The Story of the Soil; from the Basis of Absolute Science and Real LifeHopkins, Cyril G. (Cyril George)
Science
The Story of the Soil; from the Basis of Absolute Science and Real Life
Hopkins, Cyril G. (Cyril George)
Soils
"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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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