"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.'