What the Farm Was. 17 



A neighbor above us on same swamp, Mr. S. P. Thompson, 

 cleared his at great expense and labor, and did get one fine crop. 

 Another year he had to stand and see crops totally ruined, acres 

 and acres, and was powerless to prevent it. I believe he has about 

 decided to seed his with red top and give up tillage crops on it. 

 Mine is waste land, except a little grass of poor quality that grows 

 on it, and I will leave it so, after fooling away quite a little 

 money on it in years gone by. I tried to make something out of 

 this muck once by drawing it out and spreading on upland for a 

 fertilizer ; but that did not last long. I will give my experience 

 in detail on this point later on. 



Now \ve have the upland to describe, about 45 acres. Per- 

 haps one-third of this was covered with scattering timber, from 

 which all the best had been culled out. This timber was beech 

 and w 7 hite and red oak, for the most part. There were but few 

 trees that w r ere of much value except for wood. Previous owners 

 and tenants had been too hard up to keep much timber that would 

 sell readily. This brings the farm down to 30 acres, and with the 

 exception of three or four acres near the house, this land was all 

 covered with stumps. The oak and some chestnut stumps of the 

 original clearing were still standing in large numbers. Although 

 I was very green at farming, I remember thinking that land that 

 had once grown such great trees must have been good then, and 

 I did not believe it was so totally w 7 orn out and exhausted as 

 some people seemed to think, and as the crops seemed to indicate. 



The soil of the 45 acres of upland is quite variable. There 

 are three or four acres that might be termed sandy loam. Here 

 we had the great chestnut stumps. It was a terrible job mowing 

 and plowing around among them at first. Why not get them 

 out ? Well, we did as fast as possible, but there was everything 

 on earth that needed doing all at once, not one single thing in 

 order, and only two pairs of hands to do it wife's and mine. 

 We had no money to hire anyone. There are some three or four 

 acres that might be called a gravelly loam, but the larger part of 

 the upland is more of a clay loam. This works easily when 

 properly drained and clovered, but is heavy enough, so it must 

 not be carelessly treated. One must stay off of it when it is wet. 

 It will pack and make trouble if he doesn't. When I was sick 

 one spring my man left the cattle out in a field after it thawed out, 

 and almost ruined it for cropping that year. It plowed up in 

 lumps that it was almost impossible to pulverize. The field w r as 

 small for the number of cattle, however. The rest of land is more 

 or less heavy clay, some of it very heavy, the regular bowlder 

 clay of Northern Ohio. On this and much of the clay loam we 

 had many large bowlders to sink, which I will tell you about in 

 due time. 



To properly understand what we have done, you need to 

 know exactly what the soil was. Therefore, I have been very 



