7^ The Bulletin. 



went around to my neighbor's place and found him with three mules hitched 

 to a plow and subsoiler preparing a mountain-side for corn. He had been 

 watching my land all winter and had taken hold of the idea. 



Now, all of our red clay uplands are very much inclined to wash — more so 

 than similar looking lands up North, where it was glaciated. We are more 

 likely to have these great outbursts of rain in the summertime, which we 

 must control in some way or other; hence the system of terracing. The old 

 way was to run a bank around a hillside with a slight fall or dip above it. 

 In nine cases out of ten the dip became a gully. There were lines of grass or 

 weeds disfiguring the landscape, and you had to follow the lines of the terrace 

 in plowing the laud. The more recent invention is a broad bank with a very 

 slight fall to carry the water down the hill. Yet this is not always sufficient. 

 Right out here I have seen the water going over the terrace like little Niagaras. 

 Now, I have for years cultivated as steep hills as are in North Carolina, 

 and I have never made a terrace or attempted to make a terrace and have 

 never had a gully form. I have cured old gullies. I made a deep rim 

 around them and put in Bermuda grass to hold the soil, and filled up the 

 gully. The gullies are full of grass to-day, but I stopped the washing 

 twenty-five years ago. I would not say to any man here who has been culti- 

 vating his land as the greater part of our cotton country is cultivated, plowing 

 3 or 4 inches deep and keeping the land continuously clean cultivated, with 

 nothing in it to hold the soil together, that he can abandon terraces at once 

 and make a success. He could not do it. You must have the soil more 

 deeply broken and you must have something in the way of humus-making 

 material to hold the soil together. Otherwise it will wash. The two must go 

 together. I never broke a hillside unless I had a sod. I edged up the sod so 

 as to form a partial check to that tendency to wash. You must have plenty 

 of room for moisture to rise, and you must have that sod set up. 



Now, restoration of bacterial life is, as you were told before, the greatest 

 and most important thing in improving our soil. There is a slight difference 

 of opinion right there. I thoroughly believe In the growing of these legumi- 

 nous crops, every one of them, especially crimson clover. But I don't believe 

 that it pays me to grow a couple of tons of cowpea hay and turn it under, when 

 I can save my manure and get that back on the land. It may be just as Dr. 

 Hopkins tells you, that phosphate rock is intended for good farmers, just as the 

 saving of manure is Intended for good farmers who will take care of the 

 manure and get it back on the land as soon as possible. The feeding of live 

 stock in some shape lies at the very foundation of all our soil improvement. 

 How are you going to feed stock if you plow under all your humus? I want 

 to save some of my crops and feed my animals. I want to get all I can out of 

 the crop and then return what I can to the soil. In starting out to improve 

 a dead, poor piece of ground it might be well to turn under what little growth 

 it would make. Forty years ago, when I began to talk to the farmers, we did 

 not know anything about the nodules on the roots of leguminous plants, but we 

 knew that in some way clover increased the nitrogen in the soil. I do not 

 believe that any farmer who grows clover right would have to buy any 

 nitrogen. 



I was up in an institute in Maryland several years ago when Mr. Van 

 Alstine of New York made an admirable address on commercial fertilizers and 

 their use. It was a fine talk, and I had no objection to make to it. but when 

 he was through I asked him if he knew that not ten men in the audience had 

 bought any nitrogen for thirty years. They bought nothing but a little phos- 

 phate. They do not need ammonia there, because they have changed their 

 method of farming. 



I have an old friend there, an enthusiastic farmer of eighty-five years of 

 age. I went to visit him on one occasion when he was too old to come up to 

 the institute. He said to me : "I wish I could show you this farm to-day. We 

 used to make 10 or 15 bushels of wheat to the acre and about 30 bushels of 

 corn. We have changed our methods since you have been preaching clover 

 and cowpeas. and have got hold of the idea of using phosphoric fertilizer. 

 For the last twenty years I have averaged 40 bushels of wheat and 75 bushels 

 of corn, and in all that time I have bought nothing but plain acid phosphate 

 for the wheat crop — the money crop. I have been telling the farmers for years 



