Finest Furrows

In the smoky haze of a September afternoon, fortnight ago, more than 10,000 people tramped over Martin Fry's Illinois farm to see who could turn soil the straightest and best in the great Wheatland Plowing Match, oldest of its kind in the U. S. For 58 years farmers have thus competed on the prairies west of Chicago, and in those years many a husky young hand has geed and hawed his team down furrows to fame.

This year all eyes were on Carl Shoger from nearby Plainfield as he jauntily bounced along on the seat of an I. H. C. Farmall tractor, listening to a built-in radio while he plowed. For four years straight he had excelled everyone in the professional class of this championship. As his engine chugged along, those who watched him did not mark his speed. Being dirt farmers, they knew that any of them could easily turn the three-quarters of an acre each contestant was allotted in the required time. Instead they looked closely at the beginning of the furrows to see how cleanly the plowshares opened each gash in the oat stubble. As the twin 12-inch strips of black loam gracefully curved from the gleaming moldboards of his gang plow, they noted how even the lines of earth were, how uniform they were cut and whether they overlapped and lay in regular waves. They stooped and squinted along the crowned ridges of dirt to see if he was plowing with even depth, then stood back and looked down the patch to see how straight the furrows ran.

When all had plowed, the judges announced that Shoger was within one point of being perfect in all things except straightness of furrows, had scored a 92, had won for the fifth straight year. Although that was a record of more consecutive victories than anyone else had ever won in the history of the contest, Shoger's feat caused no more comment than that of 21-year-old Wayne Fuller who took the men's class for the second year with a score of 91.

Coached by his stepfather, a onetime champion who contended in 32 matches before retiring, young Fuller is now qualified to enter the professional class, will plow before the same judges as Shoger next year.

Dealers, who entered as a class to show equipment, failed to impress with their plowing. Their best score, Si, was just one point better than youthful Donald Morris from Kane County, who won the boys' class.

Missing from this year's field was Homer Lapp, who, in 1930, was the last to win the Wheatland contest with a horse-drawn plow. Considered the peer of any horse-driving plowman in the long history of this contest, Lapp continued to pit his teams against tractors, took second in 1931, 1932 and 1933, placed fourth last year. With Lapp out, all contestants this year drove tractors.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.