THE State Superintendent of Farmers' Institutes 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 space doth occupy and all motion guide, all life impart, we come this morning in the capacity of this Farmers' Institute 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 institute, 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 replenishing 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 God 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 institute 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 relationships, 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 institute. Give Thy strength, Thy presence, and Thy discernment to these who participate in the work, the membership 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 God. Amen."
"It may be," said the Chairman, "that a State Farmers' Institute sometimes exercises a little arbitrary power in selecting subjects we want to speak of. I think county institutes might adopt the same plan to advantage, and assign the topic they wish discussed.
"The topic assigned 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 Institute.
"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 shingles. 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 circumstances, 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.
"Now I had arranged with the tenant the first year, before we went on there, to seed down a certain field. It had been under the plow for some time. I wanted it seeded so I could have some land to mow and he seeded half of it. It was only a little lot, about five acres. He seeded half with timothy and left the other half. That was his way of doing things, anyway. When we moved onto the farm later I naturally wanted to finish that seeding and get that field in some sort of shape for mowing. I went to my next neighbor, who lives there yet, and asked him what I had better use. I didn't know anything, practitically, about farming, and he advised me to try some clover seed. He said: 'So far as I know, none was ever sown on that farm. They have sowed timothy everlastingly, everybody, because it is cheap. I knew timothy wouldn't grow there to amount to anything If I were in your place I would try some clover.'
"I got the land prepared and sowed that clover alone, so as to give it a chance. I did have sense enough to mow off the weeds when they got six or eight or ten inches high perhaps, so that the clover could have a little better chance to grow. It happened to be a very wet season. I remember that distinctly. This was a lot near to the barn. I suppose what little manure they had hauled out had been mostly put on this land. With these favoring conditions the result was fairly good. Of course not half what we got later, but we got quite a little clover and when I came to mow it, and to mow that timothy at the other end, I could see I could draw the rake two or three times as far in the timothy as in the clover. There was more clover on an acre. A load of timothy would go in and a load of clover. When I fed it to the cows in winter I noticed when feeding clover for a number of days they gave more milk. I didn't know why. I don't know as anybody knew why then. There wasn't an experiment station in the land. We were following our own notions. But the cows gave more milk; I could see that plainly.
"A little later I had an experiment forced on me by accident. I tell you just how it came about. It resulted in putting a good many thousands in our pockets and I hope millions in the pockets of the farmers of America. Later I wanted to plant corn on this field, and, as I wanted to grow just as good corn as I could, I got out what manure we saved and put it on the land preparing for plowing. I knew there wouldn't be more than half enough to go over the field. I said to myself, if there was any good corn, I would like it next to the road where people would see it. Wouldn't any of you do it? I didn't have a dollar to hire any help. I paid one dollar that year for help, and it was awful hard to get that dollar. I began spreading that manure next to the road. The back half of the field was nearly out of sight. When I got half way back there wasn't any manure left and the back half didn't get any. Now it so happened that the timothy was on the front end of the field, and it got the manure. The clover on the back half didn't get any. It came about in the simple way I told you of. Naturally I didn't expect much corn where I hadn't put any manure, but what was my surprise to find it was just about as good on that clover end of the field without any dressing as on the timothy end with what I had been able to put on. It is only right I should say there wasn't much of the manure It was poor in quality because we couldn't get grain for the cows when we couldn't get enough for ourselves to eat. There wasn't much manure and it was pretty poor, but such as it was that was the result. More hay to the acre, better hay, increased fertility, some way, by growing this clover!
"Now let us go back a little. I think it was the second spring after we moved onto the place that I happened to be crossing the farm of my next neighbor, Mr. Holcombe, now dead. I found him plowing. He had been around a piece of land, I should judge five acres, half a dozen times. He was sitting on the plow, tired out,—too old to work anyway. He said, 'I wish you would take this land and put in some crop on the shares; I want to get rid of the work; I can't do it, and would like to let you have it in some way. All I want is that it should be left so I can seed it down in the fall again.'
"It was an old piece of sod he had mowed in the old eastern way until it wouldn't grow anything any longer. I don't suppose he got a quarter of a ton of hay to the acre. He wanted it plowed so he could re-seed it. I didn't know the value of the land, but, foolishly perhaps, as most people thought, offered him five dollars an acre for the use of it. I hadn't enough to do at home. I didn't have my land in shape so I could do much. We were working along as fast as we could. I thought I could do well if I had this job, and could perhaps make something off it. He agreed to it.
"I went home and got my team and plow, and finished the plowing. I remember making those furrows narrow and turning the ground well, a little deeper than it had been plowed before. I didn't realize what I was doing, then. I simply had been brought up to do my work well. I thought I was doing a good job, that was all. When I was through plowing I got my old harrow, a spike-tooth, and harrowed the ground. I had a roller. They were manufactured in our town. The firm bursted and I had a chance to buy one very cheap. I had a roller, harrow, and plow. That was all the tillage implements. The harrow had moved the lumps around a little. I ran the roller over the lumps; then harrowed, rolled, and harrowed. When the harrow would not take hold, I put a plank across and rode on it. I worked that land alternately until I had the surface as fine and nice as I could make it, two or three inches deep. The harrow would not take hold any longer and I had to quit. By and by a rain came. I didn't know anything about how to till land,—this spring fallow business—but I happened to hit it right. After it rained, I said that harrow will take hold better now. I loaded the harrow and got on it, and tore that ground up three or four inches deep.
"The harrow teeth were sharp. I harrowed and rolled it and my neighbor said, 'Terry, you are ruining that land, it will never grow anything any more, it will all blow away.' I reminded him of his bargain; I should raise what I pleased and take the crop home. Every little while, I can't remember how often, I would go over and harrow and roll that land. I probably plowed it the first week in April. For two months that was a sort of savings bank for my work. I would run over and work that land, occasionally, until, about the first week in June, I had it prepared just as mellow and fine and nice as it was possible to make it. It was nice enough for flower seeds."
"I builded better then than I knew. I had no idea what the result was going to be. When it was all ready, I sowed Hungarian grass seed. I wish you could have seen the crop. It grew four and a half or five feet high, as thick as it could stand on the land. I believe if I had thrown my straw hat, it would have staid on the top. It was enormous for that land. I had four big loads to the acre. You know what you can put on a load of Hungarian. When I went by the owner's house with those loads and took them to our barn, he was out there and he looked awfully sour. That man, to my knowledge, had never grown half as much to the acre since I had known of his being on the land, probably never more than one-third as much. Old run-out timothy sod; no manure, no fertilizer, nothing but the work,—this spring fallowing. I enjoyed the matter more, because he had told some of the neighbors he had got the start of that town fellow; I would never see five dollars an acre back, out of the land. That was his opinion of what I could raise.
"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."
"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."
His voice was sincere now. "I am married to a farm and laboring together with God. After hearing Terry's talk, I am more than ever determined to continue to do my part, working in the light as He gives me the power to see the light."
"Percy, dear," she asked, "did you know the bride whose wedding cards you received yesterday?"
"Don't you remember what I told you of Adelaide West, Mr. West's daughter?" he queried.
"I thought so," said the mother. She stepped to Percy's home-made desk, and from one of the pigeon holes, drew out a bunch of letters, and selected the top and bottom letters from the pile.
"Here are the first and last letters you have received from Mr. West. Did you ever see this?" She drew out a crumpled piece of paper and placed it in his hand.
"Her Grandma had not consented,"he read. "What does that mean?"
"I do not know and I did not know when I read it three years ago. It came in your first letter from Mr. West. I thought you had not found it in the envelope, but you gave me the letter to read and I found it. I left it in the letter, but never till to-day did I feel that I ought to mention it to you. Yesterday you received a letter with two cards; but you read only one of them to me."
"But I saw the other was only the wedding announcement, and I left them both in the letter for you to read."
"And I read them both," she said. "Read this."
Percy took the card and slowly read:
_Mr. and Mrs. Clarance Voit
Announce the marriage of their daughter
Ameila Louise
to
Professor Paul Strongworth Barstow_
She watched his face but saw no sign. She kissed his forehead and then pointed to the writing,"With Grandma's Compliments,"saying, "I do not know what this means, but I thought my boy might be getting too careless, when he fails to read even the wedding announcement of college professors, sent to him by such a good friend as Grandma West may intend to be."
Percy looked into his mother's face as if to read her thoughts.
"I think I understand what you have in mind," he said. "Mr. West has mentioned once or twice that Adelaide was teaching school, but I supposed that she was trying to earn enough to buy her own wedding outfit."
"Perhaps that is true," replied the mother, "and perhaps she is already married or soon to be married; but I thought you ought to know that she had not married Professor Barstow, lest you might allude to it in your letters to Mr. West."
"WELL, I reckon the cowboy's gone back to 'tend to his cows," remarked the grandmother to Adelaide, as she returned from taking Percy to Blue Mound and found the old lady sitting on the lawn bench apparently enjoying the mild late November weather. "Did you leave him at the station or see him off?"
"Neither," Adelaide replied, sitting down beside her. "The train was late, and he insisted on coming back with me to the first turn, and then stood and watched till I came within sight of home at the next turn. I doubt if he is back to the station yet."
"He reminds me, Pet, of the Latin definition you gave for _sincere," _remarked the grandmother. "Pure honey without wax, wasn't it?"
"Oh, no, Grandma. Not pure honey. It says nothing about honey. Sine is the Latin for _without, _and _cera _means _wax; _so that our word _sincere, _taken literally from the Latin, meanswithout wax."
"Oh, yes, I see now; but let me tell you, Adelaide, I think that professor of yours is right smart wax."
"Why, Grandma! I never heard you say such a thing. You know papa and mamma like Professor Barstow and I think I like him too, and,—and he has papa's consent, and mamma's consent."
"Well, you never heard me say such a thing before and you won't ever hear it again, but he hasn't got my consent. I think he's some wax, but I reckon you think he's some honey, and I know he thinks he's some punk'ns. Of course, your father would like an English or Scottish nobleman for a son-in-law, or at least a college professor with a string of ancestry reaching across the water; but the Henry's prefer to make their own reputations as they go along, and I doubt if Patrick ever saw England or Scotland. I tell you, Adelaide, a pound of gumption will make a better husband than a shipload of ancestry, and I just hope you will more than like your husband, that's all."
With that the old lady arose and walked to the house.