DEEP WATERS
For sharp contrasts give me the dull country. The unexpected is the
usual in small and in great things alike as they happen on a farm, and I
make no apology to the reader for entering them in my narrative. I only
ask him, if he be a city man, to take my word for the truth as to the
general facts. To some elaboration and embellishment I plead guilty, but
the groundwork is truth, and the facts stated are as real as the
foundations of my buildings or the cows in my stalls. If the fortunate
reader be a country man, he will need no assurance from me, for his eyes
have seen and his ears have heard the strange and startling episodes
with which the quiet country-side is filled. I do not dare record all
the adventures which clustered around us at Four Oaks. People who know
only the monotonous life of cities would not believe the half if told,
and I do not wish to invite discredit upon my story of the making of the
factory farm.
The incidents I have given of the strike at Gordon's mine are
substantially correct, and I would love to follow them to their
sequel,--the coöperative mine; but as that is a story by itself, I
cannot do it now. I promise myself, however, the pleasure of writing a
history of this innovation in coal-mining at an early date. It is worth
the world's knowing that a copartnership can exist between three hundred
equal partners without serious friction, and that community in business
interests on a large scale can be successfully managed without any
effort to control personal liberty, either domestic, social, or
religious. Indeed, I believe the success of this experiment is due
largely to the absence of any attempt to superintend the private
interests of its members,--the only bond being a common financial one,
and the one requisite to membership, ability to save a portion of the
wages earned.
But to go back to farm matters. In August the ground was stirred for the
second time around the young trees. To do this, the mulch was turned
back and the surface for a space of three feet all around the tree was
loosened by hoe or mattock, and the mulch was then returned. The trees
were vigorous, and their leaves had the polish of health, in spite of
the dry July and August. The mulching must receive the credit for much
of this thrift, for it protected the soil from the rays of the sun and
invited the deep moisture to rise toward the surface. Few people realize
the amount of water that enters into the daily consumption of a tree. It
is said that the four acres of leaf surface of a large elm will
transpire or yield to evaporation eight tons of water in a day, and that
it takes more than five hundred tons of water to produce one ton of hay,
wheat, oats, or other crop. This seems enormous; but an inch of rain on
an acre of ground means more than a hundred tons of water, and
precipitation in our part of the country is about thirty-six inches per
annum, so that we can count on over thirty-six hundred tons of water per
acre to supply this tremendous evaporation of plant life.
Water-pot and hose look foolish in the face of these figures; indeed,
they are poor makeshifts to keep life in plants during pinching times. A
much more effective method is to keep the soil loose under a heavy
mulch, for then the deep waters will rise. In our climate the tree's
growth for the year is practically completed by July 15, and fortunately
dry times rarely occur so early. We are, therefore, pretty certain to
get the wood growth, no matter how dry the year, since it would take
several years of unusual drought to prevent it. Of course the wood is
not all that we wish for in fruit trees; the fruit is the main thing,
and to secure the best development of it an abundant rainfall is needed
after the wood is grown. If the rain doesn't come in July and August,
heavy mulching must be the fruit-grower's reliance, and a good one it
will prove if the drought doesn't continue more than one year. After
July the new wood hardens and gets ready for the trying winter. If July
and August are very wet, growth may continue until too late for the wood
to harden, and it consequently goes into winter poorly prepared to
resist its rigors. The result is a killing back of the soft wood, but
usually no serious loss to the trees. The effort to stimulate late
summer growth by cultivation and fertilization is all wrong; use manures
and fertilizers freely from March until early June, but not later. The
fall mulch of manure, if used, is more for warmth than for fertility; it
is a blanket for the roots, but much of its value is leached away by the
suns and rains of winter.
I felt that I had made a mistake in not sowing a cover crop in my
orchard the previous year. There are many excellent reasons for the
cover crop and not one against it. The first reason is that it protects
the land from the rough usage and wash of winter storms; the second,
that it adds humus to the soil; and the third, if one of the legumes is
used, that it collects nitrogen from the air, stores it in each knuckle
and joint, and holds it there until it is liberated by the decay of the
plant. As nitrogen is the most precious of plant foods, and as the
nitrate beds and deposits are rapidly becoming exhausted, we must look
to the useful legumes to help us out until the scientists shall be able
to fix the unlimited but volatile supply which the atmosphere contains,
and thus to remove the certain, though remote, danger of a nitrogen
famine. That this will be done in the near future by electric forces,
and with such economy as to make the product available for agricultural
purposes, is reasonably sure. In the meantime we must use the vetches,
peas, beans, and clovers which are such willing workers.
The legumes fulfil the three requisites of the cover crop: protection,
humus, and the storing of nitrogen. That was why, when the corn in the
orchard was last cultivated in July, I planted cow peas between the
rows. The peas made a fair growth in spite of the dry season, and after
the corn was cut they furnished fine pasture for the brood sows, that
ate the peas and trampled down the vines. In the spring ploughing this
black mat was turned under, and with it went a store of fertility to
fatten the land. Cow peas were sowed in all the corn land in 1897, and
the rule of the farm is to sow corn-fields with peas, crimson clover, or
some other leguminous plant. As my land is divided almost equally each
year between corn and oats, which follow each other, it gets a cover
crop turned under every two years over the whole of it. Great quantities
of manure are hauled upon the oat stubble in the early spring, and these
fields are planted to corn, while the corn stubble is fertilized by the
cover crop, and oats are sown. The land is taxed heavily every year, but
it increases in fertility and crop-making capacity. For the past two
years my oats have averaged forty-seven bushels and my corn nearly
sixty-eight bushels per acre. There is no waste land in my fields, and
we have made such a strenuous fight against weeds that they no longer
seriously tax the land. The wisdom of the work done on the fence rows is
now apparent. The ploughing and seeding made it easy to keep the brush
and weeds down; hay gathered close to the fences more than pays us for
the mowing; and we have no tall weed heads to load the wind with seeds.
This is a matter which is not sufficiently considered by the majority of
farmers, for weeds are allowed to tax the land almost as much as crops
do, and yet they pay no rent. Fence lines and corners are usually
breeding beds for these pests, and it will pay any landowner to suppress
them.