166 HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 



land, one of these times you'll have to change 

 your system or take your place in the ranks 

 with all the rest of the careless farmers who 

 have played that careless game in that same 

 careless way. 



It's plainer if we stick to corn for the illus- 

 tration. The plain English and the plain logic 

 of it is that if you've been growing corn per- 

 sistently on your fields and selling it away, 

 you'll certainly have to put hack that fertility 

 some time ; and if you put it back as commer- 

 cial fertilizer, it will cost you fifteen cents or 

 better to provide what a bushel of corn will 

 take off. Besides, you'll not be able to make 

 your soil as good as it was by using commercial 

 fertilizer; to do that, you'll have to change its 

 physical character. Feeding it chemicals won't 

 do it. 



I seem to be trying to talk like a textbook, 

 making a lot of argument about a theory. I 

 shouldn't be doing that if the theory didn't 

 apply so perfectly, and illustrate itself so thor- 

 oughly by the past, present and future of our 

 own farm. Ours was an infertile farm when 

 we got it simply because the old practices had 

 been followed in handling it for so long. 



Up in the prairie country we had seen farm- 



