The Story of the Soil Part 34

"Now I had arranged with the tenant the first year, before we went on there, to seed down a certain field. It had been under the plow for some time. I wanted it seeded so I could have some land to mow and he seeded half of it. It was only a little lot, about five acres. He seeded half with timothy and left the other half. That was his way of doing things, anyway. When we moved onto the farm later I naturally wanted to finish that seeding and get that field in some sort of shape for mowing. I went to my next neighbor, who lives there yet, and asked him what I had better use. I didn't know anything, pract.i.tically, about farming, and he advised me to try some clover seed. He said: 'So far as I know, none was ever sown on that farm. They have sowed timothy everlastingly, everybody, because it is cheap. I knew timothy wouldn't grow there to amount to anything If I were in your place I would try some clover.'

"I got the land prepared and sowed that clover alone, so as to give it a chance. I did have sense enough to mow off the weeds when they got six or eight or ten inches high perhaps, so that the clover could have a little better chance to grow. It happened to be a very wet season. I remember that distinctly. This was a lot near to the barn. I suppose what little manure they had hauled out had been mostly put on this land. With these favoring conditions the result was fairly good. Of course not half what we got later, but we got quite a little clover and when I came to mow it, and to mow that timothy at the other end, I could see I could draw the rake two or three times as far in the timothy as in the clover. There was more clover on an acre. A load of timothy would go in and a load of clover. When I fed it to the cows in winter I noticed when feeding clover for a number of days they gave more milk. I didn't know why.

I don't know as anybody knew why then. There wasn't an experiment station in the land. We were following our own notions. But the cows gave more milk; I could see that plainly.

"A little later I had an experiment forced on me by accident. I tell you just how it came about. It resulted in putting a good many thousands in our pockets and I hope millions in the pockets of the farmers of America. Later I wanted to plant corn on this field, and, as I wanted to grow just as good corn as I could, I got out what manure we saved and put it on the land preparing for plowing. I knew there wouldn't be more than half enough to go over the field. I said to myself, if there was any good corn, I would like it next to the road where people would see it. Wouldn't any of you do it? I didn't have a dollar to hire any help. I paid one dollar that year for help, and it was awful hard to get that dollar. I began spreading that manure next to the road. The back half of the field was nearly out of sight. When I got half way back there wasn't any manure left and the back half didn't get any. Now it so happened that the timothy was on the front end of the field, and it got the manure.

The clover on the back half didn't get any. It came about in the simple way I told you of. Naturally I didn't expect much corn where I hadn't put any manure, but what was my surprise to find it was just about as good on that clover end of the field without any dressing as on the timothy end with what I had been able to put on.

It is only right I should say there wasn't much of the manure It was poor in quality because we couldn't get grain for the cows when we couldn't get enough for ourselves to eat. There wasn't much manure and it was pretty poor, but such as it was that was the result. More hay to the acre, better hay, increased fertility, some way, by growing this clover!

"Now let us go back a little. I think it was the second spring after we moved onto the place that I happened to be crossing the farm of my next neighbor, Mr. Holcombe, now dead. I found him plowing. He had been around a piece of land, I should judge five acres, half a dozen times. He was sitting on the plow, tired out,--too old to work anyway. He said, 'I wish you would take this land and put in some crop on the shares; I want to get rid of the work; I can't do it, and would like to let you have it in some way. All I want is that it should be left so I can seed it down in the fall again.'

"It was an old piece of sod he had mowed in the old eastern way until it wouldn't grow anything any longer. I don't suppose he got a quarter of a ton of hay to the acre. He wanted it plowed so he could re-seed it. I didn't know the value of the land, but, foolishly perhaps, as most people thought, offered him five dollars an acre for the use of it. I hadn't enough to do at home. I didn't have my land in shape so I could do much. We were working along as fast as we could. I thought I could do well if I had this job, and could perhaps make something off it. He agreed to it.

"I went home and got my team and plow, and finished the plowing. I remember making those furrows narrow and turning the ground well, a little deeper than it had been plowed before. I didn't realize what I was doing, then. I simply had been brought up to do my work well.

I thought I was doing a good job, that was all. When I was through plowing I got my old harrow, a spike-tooth, and harrowed the ground.

I had a roller. They were manufactured in our town. The firm bursted and I had a chance to buy one very cheap. I had a roller, harrow, and plow. That was all the tillage implements. The harrow had moved the lumps around a little. I ran the roller over the lumps; then harrowed, rolled, and harrowed. When the harrow would not take hold, I put a plank across and rode on it. I worked that land alternately until I had the surface as fine and nice as I could make it, two or three inches deep. The harrow would not take hold any longer and I had to quit. By and by a rain came. I didn't know anything about how to till land,--this spring fallow business--but I happened to hit it right. After it rained, I said that harrow will take hold better now. I loaded the harrow and got on it, and tore that ground up three or four inches deep.

"The harrow teeth were sharp. I harrowed and rolled it and my neighbor said, 'Terry, you are ruining that land, it will never grow anything any more, it will all blow away.' I reminded him of his bargain; I should raise what I pleased and take the crop home. Every little while, I can't remember how often, I would go over and harrow and roll that land. I probably plowed it the first week in April.

For two months that was a sort of savings bank for my work. I would run over and work that land, occasionally, until, about the first week in June, I had it prepared just as mellow and fine and nice as it was possible to make it. It was nice enough for flower seeds."

"I builded better then than I knew. I had no idea what the result was going to be. When it was all ready, I sowed Hungarian gra.s.s seed. I wish you could have seen the crop. It grew four and a half or five feet high, as thick as it could stand on the land. I believe if I had thrown my straw hat, it would have staid on the top. It was enormous for that land. I had four big loads to the acre. You know what you can put on a load of Hungarian. When I went by the owner's house with those loads and took them to our barn, he was out there and he looked awfully sour. That man, to my knowledge, had never grown half as much to the acre since I had known of his being on the land, probably never more than one-third as much. Old run-out timothy sod; no manure, no fertilizer, nothing but the work,--this spring fallowing. I enjoyed the matter more, because he had told some of the neighbors he had got the start of that town fellow; I would never see five dollars an acre back, out of the land. That was his opinion of what I could raise.

"Hay was hay that fall, after a dry season. We live in a dairy section. The cows were there and had to be fed. I got $18 a ton for that hay in our barn, something like $70 per acre. I think the laugh was on the other side. That was my first awakening, along this line of tillage. Didn't know how it came about, didn't know anything about the fertility locked up in the soil, just the plain facts. I did so and so, and got such and such results. The next year Charlie Harlow, still living there, said, 'I wish you would put in some Hungarian for me this spring.' I said, 'What part of the crop?--I should want two-thirds.' He said he had an offer for half. I said, 'Then let him have it.' He replied, 'One-third of what you will raise is more than half of what he will raise.' He saw what I did on his brother-in-law's farm.

"The following year I had a piece of land ready to grow corn, I had cleared out the stumps and done the best I could to get it in shape.

I plowed it just as soon as the ground was dry enough, about the first of April, that is. I worked it every little while just as nearly as I could as the Hungarian land had been worked, I harrowed and rolled, let it rest a while, then harrowed and rolled. I kept it up until my next door neighbor, Mr. Croy, had planted his corn, and it was four inches high and growing pretty well. Ours wasn't planted. A neighbor came and said, 'I am sorry for you, Terry, you don't know what you are about. You are fooling away your time. Your corn ought to have been in before this.' I was harrowing and rolling. I was determined to see whether I could do it over again.

Some of the neighbors said it couldn't be done again.

"The fourth or fifth of June--too late, ordinarily, to plant corn with us--I put in the crop. I wish you could have seen it grow! It came up and grew from the word 'Go.' In four weeks it was ahead of any corn about. It went ahead of my neighbor's corn that was three or four inches high when ours was planted. We had a crop that, the farm in the condition that it was, was considered as something remarkable. They couldn't account for it, neither could I. All I knew was I had been working the ground so and so and getting such and such results.

"Let us go back once more. The first year that I moved onto that farm, the first fall, we had nine cows, and I wanted to save all of the manure. Now, there wasn't an experimental station in the land. I didn't know anything about the pota.s.sium or nitrogen in the liquid manure, but I had seen where it dropped on the land and how the gra.s.s grew. I thought it was plant food, and our land was hungry. I said, I must try and save this manure, and not have it wasted. I hadn't a dollar. What did I do? There was an old stable there that would hold ten cows. It was in terrible shape. It had a plank floor that was all broken. I tore it out. I hauled some blue clay. I filled the stable four or five inches deep with the blue clay, wet it, pounded it down, shaped it off and got it level, fixed it up around the sides, saucer shape, so it would hold water. Then I laid down some old boards (I couldn't buy new ones), and put in a lot of straw there and put my cows in. I saved all that manure the first year, all that liquid. I had twice as much, probably more, from the same number of cows as had been saved on that farm before, and it was much more valuable. That was the beginning the first winter, when I hadn't anything.

"For the horse stable I went to town and found some old billboards.

It was new lumber, but had been used for billboards. After the circus the owner offered to sell the boards cheap, and to trust me.

He was a carpenter, and he jointed them. We put them crosswise on the old plank floor, and when they got wet they swelled and became practically water tight. I even crawled under and saw that there was no liquid manure dropping down there. I drew sawdust and used for bedding. I saved the liquid of the horse stable. I didn't know it was worth three times as much, pound for pound, as the solid. I didn't know it was worth two times as much in the cow stable, pound for pound, as the solid. I found it out by experience.

"Now, when I was in town, before going on this farm, I worked for S.

Straight & Son, the then great cheese and b.u.t.ter kings of the Western Reserve. I was getting over a thousand dollars a year in their office. They didn't want me to leave at all, but my wife and I took a notion to be independent, to work for ourselves, and we bought this old farm. We had a chance to work for ourselves, all right. The first year we worked from early in the morning until nine or ten o'clock at night, and then we tumbled into bed, too tired to think, to get up and do it over again. I worked in the field, taking out stumps and doing something, as long as I could see, and then helped my wife to milk. We would get our supper along about nine or ten o'clock. At the end of the year we had not one single dollar, after paying our interest and taxes,--not one dollar to show for our work. Do you wonder we were pretty discouraged?

"I met Mr. Straight one day. He said: 'Terry, things are not going very well in the office since you left. I wish you would come back.

You are not doing much over on that farm that I can see. You are having a hard time. I will gladly give you $1,200 a year if you will come back into our office.' It was a great temptation. Think what it meant. To move back to town and have $100 a month. But I said, 'No, Mr. Straight; I can't do it.' I don't deserve any credit for it, friends: but I wasn't built that way. I can't back out. When I undertake anything I have got to go through. I would have been willing enough to leave that farm, if I had made a success of it, after I made a success of it, as I thought then; but I wasn't willing to give up, whipped--to acknowledge that I had undertaken that job and had to back out and go back to town to make a living.

"Some little incident sometimes will change the whole character of a man's life. I remember, when we were in very hard conditions, we were sitting under an apple tree in our door yard one evening. It is there yet. Two men from town went by. One of them said to the other, 'What is Terry going to do?' The other said, 'If Terry sticks to it he will make something out of that old farm.' Just as quick as a flash, friends, I said, 'Terry will stick to it.'

"You see what condition we were in. I began to put all these matters together. I had been taught how to. In college I had been trained to study and think, of course,--not to work with my hands. When I got onto the work at first I worked myself almost to death with my hands, and had no time to think or study; but gradually old methods came around again and I began to think and study. I said: 'Here, more hay to the acre, better hay, increased fertility by growing that clover, increased fertility by working that soil so much.' I didn't know why, but there was the fact. 'Now, isn't it possible to put these matters together and so work them out as to build up the fertility of this farm and make it blossom like the rose?'

"I began to work it out. What was the first step? I sold eight or nine cows to get a little money to start, thus cutting off practically our whole source of income. There was no other way I could get any money. We had to do some draining. A part of the land we could not do anything with until it was tile-drained. It took money to buy tile. I had to have a little help about the digging, although I like to boast that I laid every tile on my farm with my own hands. I buried every one and know it will stay there. They were all sound and hard and good. In all these years not one has ever failed, not one drain or tile. I worked day after day, in the rain, wet to the skin, because it had to be done. It was the foundation of our success.

"As I was coming here yesterday, and pa.s.sed so much of your flat land, in need of drainage, I thought, drainage is the foundation of success for lots of these people, down here in southern Illinois.

You can't do much until you have the water out of the land. Then you have a chance to do something with tillage and manure-saving and clover. But you throw away your efforts when you try to do this work on land that is in need of drainage.

"As fast as possible we fixed up this land. Of course, it took years. We hadn't money, and there were many things that had to be done,--changing fields, getting out stumps, doing drainage,--it all took time. I had my plans made and was working as fast as I could.

"Two things I did, to keep life in our bodies until we got ready to make some money. One was to cut off every bit of timber on the farm.

Our neighbors laughed at us and prophesied rain and all that. There were two things in my mind. We had to have money to live on, and I managed to get quite a little of it in that way. In the next place we didn't have much of a farm, and I wanted the land for tillage. We can buy wood of the neighbors to-day, cheaper than we sold ours, so we never lost anything.

"Another way we got some money, as we went along, that helped us, was raising forage crops. I did not attempt to put in crops that required much hand labor. I raised Hungarian, and everything I could to be fed to cows. In our dairying section, with feed often scarce in the fall, farmers often had more stock than they could winter. We could pick up cows cheaply on credit and hold them. I could winter them for people, and the manure we used as a top dressing, to make the clover grow. Starting with a little piece of land, we spread out more and more, and got more and more enriched, and more and more growing clover, and by and by we got all the cultivated land growing it. Then we were ready for business.

"I am afraid to tell you Illinois farmers, with your great big farms, how large our farm was. We bought one hundred and twenty-five acres. We sold off all but fifty-five. That didn't help us, for the man who bought it was so poor he didn't pay us for over thirty years. Then the land went up in price and he was able to sell it for a good price and we got our money. Fifty-five acres were selected, the best we could for our purpose. Twenty acres were so situated as to have no value. Thirty-five acres were fairly good, tillable land, the best we could pick out. I began a system of rotation, after we got the land ready for it, of clover, potatoes, and wheat. My idea was to have the clover gather fertility to grow potatoes and wheat.

I was going to make use of the tillage to help out all I could, and sold the potatoes and wheat, and then had clover again, and so on around the circle. Everybody said, of course I would fail. I didn't know but I would. It was the only chance and I had to take it.

"Of course it took quite a while to get this thing going. The first three or four years didn't amount to much. After six or eight years we were surprised at the result. We were getting more than we hoped for. In a dozen years the whole country was surprised. I remember when a reporter was sent from Albany, New York, to see what we were doing, and reported in the "Country Gentlemen." We had visitors by the score from various states, it made such a stir. They couldn't believe it was possible for a man to take land as poor as that, and make it produce so well. We had some they could see that had not been touched. As I told you, in eleven years we were out of debt.

After about ten or eleven years we were laying up a thousand dollars a year, above all living and running expenses, from this land, raising potatoes and wheat. It doesn't seem possible to you, large farmers, but you can't get around the facts. In 1883 we laid up $1,700 from the land. But this was a little extra.

"We wanted to build a new house. We had lived in the old sh.e.l.l long enough. We had the money to pay cash down for the new house and to pay for the furniture that went into it. We paid $3,500 cash down, that fall, for the house and furniture, and every dollar taken out of the land. Only two or three years before that we paid the last of our debt. I had not done any talking or writing to speak of, at that time. I did not begin until 1882 I never went to an inst.i.tute, and never wrote an article for a paper, except when called upon to do it. I never sought such a job and prefer to stay at home on my farm.

It was only because I was called to do this work that I got into it.

For twenty-one years I was never at home one week during the winter season. Farmers called for me and I didn't feel that I could refuse to go.

"Now, how did we do it? I told some of the things. Let us go down to the science of the matter little, now. I didn't know anything about the science at the time. That came later. Practice came first. We know now--of course, you all know--that clover has the ability, through the little nodules that grow on the roots, to take the free nitrogen out of the air to grow itself. You know about four-fifths of the air you are breathing is nitrogen in the form of gas, and clover has the ability to feed on that and make use of it. The other plants have not. I might ill.u.s.trate it in this way: You can't eat gra.s.s; at least, you wouldn't do very well on it. But the steer eats gra.s.s and you eat the steer, so you get the gra.s.s, don't you? Your corn, wheat, oats, timothy, potatoes, so far as we know, can't touch free nitrogen in the air, but clover can and then feed it to those other crops.

"Let us look into how we got the phosphorus. On land that would not grow over six to eight bushels of wheat per acre we have succeeded once in growing forty-seven and three-fourths bushels to the acre, on all the land sowed, of wheat that sold away above the market price and weighed sixty-four pounds to the measured bushel, and never put on a pound of phosphorus. We got it from that tillage we told you about. Our land in northeastern Ohio is not very good naturally. It is nothing like what you have in this state. Most of you know that is the poorest land we have in the state in general, but we have a fair share of clay and sand in ours. That has helped us wonderfully. We have clay enough so that with our tillage we can make so far all the plant food available we want.

"Now, a little more about the tillage. I told you how we worked the surface of that ground and made it fine and nice. After five or six years, perhaps, of this kind of work, I got to thinking if I had some tool that would stir that ground to the bottom of the plowed furrow and mix it very deeply and thoroughly, I might get still better results out of the tillage. I happened to be in town one morning in the fall, when we had some wheat land (clover sod) plowed and prepared for wheat. I had harrowed and rolled it and made it as nice as I could.--It was what the neighbors would call all ready for sowing and more than ready. In town I saw a man trying to sell a two-horse cultivator. I think it was made in this State. It was the first one I ever saw--you can judge how long ago. It was a big, heavy, c.u.mbersome thing,--a horse-killer. I thought, if I only had that, I knew I could increase the fertility of our soil still more.

I hadn't any money. We hadn't got far enough that there was a dollar to spare. What did I do? I gave my note for $50 and took that cultivator home with me. I could have bought it for $35 in money, but I didn't have it. My wife didn't say a word when I got home. I have heard since that she did a lot of crying to think I would go in debt $50 more, and all for that thing.

"I got home about eleven o'clock and you can well suspect that I couldn't eat any dinner that day. I hitched up and went right to work, and told my wife I couldn't stop for any dinner. I rode that cultivator that day and tore up that field in a way land was never torn up in our section before. There was nothing to do it with. The soil would roll up and tumble over. After going lengthwise I went crosswise. A thousand hogs couldn't have made it rougher. The neighbors looked on and said that 'Terry would do 'most anything if you would only let him ride.' The worst of it was, I really didn't know but what they were right, and all he would get out of it was the riding. It was a serious thing. I had to wait until the harvest time before I could know.

"What was the result? I got ten bushels of wheat more per acre than had ever grown on the land before, without any manure or fertilizer having been applied since it grew the previous crop in the rotation.

Clover had been grown. It was a clover sod. I didn't know how much came from the clover and how much from the tillage. I didn't care, they went together to get that result. I asked some of the old settlers how much had been grown there per acre during their recollection. They said twenty-three bushels was the most they had known. I got thirty-three. The neighbors said, 'It happened so, you can't do it again.' You know how they talk, to make out nothing can be done with an old farm. I was interested in doing it again. I paid that note and had a large margin of profit left, you see, out of the extra wheat. It all came right.

"The next year I took the next field in rotation and worked it in the same way, probably more. I got thirteen bushels more wheat per acre than ever grew before. Thirty-six bushels of wheat! Such a thing was never heard of in our section before; land that would not grow anything a dozen years ago. Do you wonder I have been an enthusiast on tillage since then? Why, they call me a crank sometimes. It is a good crank, as it has turned out prosperity for us.

"After a time I began to think, can't we carry this matter a little further? People generally don't cultivate their crops more than two or three times in a season. Can I cultivate more to advantage? I began to try it, six or eight times, eight or ten. I think there have been dry years when I have cultivated our potatoes as many as fifteen times. I don't believe we ever went through them when it didn't pay.

"I remember one fall, when it was a wet season. When the tops began to die and got to the point where I could see the s.p.a.ce between the rows, I started the cultivators again. I had money then to hire men and I hired plenty of them. I started to cultivate between the rows.

People said, ' What is the idiot doing now?' I said, 'He is going to raise five bushels more by doing that work, that it what he is after.'

"Now, remember, more hay to the acre, better hay, increased fertility by growing clover, increased fertility by working this land over and over in the different ways I have told you of. They used to send for me to talk on this subject, before I knew anything about it, except that I had done it. In Wisconsin, some twenty years ago, I helped at the first inst.i.tute held in the state. They sent for me to come up. I told them what I was doing and how I thought it came about, what I thought clover was doing for me. When I was through I asked Professor Henry, who was in the audience, to tell me, honestly, what he thought about my talk. He said, 'As a farmer I believe you are right, but as a scientific man I dare not say so in public.'

"Professor Roberts came to my place one time, to investigate a little. I knew what he came for. I showed him around, and showed him the land we had not touched, not to this day. He was a surprised man. I remember the second crop of clover was at its best. It was above his knees. He says, 'This will make two tons of hay to the acre, and it is the second crop.' He didn't say but very little. I couldn't get him to talk much. He went home and began that system of experiments at Ithaca that has practically revolutionized the agriculture of the east--experiments in tillage. Pretty soon we had his book on the fertility of the soil. I think he got his inspiration from what he saw. He said to himself, seems to me, 'Terry has something that scientific men do not know.' He got samples of soil all over the state. They a.n.a.lyzed the soil and found what the average soil of New York contained. They found about four thousand five hundred pounds of nitrogen, six thousand three hundred pounds of phosphoric acid, and twenty-four thousand pounds of potash in an average acre eight inches deep; and they had been buying potash largely. (Laughter.)

"The farm we moved onto was the old Sanford homestead. Old Mr.

Sanford lived there and brought up a large family. I think five of them boys. Every one of these boys left the farm just as soon as they could get away. There wasn't anything in farming for them.

After we had been at work a dozen years or more and got things going nicely, they came back (one of them lives in Connecticut) and visited the old homestead. I remember Lorenzo said, 'It seems like a miracle. I don't know how you did it. We worked from daylight to dark, from one year's end to another, and never had anything. We boys used to be promised a holiday on the Fourth of July if the corn was all hoed. That was all we got. How on earth have you done these things?'

"Friends, there were three farms we bought. Old Mr. Sanford didn't know anything about but one. There was the air and the soil and there was the subsoil. He had been working only the soil, plowing it three or four inches deep, scratching it over, taking what came, and every year less and less came. The land had run down until the surface had quit producing. We took the same soil, put in clover and took the fertility out of the upper farm, the air, and out of the lower one, the subsoil, and put it into the second one. We plowed the surface soil a little deeper and deeper until we got it eight or nine inches deep instead of four. We worked it more and more, setting more and more of the available plant food in the soil free.

That is how we did it.

"I say 'we' advisedly, because, friends, if I hadn't had a wife fully able and willing to do her part, and more, I would not have this story to tell."