CHAPTER XL
INSPIRATION
WESTOVER,
March 14, 1907.
Mr. Percy Johnston,
Heart-of-Egypt, Ill.
MY DEAR Friend:—We were delighted to receive your interesting letter of March 2, describing the Farmer's Institute. I have been to two such meetings in Virginia, but they are devoted to fruit and truck and dairying, and no one seems to know much about our soils. I appreciate more and more every year the absolute knowledge you helped me to secure concerning Westover, where we had been working in the dark for two centuries. I am sure you will succeed on Poorland Farm,—just as confident as any one can be in advance of actual achievement; and I expect to see the time when Richland Farm will be a more appropriate name.
I only wish you could see my alfalfa. I have been seeding more every year and now have sixty acres. It has come through winter in fine condition and it will be a fine sight by Easter. Here's a standing invitation to take Easter dinner with us, or any other dinner, for that matter, if you ever come East.
I am planning to sow about forty acres more alfalfa this year. A writer for the _Breeder's Gazette _visited us last summer, and he said some of our alfalfa was as good as any he had ever seen in California. He said ground limestone was plainly what we need for alfalfa at Westover, but he thought some phosphorus would also help on the less rolling areas, where the alfalfa is not so good as where you found more phosphorus.
Lime and raw rock phosphate make the difference between clover and no clover.