ps were achieved only infrequently. Often the small
landowner did not have spare fields to lie fallow for a year--the ideal
situation for soil enrichment. "We spread some lime a time or two, but
not nearly enough," admitted Wilson McNair. "We got burned lump lime and
dumped it on the ground in piles of one bushel and when it had slaked we
spread it with a shovel." The spreading itself could be a problem,
especially when the earliest trucks began to be used in the mid-1920s. A
truck hauling seven or eight tons of lime would bog down in a wet field:
"The only way you could get out was to dump the lime, and if you dumped
the lime you were in the hole you got stuck in." Thus, a lack of
understanding of soil building techniques was coupled with the physical
difficulty of fertilization, to inhibit the optimum efficiency of the
land in the early 20th century.[23]

With the soil prepared, the crops could be sown. In the fall, generally
between mid-October and Thanksgiving, winter wheat was planted. A
"drill" or mechanical planter drawn by horses was used, which could be
adapted for use with oats, barley or rye. The area had once been a
principal wheat-growing region, but in the early 20th century dairymen
cultivated wheat chiefly for the straw which was used for bedding. In
the mid-1930s, however, the availability of certified seed (seed which
was grown to be of a uniform and established varietal type, much as
genetically pure livestock was bred) raised the quality of Fairfax
wheat and slightly increased the grain's marketability.[24] Edith
Rogers, a long-time Floris resident and for many years a member of the
Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, grew wheat on her family's farm to
use in chicken feed, and to have milled into flour for home use. It was
ground at the Herndon Milling Company.[25] Like the use of certified
seed, increased understanding of fertilization and crop rotation
practices boosted production of wheat per acre, yet it never gained
prominence as even a secondary crop. In large part this was due to the
fact that wheat was a less desirable ingredient in cattle feed than was
corn or even soybeans.[26]

Corn was planted in the spring, generally in late April. Again a drill
was employed, which, planting two rows at a time, enabled the farmer to
plant about ten acres in one day. The wide variety of uses for corn made
it Fairfax County's most important grain crop and a 1926 report on the
area's agriculture observed