OLD HOMESTEAD 



Holding the plow after a smart walking young team was no 

 boys' play; when its point brought squarely up against a solid 

 concealed rock, if you hung to the handles your feet went off 

 the ground and perhaps way up in the air; if it struck a glancing 

 blow against a big stone, very likely the handle took you in the 

 ribs and knocked the breath nearty out of you, while the plow 

 jumped out of the furrow, making a bad balk in the work; then 

 it must be pulled back and set in again. This made the horses 

 nervous and fretful and caused more of the same or worse work. 

 The disagreeable features of cultivating stony, rough, inferior 

 soil, sent many a Jefferson county boy West. 



Our land was originally very stony, and there were parts of 

 it used only as pasture where you could jump from one great 

 rock to another for rods and rods, and I frequently tried the 

 experiment of going after the cows, in the upper pasture by the 

 creek, without touching my feet to the ground. Quite a part of 

 the land used for meadow and plowing had been cleared of the 

 stone, or at least such as could be dug out and removed. Some 

 boulders too large to pry out were sunk. On others a fire was 

 built and water thrown on, causing them to crack up so they 

 could be taken out. This was father's safe and inexpensive way 

 of blasting without powder. 



The farm was in no sense a grain farm, yet we always raised 

 considerable grain — at least enough for our own use, and some 

 to sell. It all had to be sown by hand and dragged in. Grass 

 seed was '* bushed" in by hauling over the ground a long, 

 heavy, sprangly young beech or birch tree with the limbs so 

 lopped by a blow from an ax that did not cut them off, as to 

 draw along flat on the ground. A cast-iron plow, a solid twelve- 

 tooth square drag, with teeth made of one and one-quarter inch 

 iron, and a log roller was the outfit for putting in grain. 



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