14 FARMING. 



When the cultivation of the cabbages was completed snap-beans were 

 planted between the rows and the cabbages were cut and shipped. 

 The beans were gathered, and after the cabbage stalks had been 

 plowed under between the rows, in each alternate row muskmelons 

 were planted and the stripped bean-vines turned under; and as the 

 vines of the melons spread so as to prevent cultivation the grass was 

 allowed to grow, and its shade really helped the melons; and now 

 there was on the land a growth of grass that promised two tons per 

 acre of hay fully equal to the best timothy hay of the North. In fact, 

 in nearly all parts of the State one can get as much hay without 

 sowing a seed as can be had under the most careful culture in the 

 North. It is this ease of living that has been responsible for a great 

 deal of the careless farming in the South. In a limited section in 

 Davie County we have been assured that 128. different species of 

 grass have been collected, and in the black peaty soils of the coast 

 plain the rank profusion with which grass grows on every vacant 

 spot indicates well what could be done there with well-bred cattle. 

 With the legumes that thrive in North Carolina as they thrive no- 

 where north of us, and the wonderful profusion of native grass, the 

 State could in all its sections soon become a stockman's paradise if 

 devoted to that. What is needed here is diversified farming and 

 farmers who have been accustomed to farm systematically. 



DIVERSIFIED FARMING. 



This is the greatest need of North Carolina and of the whole South. 

 Our people, left penniless after the war, were compelled to use every 

 effort to get means. Cotton cultivation offered the readiest way, for 

 on the cotton crop only could money be borrowed. Hence, with the 

 aid of commercial fertilizers, they became a community of planters 

 of cotton and tobacco rather than farmers, depending on the one crop 

 for everything else, even for the mules that cultivated the crop, and 

 for the meat that fed the hands. Northern farmers, seeing the ruin 

 wrought by the constant cultivation of cotton year after year on the 

 same land, are apt to imagine that cotton was the cause of this. 

 Incidentally, of course, it was; but really the wasting of Southern 

 soils has been due to the method and not to the crop. There is no 

 crop grown that so readily fits into an improving rotation as cotton 

 at least, none that more readily does so, though the old idea was that 

 cotton must always be a planter's and not a farmer's crop. But there 

 is a very marked improvement, and the leaven of improved farming 

 is working all over the State as people see the advantages of diversi- 

 fied and systematic cropping. The long dependence on commercial 

 fertilizers for the growing of cotton has led our people to think that 

 for every crop grown there must be some special fertilizer mixture, 

 and one of the most important 'lessons to be learned is that with a 

 good rotation of crops and the use of the legumes they can save more 



