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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Krowbar who wrote (46367)	7/22/1999 3:02:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

The prairies burned periodically from lightning strikes. Rabbits girdled the few trees that survived the fires. The live and dead grass was matted sometimes six feet deep. The top soil was six feet deep in some places. It crawled with rattled snakes. Clearing the land depended on the invention of the polished steel plow (by John Deere). Surprisingly, the first areas farmed were forested because the prairie was so impenetrable -- especially bottom land. The real line of prairie was the smooth level land left by the Wisconsinin glacier -- with terminal moraines about Charleston, Illinois. Once it was cleared it turned into the corn and bean basket of the world (extending of course) Westward into Iowa. Today there's little space for game to hide and the land is 90 per cent in corn and beans -- with a few houses, towns, and roads. Many farmers have trenched and drained their lands so it looks almost manufactured.

To: Krowbar who wrote (46367)	7/22/1999 8:08:00 AM
From: Ish	Respond to of 108807

<<Are you sure about Illinois being native prairie? >> That is right as rain. Most of Illinois was once considered as having too poor soil to be farmed. Ground that didn't have trees couldn't grow crops. Most of the state was covered by a mix of short and tall grass prairies, patches of which are now being restored. In the 1800s the Funk family took a chance and tried farming a patch of prairie in what's now Shirley, Illinois. That grass was sitting on a 4 foot layer of some of the best soil in the world. With such great harvests the family had the opportunity to experiment with seed types and developed the hybrid corn we raise today. John Deere developed the moldboard plow that easily turned over the grasses.