"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?