The Bulletin. 59 



help you. They will work cheap, 15 hours a day, and pay for the privilege of 

 doing it. What cheap labor! Yet it is true. Why not avail yourself of it? 

 The ideal condition is where you see fields growing the various crops such as 

 the land is adapted to, with nicely kept fields, with stock of different kinds 

 feeding upon the land. This means safe farming, plenty of corn, meat and 

 grain. It also means a contented, satisfied farmer. 



None of us can carry out just what we would like to, but we will -never 

 advance until we try, and the sooner we make a beginning the better. The 

 farmer who doesn't try to improve his land, and get it into better shape to 

 produce crops, and improve the looks of his fields cannot love his work. I 

 have one field of 47 acres on my farm that I bought twenty-five years ago for 

 $287.50. The land was considered worthless ; no crops growing on it, except 

 gullies, sassafras, wild onions, briers, cedars, etc. I sold the wheat that grew 

 upon it this year direct from the gin for $1,040. Once before I made 1,400 

 bushels oats on it, and several times made 800 or more bushels of wheat. This 

 land now is carrying 40 sheep, several horses and colts, 20 young cattle and 

 some hogs on grass that came up after the wheat was taken off. There is not 

 a stump, gully or wash on this piece of ground. I have gotten it up by the 

 use of live stock — especially sheep and dairy cows. The sheep have cleaned 

 the land of wild growth, while the manure has gone direct from the cow 

 stables to manure the poor places, and getting the gullies and galls out; peas 

 and clover and a rotation of crops, deep plowing and a little fertilizer did the 

 rest. I have just now got this land ready to improve. When I bought it, my 

 neighbors said it was too poor and thirsty ; that if it rained every other day 

 it might make something. It was a long way below the average land in the 

 Piedmont section. How am I going to treat it for the next few years? I will 

 tell you. I threshed my wheat in five different places in the field, selecting 

 the thinnest places. It is now being improved by the stock running on it. This 

 winter on pleasant days I will turn my milk cows in this field, and with other 

 cattle they will eat a great deal of this straw, and what they do not eat will 

 in the spring be scattered over the poorest places in the field, and, with the 

 droppings of the cows over the field, will leave the land in good condition for 

 the next crop. In May I will plow the field with a disc plow, and will use, 

 about the first of June, a two-horse planter, with about 200 pounds acid phos- 

 phate ; plant this field in peas and soja beans and will cultivate them with 

 a double cultivator. I am undecided whether or not at last working to sow 

 this land in crimson clover. In the fall I will put hogs in the field to feed 

 on the peas, and the next year will put it in corn. Sowing crimson clover 

 would be the thing to do, but I am afraid I could not get the sod of clover 

 turned under at the proper time to get in a corn crop. I am undecided what 

 to do, but any way this crop of peas with hogs running in the field would in 

 itself be an ideal preparation for a corn crop. You see by this method I am 

 Improving this land without a great outlay of labor — live stock doing the 

 work. What I am doing to this field, I am trying to do, the best I can, for 

 my whole farm. What I have done and am doing to this field every farmer, 

 whether small or large, can and should do. 



What we want to do is not to cultivate our land so often in clean crops that 

 It will wash away, but to cultivate so we will add humus and decayed mat- 

 ter to keep it from washing. I know of no other way in which I could have 

 made a living on my farm and improved it. I know of thousands of farms in 

 the State that could be improved in this way that are getting poorer every 

 year. I can't tell you just how each man should manage his farm. You must 

 study your conditions, and know your farm, and your surroundings. But 1 

 want to get you to thinking about it, and tell you how easy it is. If I have 

 done this, I will feel my talk has not been in vain. 



