Employees of the Island Improvement Company planted several hundred acres of hay and 1000 acres of wheat each year on the Island. Workers disked new fields to remove surface weeds and broke up deeply compacted soil by using rippers. Once the large rocks and sagebrush were removed, farmers could plow the fields. Island farm hands used horse-drawn plows from the mid-1800s through the early 1900s. By the 1920s, tractors were used to pull the plows.