by continued grain cropping. During 1914 the Bureau bought and sold to farmers at cost 160 bushels of alfalfa seed. The seed houses sold about 360 bushels during the same season. Prior to the spring of 1914 there were about 200 acres of alfalfa in the county; today there are about 7,000 acres. The acreage of clover has been brought up to about 17,000. The corn crop has increased by leaps and bounds. The 1910 census gives the acreage of the county as 2,000. In 1915 there were about 50,000 acres planted and in spite of very adverse weather conditions, about 800 bushels of good seed was gathered. This seed, because it ripened in such a short season, is worth thou- sands of dollars to the county. A good portion of the corn crop was used for silage in the fall of 1915, the number of silos having increased from 65 in the spring of 1914 to over 300. Clay County corn has received recognition wherever it has been exhibited. In the fall of 1913 a prize was secured in competition with the southern part. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images tha
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectagriculture, bookyear
