The Story of the Soil Part 39

(4) That the yield of wheat has decreased from thirty bushels to twenty-four bushels since 1851, wheat, grown once in four years, being the only crop worth raising as an average of the last twenty years.

No, Sir. Neither optimism, nor ignorance, nor bigotry, nor deception can controvert these facts.

Do you know that the people of India rotate their crops? They do; and they use many legumes; and some of their soils now contain only a trace of phosphorus, too small to be determined in figures by the chemist. Do you know there are more of our own Aryan Race hungry in India than live in the United States?

Do you know that Russia regularly practices a three-year rotation and actually harvests only two crops in three years, with one year of green manuring? Yes, and the average yield of wheat for twenty years is only eight and one-quarter bushels per acre.

Think on these things.

Your _third principle _is, that "of all forage fed to live stock at least one-third in cash value remains on the land in the form of manure that soon restores worn-out soil to fertility and keeps good land from deteriorating. By this system the farm may be made and kept a source of perpetual wealth."

I grieve with you; pity 'tis, 'tis not true.

No, Sir. Neither crops nor animals can be made out of nothing, and no independent system of livestock farming can add to the soil a pound of any element of plant food, aside from nitrogen, and even this addition is due to the legume crops grown and not to the live stock.

Under the best system of live-stock farming about three-fourths of the nitrogen, three-fourths of the phosphorus, and one-third of the organic matter contained in the food consumed can be returned to the land if the total excrements, both solid and liquid, are saved without loss. Of course, the produce used for bedding can all be returned, but it could also be returned without live stock.

Under a good system of crop rotation with all grain sold from the farm it is possible to return to the soil more than one-third of the phosphorus and more than one-half of the organic matter contained in the crops, and even as much nitrogen as all of the crops remove from the land in the grain sold. Thus, with a four-year rotation of wheat, corn, oats, and clover, and a catch crop of clover grown with the wheat and turned under late the following spring for corn, we may plow under three tons of clover containing one hundred and twenty pounds of nitrogen, in return for the one hundred and nineteen pounds removed from the soil for the twenty-five bushels of wheat, fifty bushels of corn, and fifty bushels of oats. These amounts of grain and the two bushels of clover seed might be sold from the farm, while the two and one-half tons of straw, one and one-half tons of stalks, and three tons of clover might be returned to the land. These amounts aggregate seven tons of organic matter, or the equivalent of seventeen tons of manure, measured by the nitrogen content, or of twenty-four tons, measured by the content of organic matter. To replace the twenty-two pounds of phosphorus sold from the farm in the grain of these four crops would require the expenditure of sixty-six cents at the present prices for raw phosphate delivered at Heart-of-Egypt.

I have no doubt you will be glad to have your attention called to the fact that the world does not live wholly, or even largely, upon meat and milk. Bread is the staff of life, and I note from your _World's Work _article that you prefer to have the bread made of wheat. Thus, most farmers must raise and sell grain and vegetables.

If no independent system of live-stock farming can add a pound of phosphorus to the one hundred and sixty pounds still remaining in the great body of the level uplands const.i.tuting forty-one per cent.

of St. Mary county, and forty-five thousand seven hundred and seventy acres of Prince George county, Maryland, adjoining the District of Columbia, nor even maintain the phosphorus supply in our good lands, then what must we do to be fed?

Manifestly, we should make large use of legume crops for the production of farm manure or green manure; and, manifestly, America should stop selling every year for five million dollars enough raw phosphate for the production of more than a billion dollars' worth of wheat. How long can we afford to give away a thousand millions for five millions?

Our annual corn crop is nearly three billion bushels, while the estimated value of all the timber on the still remaining federal lands is only one billion dollars. Again, our three trillion tons of coal is sufficient for an annual consumption of half a billion tons for six thousands years, whereas the United States Geological Survey has estimated that at the present rate of increase in mining and exportation our total supply of high-grade phosphate will be exhausted in fifty years. It seems to me that about ninety per cent.

of the talk about conservation of natural resources is directed toward ten per cent. of the resources, when we remember the soil as the foundation of all agriculture and all industry.

Do you know, Mr. Hill, that, at the Second Conservation Conference called by the President of the United States, Doctor Van Hise, of the University of Wisconsin, was the only man to raise his voice in the interests of the common soils of America? For three days the statesman and experts discussed the forests, forests, forests, and the waters, waters, and the coal and iron; and for fifteen minutes President Van Hise pleaded for the conservation of phosphate, _the master key to all our material prosperity; _and he was called a crank with a hobby.

With deep respect, I am,

Very sincerely yours,

PERCY JOHNSTON

CHAPTER XLII

ADVANCE INFORMATION

HEART-OF-EGYPT, November 14, 1909.

DEAR father and mother: I can scarcely realize that I have been an "Egyptian" for almost two years. I feel that the time has been shorter than two months of school-teaching.

Percy is so encouraged with the crops that I rejoice with him, although I could never weep with him unless I weep for joy. He says the crops needed only that I should stroll over the fields with him; that they would grow rapidly if I only looked at them. Think of it--I drove the mower to cut hay,--not all of the 80 acres, to be sure, but I cut where it yielded two tons per acre. That is on No.

4, where Percy applied his first cars of limestone. I wish you could have seen the untreated strips--no clover and only half a ton of weedy timothy, while the rest of No. 4 and No. 6 were clean hay of mixed alsike and timothy. Percy says that No. 4 produced as much real hay last year as all the rest of the farm has produced since he came, and that the hay crop this year is worth as much for feed as all that has been harvested during the previous five years; and the cattle and horses seem to agree with him.

We sold our main lot of hogs for $654, and have another lot to go later. We are getting so many horses and cattle on the place, that we are going out of the hog business.

Percy says that hogs belong more properly in the corn belt, than in the wheat and fruit belt. You know the year I came the corn crop was on No. I, which had never grown anything but corn, oats, and wheat, so far as we can learn; and the corn was so poor the hogs ate most of it in two months' time. During the same two months the price of hogs dropped from 7 to 4-1/2 cents, so that the hogs were worth no more after eating the corn crop than they were before.

Next year we are to have corn on No. 4, and Percy says it will be the first time that corn has had a "ghost of a show to make a decent crop" since he bought the place. The spring before we were married he reseeded that forty, sowing mixed alsike and timothy. The clover came on finely, evidently because the scanty growth of clover the year before had at least allowed the field to become thoroughly infected with the clover bacteria. There was no clover on the unlimed strip. So we say that limestone and bacteria brought clover.

The hay and other feed has made manure enough so that No. 4 has been completely covered with six tons per acre, and the phosphate has also been applied; so with manure and phosphate on clover ground we hope to grow corn next year, if we have good weather.

The phosphate has also been put on some of the other forties. I convinced him that the money will pay a higher rate of interest in phosphate than it would in the savings bank, even if he put it on before manure and clover could be plowed under. The experiments of several states show this very conclusively.

The corn is on No. 3 this year and it is the best crop in the six years. Percy says the "Terry Act" (which means lots of work in preparing the land) is some help, but he thinks the phosphate shows against the check strips. The young wheat on No. 2 is looking fine, and with both limestone and phosphate on that field and the extra work on the seed bed, we hope for a better crop than we have ever grown on a full forty; even though we must depend solely upon our reserve stock of nitrogen for the crop. We are all about as jealous of that reserve stock of organic matter and nitrogen as we are of the Winterbine bank account.

I cannot forget how Percy tried to persuade me to postpone our wedding for a year because, as he said, the hogs had taken his corn crop and given nothing in return for it; and above all how he objected to my reimbursing the Winterbine reserve from my teacher's wages to the extent of $250, which he had drawn in part to tide over the hard times, and in part to come to see me that Easter. But I am glad to have him still insist upon it that that uncertain venture proved his best investment, even if he does tease by adding that it paid one hundred and fifty per cent. net profit at Winterbine.

We are selling some cows this fall,--trying to weed out our herd by the Babc.o.c.k test which shows that "some cows don't pay their board and keep," to quote Governor h.o.a.rd's lecture on "Cows versus Cows,"

which Percy heard at Olney the winter Professor Barstow was married.

The "versus cows" are worth only $45.

I cannot tell you how I have enjoyed the summer. Sir Charles Henry is the dearest child, and his grandmother insists upon it that it is better for me to help Percy in the field with such light work as I can do, and I am out for a few hours every day when the weather is good. Percy's mother is such a dear. I am sure she could be no more sweet and loving to an own daughter. She had Percy all to herself for so long that I was really afraid she might not like to share him with me, but Percy says that it was his mother who persuaded him to make us that Easter visit. We tell her that she hasn't much use for either of us now, and that we are likely to get jealous because Charles Henry gets so much of her affection.

I forgot to tell you of Percy's four-acre patch of wheat. He said it is so long to wait till 1912 for his first wheat crop on land that had grown clover at least once during historic times that he thought he would fix up a little patch to grow a crop of wheat, just to see how real wheat would look; or, as he sometimes says, to see how wheat grows in "Egypt" when it has a ghost of a chance.

He treated a four-acre patch down by the wood's pasture with limestone, phosphorus, and farm manure, did the "Terry Act" in preparing the seed bed, and drilled in a good variety of wheat, on October 17,--a little later than he likes to finish sowing wheat. It came up with a good stand but did not make very much fall growth, partly owing to the dry weather. In the spring the man came across the patch and reported to Percy that the wheat was mighty small and he guessed it was "gone up," although it seemed to be all alive.

Percy said that he would not worry about it if it were alive because the wheat would find something to please it when it really woke up in the spring. I reckon it did, for a neighbor pa.s.sed on his way to town in early May and called over the fence to Percy that his patch of rye down by the woods was looking fine. Well the four acres yielded 129-1/2 bushels, or a little more than thirty-two bushels per acre. Percy said if he could have eighty acres of it and sell it for $1.18 a bushel, the same as he got for the last he sold, it would amount to twice the original cost of the land--and then some.

Mr. Barton asked him if he could not raise "just as good crops with good old farm manure," and if he could not build up his whole farm with farm manure. Percy said yes, but he would need three thousand tons for the first application. Mr. Barton then suggested that that was more than the whole towns.h.i.+p produced.

No. 5 has been in pasture for three years, clover and gra.s.s having been seeded in 1906, even though the wet weather had prevented the seeding of wheat the fall before, and the ground was left too rough for the mower. Percy hopes to have that forty completely covered with manure by the time he will be ready to apply the phosphate and plow it under for the 19 I I corn crop.

Now your "Egyptian" son has just read over this long, long letter, and he says that if I were a real wise old farmer I would not begin to talk about results before a single forty acres of grain had had a ghost of a chance to make a crop. He says that every bushel of corn, oats, and wheat that this old farm has produced during the last six years has been wholly at the expense of the meager stock of reserve nitrogen still left in the soil after seventy-five years of almost continuous effort to "work the land for all that's in it" He says that we have no right to expect really good crops until after the second rotation is completed, because the clover grown during the first rotation does not have a fair show, the limestone not yet being well mixed with the soil, the phosphorus supply being inadequate, the inoculation or infection being imperfect, and no provision whatever having been made to supply decaying organic matter in advance of the first clover crop. I think he is right as usual and I promise to give no more advance information hereafter except upon inquiry, at least not until 1918, when the first wheat crop will be grown on land which has been twice in clover. We are mighty sorry not to be able to be with you for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but really we cannot go to the expense; our house is so small (we just must build a larger barn) and our home equipment is so meager that, in the words which you will remember Percy told us his mother credited to Mrs. Barton, I feel that as yet I must say,

"Do come over when you can."

Your happy, loving daughter,

ADELAIDE.

P.S.--Three big oil wells, belonging to the cla.s.s called "gushers,"

have been struck about seven or eight miles from Poorland Farm. We are all getting interested except Percy. He says he does not want any oil wells on his six rotation forties or in the wood's pasture, but he might let them bore in the twelve-acre orchard, which has never produced but one crop that paid for itself, and the profit from that is about all gone for the later years of spraying.

The first oil boom in Illinois was at Casey where they struck oil six or eight years ago, but they say the wells there are dry already and they have to go back to farming again to get a living. Of course if we could get a hundred-barrel well on every ten acres and get a royalty of $400 a day for a few years, it would help out nicely, but the oil business is uncertain and short-lived, whereas, to quote Percy "the soil is the breast of Mother Earth, from which her children must always draw their nourishment."