The Story of the Soil Part 33

His hope was in the clover, but as the fall came on the red clover was found to have failed almost completely, and the alsike was one-half a stand. As the red clover had been seeded on the unlimed strip there was no way of knowing whether the limestone had even benefited the alsike. The neighbors had "seen just as good clover without putting on any of that stuff."

There were no apples, but the spraying had cost as much as ever, and some team work had been hired.

Three years of the hardest work; limestone on two forties, but only twenty acres of poor clover on one and no wheat seeded on the other.

The neighbors "knew the clover would winter kill." The bills for pasturing amounted to as much as the b.u.t.ter had brought; for the twenty-eight-acre pasture had been very poor. The feed for the cows for winter consisted of corn fodder, straw and poor hay, and not enough of that.

They had to do it--draw $150 from the Winterbine reserve, besides what had been used for limestone. Part of it must go for clover seed, for clover must be seeded before it could be grown. The small barn must also be enlarged, but with the least possible expense.

It was February. Wet snow, water, and almost bottomless mud covered the earth. With four horses on the wagon, Percy had worked nearly all day bringing in two "jags" of poor hay from the stack in the field. It was all the little mow would hold.

He had finished the ch.o.r.es late and came in with the milk.

"Put on some dry clothes and your new shoes," said his mother, "while I strain the milk and take up the supper. There is a letter on the table. I hardly see how the mail man gets along through these roads. They must be worse than George Rogers Clark found on his trip from Kaskaskia to Vincennes. They say his route pa.s.sed across only a few miles from the present site of Heart-of-Egypt. I suppose the letter is from Mr. West."

Percy finished was.h.i.+ng his hands, and opened the letter. Two cards fell to the table as he drew the letter from the envelope.

He picked up one of the cards, and read it aloud to his mother:

_Mr. and Mrs. Strongworth Barstow

__At home after March I, 1907

1422 College Avenue

Raleigh, N. C._

_"With Grandma's Compliments,"_ was penciled across the top of the card. Percy glanced at the other card and read the plain lines:

_Announce the marriage of their daughter_

Did his eyes blurr? He laid the one card over the other, scanned Mr.

West's letter hurriedly, replaced it with the cards in the envelope, and laid the letter at his mother's plate.

Percy replaced his rubber boots with shoes, and his wet, heavy coat with a dry one.

"You remember the letter I had from the College?" he asked, as he took his seat at the table.

"Yes, I remember," she replied, "but the Inst.i.tute was to begin to-day."

"I know," said Percy, "but h.o.a.rd and Terry both speak to-morrow,--Terry in the morning and the Governor in the afternoon, and they are the men the Professor especially wanted me to hear, if I could. I think I'll 'phone to Bronson's and ask Roscoe to come over and do the ch.o.r.es to-morrow noon. I can get back by nine to-morrow night."

"But, Dear, how in the world can you get to Olney to hear Mr. Terry speak to-morrow morning?"

"There is a train east about eight o'clock," he replied. "Of course the roads are too awful to think of driving to the station, especially since the mares ought not to be used much. I put four on the wagon to-day and tried to be as careful as possible but it does not seem right to use them. I can manage all right. I will get up a little early in the morning and get things in shape so I can leave here by daylight and I am sure I can make the B. & O. station by eight o'clock easily. I will wear my rubber boots and carry my shoes in a bundle. I can change at the depot and put my boots on again when I get back there at seven at night. If it clears up, I will have the moon to help coming home."

But, Percy, you do not mean to walk five miles and back through all this mud and water?"

"I wish you would not worry, Mother. There is gra.s.s along the sides most of the way, and I am used to the mud and water. I will spy out the best track as I go in the morning and just follow my own trail coming back."

"Then it is time we were asleep," replied the mother.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

HARDER TIMES

THE State Superintendent of Farmers' Inst.i.tutes called the meeting to order soon after Percy entered the Opera House at Olney about ten o'clock the next morning.

"Divine blessing will be invoked by Doctor T. E. Sisson, pastor of the First Methodist Church of Olney:"

"Oh, Thou, whose presence bright all s.p.a.ce doth occupy and all motion guide, all life impart, we come this morning in the capacity of this Farmers' Inst.i.tute to thank thee for Thy mercies and for Thy blessings, and to invoke Thy presence and Thy continued favor. As Thou with Thy presence hast surrounded all forms of creation and all stages of being with the providences of welfare and development and grace, so we pray, our Father, for guidance through the sessions of this inst.i.tute, for the providences of Thy love and Thy wisdom divine as it reveals itself in the open field, in the orchard, in the garden, bringing forth those things which replenish the earth with food and fill the mouths of our hungry ones with bread.

"We thank Thee for this larger knowledge which has come to the minds of men, because they have been learning to study Thy works and to walk closer to Thee. Wilt Thou, Heavenly Father, continue to enlighten this body of men and women that are represented in this great field of the world's busy hive so that the starving millions of the world, now in our cities rioting for bread, and in the vast nations where they are crying for food, may be fed. We pray Thee, reveal such improvement of knowledge to these who are willing to get close to Thee to learn Thy secrets and know Thy wisdom, as that unto all shall be given plenty, for replenis.h.i.+ng our physical needs. And help us to know, our Father, as we learn Thy will and seek to do Thy will and live in the higher courts of knowledge and wider circles of thought, so shall G.o.d reveal himself unto us.

"Our Father, we thank Thee for all the developments and great sources of utility that come through the means of this inst.i.tute in the development of the resources of this country, this great State and adjoining states through the length and breadth of this favored nation. We pray, Heavenly Father, while studying all these replenishments and seeking to defend them from the inroads of evil, of the rust and the mildew and the worm, we pray also for the beautiful homes, for the souls of the children given to our homes, that we may study their mental and spiritual being in such a way as shall keep all harm and evil and wrong from this life of ours, and so to work in the field of Thy providences, revealed in hand and mind and heart and relations.h.i.+ps, of school and church and state and farm, and all the activities of this life's great work, as that good shall be our inheritance.

"We pray Thee, Heavenly Father, to be with the officers of this inst.i.tute. Give Thy strength, Thy presence, and Thy discernment to these who partic.i.p.ate in the work, the members.h.i.+p and onlookers, and those who come to learn. We pray Thee, give us the revelation of Thy wisdom to replenish and build up every human family, and to Thee all praise shall be given to-day for this blessing and for Thy continued favor; and not only to-day but to-morrow and the day after and through all eternity the praise shall be Thine, in the name of Him who came into this world to give us the life of the knowledge of G.o.d. Amen."

"It may be," said the Chairman, "that a State Farmers' Inst.i.tute sometimes exercises a little arbitrary power in selecting subjects we want to speak of. I think county inst.i.tutes might adopt the same plan to advantage, and a.s.sign the topic they wish discussed.

"The topic a.s.signed our speaker to-day is 'What I did and how I did it.' It may sound egotistical, but I want to relieve the speaker of that imputation, because the subject was selected by the Inst.i.tute.

"Allow me to present Mr. Terry, who needs no introduction to an audience of American farmers:"

Mr. Terry began to speak:

"Thirty-six years ago last fall," he said, "my wife and I bought and moved onto the farm where we now reside. We went on there in debt $3,700, on which we had to pay seven per cent. interest. I had one horse, an old one, and it had the heaves, a one-horse harness, and a one-horse wagon, three tillage implements, and nine cows that were paid for; and a wife and two babies, but no money. Now that was the condition in which we started on this farm, thirty-six years ago, in debt heavily, and no money; but that is not the worst of it. If it had been as good soil as you have in some parts of this State, we should have been all right. How about the soil? For sixty years farmers had been running it down until it could scarcely produce anything. We had a tenant on the place one year, before we could arrange to move on, after we got it. They got eight bushels of wheat per acre, and he said to me, 'That is a pretty good yield, don't you think, for this old farm?' Oh, friends, I didn't think so;--never ought to have bought this farm;--didn't know any better,--born and brought up in town, my father a minister, and I thought a farm was a farm. But I learned some things after awhile. That tenant mowed over probably forty acres of land. (We originally bought one hundred and twenty-five.) He put the hay in the barn. It measured twelve tons.

Half of that was weeds. Most of the hay he cut down in a swale.

There wasn't anything worth considering on the upland. That was the condition of the land.

"How about the buildings? The house had been used about sixty years, an old story-and-a-half house. Dilapidated, oh, my! Every time the rain came, we had to take every pan upstairs and set it to catch the water. We did not have any money to put on more s.h.i.+ngles. It was out of the question, we couldn't do it. How about the dooryard? It was a cow yard. They used it for a milking yard, for years and years. You can imagine how it looked. The barn was in such condition that cattle were just as well off outdoors as in. The roof leaked terribly. The tenants had burned up the doors and any boards they could take off easily. They were too lazy to take off any that came off hard. They burned all the fences in reach.

"Now friends, that was the farm we moved onto and the condition it was in. Some of you will know we saw some pretty hard times for a while. Time and again I was obliged to take my team, after we got two horses (the second I borrowed of a relative, it was the only way I could get one), and go to town to do some little job hauling to get some money to get something to eat. That is the way we started farming. I remember, after three or four years, meeting Dr. W. I.

Chamberlain. Some of you know him. He said: 'Terry, if you should get a new hat, there wouldn't anybody know you. Your clothes wear like the children of Israel's.' They had to wear. No one knew how hard up we were. It was not best to let them know. That money was borrowed of a friend in Detroit, secured on a life insurance policy.

We did not let anybody know how hard up we really were. My wife rode to town (to church when she went), in the same wagon we hauled out manure in, for a time. Time and again she had been to town when she said she could not do without something any longer and came back without it. Credit was good. We could have bought it. We didn't dare to.

"Now, friends, a dozen years from the time we started on that farm, under these circ.u.mstances, we were getting from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty bushels of merchantable potatoes per acre right along--not a single year, but on the average--varying, of course, somewhat with the season. We were getting from four to five tons of clover hay in a season, from two cuttings, of course, per acre. We were getting from thirty-three to thirty-eight bushels of wheat per acre, not one year, but for five years we averaged thirty-five bushels per acre, and right on that same farm. No fertility had been brought on to it, practically, from the outside.

A man without any money, in debt for the land $3,700, was able to do this. Now, how did he do it? That is the question I have been asked to talk upon. I have told you briefly something like what we have accomplished. I might say, further, the old house I told you that we lived in for fourteen years while we were building up the fertility of this soil, we sold for $10, after we got through with it. It is now a horse barn on the farm of our next neighbor and has been covered over.

"Eleven years from the time we started we paid the last $500 of our debt, all dug out of that farm, not $25 from any other source.

Thirteen years from the time we started, we carried off the first prize of $50 offered by the State Board of Agriculture of Ohio, for the best detailed report of the best and most profitably managed small farm in the state,--only thirteen years from the time we started on that rundown land, and no fertility brought from the outside; without any money; and meanwhile we had to live.