Originally posted by ramseybuckeye One of the perils of farmimg, you need rain to grow crops, but sometimes just too much comes at the wrong time....
My grandfather's farm only had one field that had any significant natural fertility, because it was a bottomland field in the floodplain of McKee Creek, locally pronounced muh-GEE CRICK. Periodic spring floods would renew it, and sometimes even create a good sized temporary pond at one end that was usually good fishing. But the floods sometimes came after corn planting or even when the corn seedlings were up, with the water staying long enough in some areas to rot the crop. It was impractical to get the team and planter back into the field to replant just those areas, so my grandfather, and his oldest child, my mom, would spend hours-to-days, replanting those crop-bare areas by hand with garden hoes. It's what you did in the 1920s, in Adams County, Illinos, if you needed a full crop to feed your livestock through the following winter.