The cultivated vegetable productions in the field, are maize or Indian corn, wheat, oats, barley, buckwheat, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, rye for horse feed and distilleries, tobacco, cotton, hemp, flax, the castor bean, and every other production common to the Middle States.
Maize is a staple production. No farmer can live without it, and hundreds raise little else. This is chiefly owing to the ease with which it is cultivated. Its average produce is fifty bushels to the acre. I have oftentimes seen it produce seventy-five bushels to the acre, and in a few instances, exceed one hundred.
Wheat yields a good and sure crop, especially in the counties bordering on the Illinois river. It weighs upwards of 60 pounds per bushel; and flour from this region has preference in the New Orleans market, and passes better inspection than the same article from Ohio or Kentucky.
In 1825, the weevil, for the first time, made its appearance in St. Clair and the adjacent counties, and has occasionally renewed its visits since. Latterly, some fields have been injured by the fly.
A common, but slovenly practice amongst our farmers, is, to sow wheat amongst the standing corn, in September, and cover it by running a few furrows with the plough between the rows of corn. The dry stalks are then cut down in the spring, and left on the ground. Even by this imperfect mode, fifteen or twenty bushels of wheat to the acre are produced. But where the ground is duly prepared by fallowing, and the seed put in at the proper time, a good crop, averaging from twenty-five to thirty-five bushels per acre, rarely fails to be procured.
The average price of wheat at present is a dollar per bushel, varying a little according to the competition of mills and facilities to market. In many instances a single crop of wheat will more than pay the expenses of purchasing the land, fencing, breaking the prairie, seed, putting in the crop, harvesting, threshing, and taking it to market. Wheat is now frequently sown on the prairie land as a first crop, and a good yield obtained.
Flouring mills are now in operation in many of the wheat growing counties. Steam power is getting into extensive use both for sawing timber, and manufacturing flour.
It is to be regretted, that so few of our farmers have erected barns for the security of their crops. No article is more profitable, and really more indispensable to a farmer, than a large barn.
Oats have not been much raised till lately. They are very productive, often yielding from forty to fifty bushels on the acre, and usually sell for twenty-five cents the bushel. The demand for the use of stage and travellers' horses is increasing.
Hemp is an indigenous plant in the southern part of this State, as it is in Missouri. It has not been extensively cultivated; but wherever tried, is found very productive, and of an excellent quality. It might be made a staple of the country.