HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
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it left the yoke and before it could be drawn from his neck, off clashed the near ox, either forward or backward, while at the same instant away sprang the off ox with the yoke swinging at his neck and, like a crazy beast, he plunged around and around the yard, the swinging yoke banging against the corners of the fence, and the narrow bow turning across his neck and choking him until exhausted and panting for breath he stopped and stood with protruding tongue and quivering flanks, while the driver stole softly up to him and warily prepared to dodge the swinging yoke if the animal should again break away-as he was quite liable to do -gently unkeyed the bow and removed the yoke from his neck. It seemed almost impossible to cure this miserable habit if once acquired. At daylight in the morning the boy was up and away after the oxen, clad only in a "hickory" shirt and coarse cotton-cloth trousers. He was wet to the waist with the cold night dew, and the saw-edged wire grass cut his tough feet painfully, but the cattle must be in and yoked before breakfast at sunrise.
This first plowing killed the grass and flowers very thoroughly, but the mass of tough roots decayed slowly, and required fully a year or two for the sods to entirely disintegrate. "Backsetting" and "cross-plowing" this tough sod was very hard work for man and team.
The early breaking was often sowed or planted to some spring crop, and in the fall winter-wheat was frequently sowed upon the sod. Corn was usually planted upon sod with an axe. With a stroke of the axe, carried in one hand, a hole was made in the sod; with the other hand a few kernels of corn were dropped into the opening and a shuffle and pressure of the foot upon the spot covered the seed. These movements were each so slight and so quickly done that the planter scarcely paused in his slow walk. No marking was done, and very little cultivation given, yet quite fair crops of corn were often produced. Wheat was the only cash crop, and was very nearly the farmer's sole dependence for money to meet his few cash obligations, and by and by when the land-sale occurred, to pay for his land upon which absolutely his all was staked. For a number of years after the first breaking, the land produced very fine crops of plump heavy winter-wheat of most excellent quality. It was frequently sowed broadcast in the field of ripening
corn, by a man on horseback. The green fields of winter-wheat made rich pasturage for the wild deer.
There are few rural sights more lovely than a large field of clean wheat, its long full heads of ripening grain standing thick and even over the land, swaying gracefully in the summer breeze and giving such delightful promise of an abundant harvest very soon to be ready for the ingathering. And there is no keener financial disappointment than that of the debt-laden farmer, who watches with pride and intense satisfaction this near fruition of his toil, when he awakens after an unusually hot July night to find a misty, "muggy" morning without a ripple of air, the warm stifling vapor hanging like a steaming cloud over his field. He knows all too well that his only hope of escape from the deadly blight is the coming of a cool breeze that will shake the dampness and heat from the grain stalks before the summer sun pierces the cloud, and adds its torrid ray. But the calm continues, and about mid-forenoon the mist rises and the full sunlight and heat bursts above the field revealing the whole promising crop of wheat blighted and utterly ruined. Such was the frequent and disheartening experience of many Kane County farmers during the 'fifties.
The ordinary yield of wheat was from twenty to forty bushels to the acre. Oats, barley and rye produced bountifully. Properly cultivated corn made from fifty to eighty bushels to the acre and continuous replanting did not appear to exhaust the soil. Three or four hundred bushels of "Pinkeye" or "Neshannock" potatoes, were often dug from an acre's planting, and the pestiferous Colorado beetle or potato-bug was unknown. Early in June the farmer, or his boys or girls went along each third or fourth row of young corn, and in each third or fourth hill pushed a pumpkin seed into the soft earth. "When the frost was on the pumpkin, and the fodder in the shock," what innumerable loads of great red and yellow pumpkins covered the field. A full load of a wagon-box with sideboards, could be bought in the towns for one dollar. They furnished excellent and abundant food for all farm-stock during the fall. Large and luscious water-melons and musk-melons were raised in great abundance, usually on some piece of low rich ground hidden in the midst of the corn-field.
