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.