McCormick machines were early in Wisconsin fields.


    Today flour mills use rollers to grind grain, but
the early methods used millstones or buhrstones.
Cadwallader C. Washburn of La Crosse pioneered in
machinery for the refinement of flour.
    The ravages of insects and depletion of the soil
were two main reasons that Wisconsin farmers even-
tually discontinued wheat growing. By 1856 chinch
bugs had ruined wheat crops in the Watertown dis-
trict and in Walworth County. On July 29, 1864, the
Milwaukee Sentinel reported, "Yesterday evening
the lakeshore was covered with Chinch Bugs. They
swarmed upon the beach to depth of three or four
inches. The stench was intolerable." The bugs also
decimated crops throughout the state in 1879-1880.
    Although Milwaukee was still producing two mil-
lion barrels of flour in 1892, by 1918 it was producing
almost none. By then the milling centers had shifted
to Minneapolis and the west.
    Great-grandfather was a wheat farmer. That's all
he knew. He wasn't especially interested in cattle, didn't
think there were any cows worth anything, except a beast
that could give a little milk when it was needed. He was
a grain farmer. Wheat to him was the golden crop. And
for some years his people had done well with wheat in
New York. Then the soil gave out and wouldn't grow
wheat any longer. I doubt that great-grandfather ever
understood that they had worn the soil out. It just wasn't
any good any longer, so he wanted to leave. The stuff he
brought with him to Wisconsin was wheat-farmer stuff:


a heavy old plow with an iron point; a heavy grain cradle;
a bucket he strapped on when he was sowing wheat. We
have the cradle and the bucket still. They are part of our
farm museum collection. When the change came in Wis-
consin, and cattle became so much more important, great-
grandfather didn't know quite what was happening.


                  LIVESTOCK
    The York Staters and the Yankees wore the land
out first. Discouraged with lean years and drought,
many of them left Wisconsin for the California gold
rush or for other points west. The Germans and
other Europeans who took up the Yankee lands con-
centrated on orchards and livestock. Most impor-
tant, they restored manure to the land.
    The German not only used the heaps of farm-
yard fertilizer existing on his newly acquired prop-
erty, but he also conserved all that his livestock pro-
duced. Frequently, if not too distant from town or
village, he purchased a commodity of which livery-
men, stockyard keepers, and private owners of cows
or horses were anxious to be relieved. The manufac-
ture of fertilizer was a prime reason that the Euro-
pean settler stabled his livestock. Another was his
fixed habit of affording animals such care. Not all
Germans built barns at once, but the majority tried
to provide warm sheds at least, whereas Yankee and
southwesterner alike were prone to allow their ani-


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