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The Story of the Soil

C >> Cyril G. Hopkins >> The Story of the Soil




"Hay was hay that fall, after a dry season. We live in a dairy
section. The cows were there and had to be fed. I got $18 a ton for
that hay in our barn, something like $70 per acre. I think the laugh
was on the other side. That was my first awakening, along this line
of tillage. Didn't know how it came about, didn't know anything
about the fertility locked up in the soil, just the plain facts. I
did so and so, and got such and such results. The next year Charlie
Harlow, still living there, said, 'I wish you would put in some
Hungarian for me this spring.' I said, 'What part of the crop?--I
should want two-thirds.' He said he had an offer for half. I said,
'Then let him have it.' He replied, 'One-third of what you will
raise is more than half of what he will raise.' He saw what I did on
his brother-in-law's farm.

"The following year I had a piece of land ready to grow corn, I had
cleared out the stumps and done the best I could to get it in shape.
I plowed it just as soon as the ground was dry enough, about the
first of April, that is. I worked it every little while just as
nearly as I could as the Hungarian land had been worked, I harrowed
and rolled, let it rest a while, then harrowed and rolled. I kept it
up until my next door neighbor, Mr. Croy, had planted his corn, and
it was four inches high and growing pretty well. Ours wasn't
planted. A neighbor came and said, 'I am sorry for you, Terry, you
don't know what you are about. You are fooling away your time. Your
corn ought to have been in before this.' I was harrowing and
rolling. I was determined to see whether I could do it over again.
Some of the neighbors said it couldn't be done again.

"The fourth or fifth of June--too late, ordinarily, to plant corn
with us--I put in the crop. I wish you could have seen it grow! It
came up and grew from the word 'Go.' In four weeks it was ahead of
any corn about. It went ahead of my neighbor's corn that was three
or four inches high when ours was planted. We had a crop that, the
farm in the condition that it was, was considered as something
remarkable. They couldn't account for it, neither could I. All I
knew was I had been working the ground so and so and getting such
and such results.

"Let us go back once more. The first year that I moved onto that
farm, the first fall, we had nine cows, and I wanted to save all of
the manure. Now, there wasn't an experimental station in the land. I
didn't know anything about the potassium or nitrogen in the liquid
manure, but I had seen where it dropped on the land and how the
grass grew. I thought it was plant food, and our land was hungry. I
said, I must try and save this manure, and not have it wasted. I
hadn't a dollar. What did I do? There was an old stable there that
would hold ten cows. It was in terrible shape. It had a plank floor
that was all broken. I tore it out. I hauled some blue clay. I
filled the stable four or five inches deep with the blue clay, wet
it, pounded it down, shaped it off and got it level, fixed it up
around the sides, saucer shape, so it would hold water. Then I laid
down some old boards (I couldn't buy new ones), and put in a lot of
straw there and put my cows in. I saved all that manure the first
year, all that liquid. I had twice as much, probably more, from the
same number of cows as had been saved on that farm before, and it
was much more valuable. That was the beginning the first winter,
when I hadn't anything.

"For the horse stable I went to town and found some old billboards.
It was new lumber, but had been used for billboards. After the
circus the owner offered to sell the boards cheap, and to trust me.
He was a carpenter, and he jointed them. We put them crosswise on
the old plank floor, and when they got wet they swelled and became
practically water tight. I even crawled under and saw that there was
no liquid manure dropping down there. I drew sawdust and used for
bedding. I saved the liquid of the horse stable. I didn't know it
was worth three times as much, pound for pound, as the solid. I
didn't know it was worth two times as much in the cow stable, pound
for pound, as the solid. I found it out by experience.

"Now, when I was in town, before going on this farm, I worked for S.
Straight & Son, the then great cheese and butter kings of the
Western Reserve. I was getting over a thousand dollars a year in
their office. They didn't want me to leave at all, but my wife and I
took a notion to be independent, to work for ourselves, and we
bought this old farm. We had a chance to work for ourselves, all
right. The first year we worked from early in the morning until nine
or ten o'clock at night, and then we tumbled into bed, too tired to
think, to get up and do it over again. I worked in the field, taking
out stumps and doing something, as long as I could see, and then
helped my wife to milk. We would get our supper along about nine or
ten o'clock. At the end of the year we had not one single dollar,
after paying our interest and taxes,--not one dollar to show for our
work. Do you wonder we were pretty discouraged?

"I met Mr. Straight one day. He said: 'Terry, things are not going
very well in the office since you left. I wish you would come back.
You are not doing much over on that farm that I can see. You are
having a hard time. I will gladly give you $1,200 a year if you will
come back into our office.' It was a great temptation. Think what it
meant. To move back to town and have $100 a month. But I said, 'No,
Mr. Straight; I can't do it.' I don't deserve any credit for it,
friends: but I wasn't built that way. I can't back out. When I
undertake anything I have got to go through. I would have been
willing enough to leave that farm, if I had made a success of it,
after I made a success of it, as I thought then; but I wasn't
willing to give up, whipped--to acknowledge that I had undertaken
that job and had to back out and go back to town to make a living.

"Some little incident sometimes will change the whole character of a
man's life. I remember, when we were in very hard conditions, we
were sitting under an apple tree in our door yard one evening. It is
there yet. Two men from town went by. One of them said to the other,
'What is Terry going to do?' The other said, 'If Terry sticks to it
he will make something out of that old farm.' Just as quick as a
flash, friends, I said, 'Terry will stick to it.'

"You see what condition we were in. I began to put all these matters
together. I had been taught how to. In college I had been trained to
study and think, of course,--not to work with my hands. When I got
onto the work at first I worked myself almost to death with my
hands, and had no time to think or study; but gradually old methods
came around again and I began to think and study. I said: 'Here,
more hay to the acre, better hay, increased fertility by growing
that clover, increased fertility by working that soil so much.' I
didn't know why, but there was the fact. 'Now, isn't it possible to
put these matters together and so work them out as to build up the
fertility of this farm and make it blossom like the rose?'

"I began to work it out. What was the first step? I sold eight or
nine cows to get a little money to start, thus cutting off
practically our whole source of income. There was no other way I
could get any money. We had to do some draining. A part of the land
we could not do anything with until it was tile-drained. It took
money to buy tile. I had to have a little help about the digging,
although I like to boast that I laid every tile on my farm with my
own hands. I buried every one and know it will stay there. They were
all sound and hard and good. In all these years not one has ever
failed, not one drain or tile. I worked day after day, in the rain,
wet to the skin, because it had to be done. It was the foundation of
our success.

"As I was coming here yesterday, and passed so much of your flat
land, in need of drainage, I thought, drainage is the foundation of
success for lots of these people, down here in southern Illinois.
You can't do much until you have the water out of the land. Then you
have a chance to do something with tillage and manure-saving and
clover. But you throw away your efforts when you try to do this work
on land that is in need of drainage.

"As fast as possible we fixed up this land. Of course, it took
years. We hadn't money, and there were many things that had to be
done,--changing fields, getting out stumps, doing drainage,--it all
took time. I had my plans made and was working as fast as I could.

"Two things I did, to keep life in our bodies until we got ready to
make some money. One was to cut off every bit of timber on the farm.
Our neighbors laughed at us and prophesied rain and all that. There
were two things in my mind. We had to have money to live on, and I
managed to get quite a little of it in that way. In the next place
we didn't have much of a farm, and I wanted the land for tillage. We
can buy wood of the neighbors to-day, cheaper than we sold ours, so
we never lost anything.

"Another way we got some money, as we went along, that helped us,
was raising forage crops. I did not attempt to put in crops that
required much hand labor. I raised Hungarian, and everything I could
to be fed to cows. In our dairying section, with feed often scarce
in the fall, farmers often had more stock than they could winter. We
could pick up cows cheaply on credit and hold them. I could winter
them for people, and the manure we used as a top dressing, to make
the clover grow. Starting with a little piece of land, we spread out
more and more, and got more and more enriched, and more and more
growing clover, and by and by we got all the cultivated land growing
it. Then we were ready for business.

"I am afraid to tell you Illinois farmers, with your great big
farms, how large our farm was. We bought one hundred and twenty-five
acres. We sold off all but fifty-five. That didn't help us, for the
man who bought it was so poor he didn't pay us for over thirty
years. Then the land went up in price and he was able to sell it for
a good price and we got our money. Fifty-five acres were selected,
the best we could for our purpose. Twenty acres were so situated as
to have no value. Thirty-five acres were fairly good, tillable land,
the best we could pick out. I began a system of rotation, after we
got the land ready for it, of clover, potatoes, and wheat. My idea
was to have the clover gather fertility to grow potatoes and wheat.
I was going to make use of the tillage to help out all I could, and
sold the potatoes and wheat, and then had clover again, and so on
around the circle. Everybody said, of course I would fail. I didn't
know but I would. It was the only chance and I had to take it.

"Of course it took quite a while to get this thing going. The first
three or four years didn't amount to much. After six or eight years
we were surprised at the result. We were getting more than we hoped
for. In a dozen years the whole country was surprised. I remember
when a reporter was sent from Albany, New York, to see what we were
doing, and reported in the "Country Gentlemen." We had visitors by
the score from various states, it made such a stir. They couldn't
believe it was possible for a man to take land as poor as that, and
make it produce so well. We had some they could see that had not
been touched. As I told you, in eleven years we were out of debt.
After about ten or eleven years we were laying up a thousand dollars
a year, above all living and running expenses, from this land,
raising potatoes and wheat. It doesn't seem possible to you, large
farmers, but you can't get around the facts. In 1883 we laid up
$1,700 from the land. But this was a little extra.

"We wanted to build a new house. We had lived in the old shell long
enough. We had the money to pay cash down for the new house and to
pay for the furniture that went into it. We paid $3,500 cash down,
that fall, for the house and furniture, and every dollar taken out
of the land. Only two or three years before that we paid the last of
our debt. I had not done any talking or writing to speak of, at that
time. I did not begin until 1882 I never went to an institute, and
never wrote an article for a paper, except when called upon to do
it. I never sought such a job and prefer to stay at home on my farm.
It was only because I was called to do this work that I got into it.
For twenty-one years I was never at home one week during the winter
season. Farmers called for me and I didn't feel that I could refuse
to go.

"Now, how did we do it? I told some of the things. Let us go down to
the science of the matter little, now. I didn't know anything about
the science at the time. That came later. Practice came first. We
know now--of course, you all know--that clover has the ability,
through the little nodules that grow on the roots, to take the free
nitrogen out of the air to grow itself. You know about four-fifths
of the air you are breathing is nitrogen in the form of gas, and
clover has the ability to feed on that and make use of it. The other
plants have not. I might illustrate it in this way: You can't eat
grass; at least, you wouldn't do very well on it. But the steer eats
grass and you eat the steer, so you get the grass, don't you? Your
corn, wheat, oats, timothy, potatoes, so far as we know, can't touch
free nitrogen in the air, but clover can and then feed it to those
other crops.

"Let us look into how we got the phosphorus. On land that would not
grow over six to eight bushels of wheat per acre we have succeeded
once in growing forty-seven and three-fourths bushels to the acre,
on all the land sowed, of wheat that sold away above the market
price and weighed sixty-four pounds to the measured bushel, and
never put on a pound of phosphorus. We got it from that tillage we
told you about. Our land in northeastern Ohio is not very good
naturally. It is nothing like what you have in this state. Most of
you know that is the poorest land we have in the state in general,
but we have a fair share of clay and sand in ours. That has helped
us wonderfully. We have clay enough so that with our tillage we can
make so far all the plant food available we want.

"Now, a little more about the tillage. I told you how we worked the
surface of that ground and made it fine and nice. After five or six
years, perhaps, of this kind of work, I got to thinking if I had
some tool that would stir that ground to the bottom of the plowed
furrow and mix it very deeply and thoroughly, I might get still
better results out of the tillage. I happened to be in town one
morning in the fall, when we had some wheat land (clover sod) plowed
and prepared for wheat. I had harrowed and rolled it and made it as
nice as I could.--It was what the neighbors would call all ready for
sowing and more than ready. In town I saw a man trying to sell a
two-horse cultivator. I think it was made in this State. It was the
first one I ever saw--you can judge how long ago. It was a big,
heavy, cumbersome thing,--a horse-killer. I thought, if I only had
that, I knew I could increase the fertility of our soil still more.
I hadn't any money. We hadn't got far enough that there was a dollar
to spare. What did I do? I gave my note for $50 and took that
cultivator home with me. I could have bought it for $35 in money,
but I didn't have it. My wife didn't say a word when I got home. I
have heard since that she did a lot of crying to think I would go in
debt $50 more, and all for that thing.

"I got home about eleven o'clock and you can well suspect that I
couldn't eat any dinner that day. I hitched up and went right to
work, and told my wife I couldn't stop for any dinner. I rode that
cultivator that day and tore up that field in a way land was never
torn up in our section before. There was nothing to do it with. The
soil would roll up and tumble over. After going lengthwise I went
crosswise. A thousand hogs couldn't have made it rougher. The
neighbors looked on and said that 'Terry would do 'most anything if
you would only let him ride.' The worst of it was, I really didn't
know but what they were right, and all he would get out of it was
the riding. It was a serious thing. I had to wait until the harvest
time before I could know.

"What was the result? I got ten bushels of wheat more per acre than
had ever grown on the land before, without any manure or fertilizer
having been applied since it grew the previous crop in the rotation.
Clover had been grown. It was a clover sod. I didn't know how much
came from the clover and how much from the tillage. I didn't care,
they went together to get that result. I asked some of the old
settlers how much had been grown there per acre during their
recollection. They said twenty-three bushels was the most they had
known. I got thirty-three. The neighbors said, 'It happened so, you
can't do it again.' You know how they talk, to make out nothing can
be done with an old farm. I was interested in doing it again. I paid
that note and had a large margin of profit left, you see, out of the
extra wheat. It all came right.

"The next year I took the next field in rotation and worked it in
the same way, probably more. I got thirteen bushels more wheat per
acre than ever grew before. Thirty-six bushels of wheat! Such a
thing was never heard of in our section before; land that would not
grow anything a dozen years ago. Do you wonder I have been an
enthusiast on tillage since then? Why, they call me a crank
sometimes. It is a good crank, as it has turned out prosperity for
us.

"After a time I began to think, can't we carry this matter a little
further? People generally don't cultivate their crops more than two
or three times in a season. Can I cultivate more to advantage? I
began to try it, six or eight times, eight or ten. I think there
have been dry years when I have cultivated our potatoes as many as
fifteen times. I don't believe we ever went through them when it
didn't pay.

"I remember one fall, when it was a wet season. When the tops began
to die and got to the point where I could see the space between the
rows, I started the cultivators again. I had money then to hire men
and I hired plenty of them. I started to cultivate between the rows.
People said, ' What is the idiot doing now?' I said, 'He is going
to raise five bushels more by doing that work, that it what he is
after.'

"Now, remember, more hay to the acre, better hay, increased
fertility by growing clover, increased fertility by working this
land over and over in the different ways I have told you of. They
used to send for me to talk on this subject, before I knew anything
about it, except that I had done it. In Wisconsin, some twenty years
ago, I helped at the first institute held in the state. They sent
for me to come up. I told them what I was doing and how I thought it
came about, what I thought clover was doing for me. When I was
through I asked Professor Henry, who was in the audience, to tell
me, honestly, what he thought about my talk. He said, 'As a farmer I
believe you are right, but as a scientific man I dare not say so in
public.'

"Professor Roberts came to my place one time, to investigate a
little. I knew what he came for. I showed him around, and showed him
the land we had not touched, not to this day. He was a surprised
man. I remember the second crop of clover was at its best. It was
above his knees. He says, 'This will make two tons of hay to the
acre, and it is the second crop.' He didn't say but very little. I
couldn't get him to talk much. He went home and began that system of
experiments at Ithaca that has practically revolutionized the
agriculture of the east--experiments in tillage. Pretty soon we had
his book on the fertility of the soil. I think he got his
inspiration from what he saw. He said to himself, seems to me,
'Terry has something that scientific men do not know.' He got
samples of soil all over the state. They analyzed the soil and found
what the average soil of New York contained. They found about four
thousand five hundred pounds of nitrogen, six thousand three hundred
pounds of phosphoric acid, and twenty-four thousand pounds of potash
in an average acre eight inches deep; and they had been buying
potash largely. (Laughter.)

"The farm we moved onto was the old Sanford homestead. Old Mr.
Sanford lived there and brought up a large family. I think five of
them boys. Every one of these boys left the farm just as soon as
they could get away. There wasn't anything in farming for them.
After we had been at work a dozen years or more and got things going
nicely, they came back (one of them lives in Connecticut) and
visited the old homestead. I remember Lorenzo said, 'It seems like a
miracle. I don't know how you did it. We worked from daylight to
dark, from one year's end to another, and never had anything. We
boys used to be promised a holiday on the Fourth of July if the corn
was all hoed. That was all we got. How on earth have you done these
things?'

"Friends, there were three farms we bought. Old Mr. Sanford didn't
know anything about but one. There was the air and the soil and
there was the subsoil. He had been working only the soil, plowing it
three or four inches deep, scratching it over, taking what came, and
every year less and less came. The land had run down until the
surface had quit producing. We took the same soil, put in clover and
took the fertility out of the upper farm, the air, and out of the
lower one, the subsoil, and put it into the second one. We plowed
the surface soil a little deeper and deeper until we got it eight or
nine inches deep instead of four. We worked it more and more,
setting more and more of the available plant food in the soil free.
That is how we did it.

"I say 'we' advisedly, because, friends, if I hadn't had a wife
fully able and willing to do her part, and more, I would not have
this story to tell."






CHAPTER XXXVIII

AN AWAKENING DREAM





"THE chores are all done," said Mrs. Johnston, as Percy began to
take down his heavy work-coat about nine o'clock that evening.

"You ought not to have done them," he chided as he slipped his arm
around her and drew her to the sofa.

"Tell me about the Institute," she said, stroking the hair from his
forehead.

He told her of the professors who were there from the University and
briefly reported the addresses he had heard.

"And I verily believe," he added, "that if Terry were to wake up
some morning and find himself located on the "Barrens" of the
Highland Rim of Tennessee, he would start out with the firm
conviction that all he would need to do to become a successful
farmer there would be to sow clover and then 'work the land for all
that's in it.' But, after all, it is not so strange, perhaps, that
one who has himself discovered and then utilized the power of clover
and tillage to restore and increase the productive power of land
rich in limestone, phosphorus and all other essential mineral plant
food, should jump to the fixed and final conclusion that the same
system of treatment is all that is needed to make any and all land
productive. The fact that Terry's land (if equal to the nearby New
York land) contained two thousand three hundred pounds of phosphorus
in the plowed soil of an acre when he began to work it out, while
the soil of the Tennessee "Barrens" contains only about one
hundred pounds, does not disturb him or modify his opinion so long
as his personal experience is limited to his own land.

"Terry's problem was easier than Mr. West's on his Virginia farm,
where the soil is acid and hence limestone must be used liberally in
order that clover and other legumes may be grown successfully. Even
the supply of phosphorus and other mineral elements is probably
greater in Terry's farm in northeastern Ohio than in the soil of
Westover.

"Our problem is even more difficult, because we must not only
increase the supply of active organic matter, although we have a
reserve of old humus far above that contained in the Terry or West
farms; but in addition we need more limestone than Mr. West and then
we must add the phosphorus. Of course the surface washing is a
serious factor on Westover, but perhaps our tight clay subsoil is
worse.

"But I learned at least two things that I shall try to profit by.
One of these was from Governor Hoard's lecture on 'Cows Versus Cows,
and the man behind the cow'; and the other is that we must do more
work on the land."

"Oh, Percy, I am so sorry you went. How can you possibly do more
work than you have been doing?"

"I may need to hire more," he replied; "and, of course, that will
further increase our expenses, but, it will surely pay to do well
what we try to do."

"When does my boy expect to get married?" she asked, softly, as
she gently stroked his hair.

"I am married," he replied.

She looked at him in wonder.

"Mother mine, I thought that you knew I was married."

"Your face is blank sincerity, as usual," she said smiling, "but you
never deceive me with your voice. Your voice reveals every attempt
at deception. Tell me what you mean."

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