The Story of the Soil; from the Basis of Absolute Science and Real Life

by Cyril G. Hopkins

HEART-OF-EGYPT, November 14, 1909.

DEAR father and mother: I can scarcely realize that I have been an "Egyptian" for almost two years. I feel that the time has been shorter than two months of school-teaching.

Percy is so encouraged with the crops that I rejoice with him, although I could never weep with him unless I weep for joy. He says the crops needed only that I should stroll over the fields with him; that they would grow rapidly if I only looked at them. Think of it—I drove the mower to cut hay,—not all of the 80 acres, to be sure, but I cut where it yielded two tons per acre. That is on No. 4, where Percy applied his first cars of limestone. I wish you could have seen the untreated strips—no clover and only half a ton of weedy timothy, while the rest of No. 4 and No. 6 were clean hay of mixed alsike and timothy. Percy says that No. 4 produced as much real hay last year as all the rest of the farm has produced since he came, and that the hay crop this year is worth as much for feed as all that has been harvested during the previous five years; and the cattle and horses seem to agree with him.

We sold our main lot of hogs for $654, and have another lot to go later. We are getting so many horses and cattle on the place, that we are going out of the hog business.

Percy says that hogs belong more properly in the corn belt, than in the wheat and fruit belt. You know the year I came the corn crop was on No. I, which had never grown anything but corn, oats, and wheat, so far as we can learn; and the corn was so poor the hogs ate most of it in two months' time. During the same two months the price of hogs dropped from 7 to 4-1/2 cents, so that the hogs were worth no more after eating the corn crop than they were before.

Next year we are to have corn on No. 4, and Percy says it will be the first time that corn has had a "ghost of a show to make a decent crop" since he bought the place. The spring before we were married he reseeded that forty, sowing mixed alsike and timothy. The clover came on finely, evidently because the scanty growth of clover the year before had at least allowed the field to become thoroughly infected with the clover bacteria. There was no clover on the unlimed strip. So we say that limestone and bacteria brought clover. The hay and other feed has made manure enough so that No. 4 has been completely covered with six tons per acre, and the phosphate has also been applied; so with manure and phosphate on clover ground we hope to grow corn next year, if we have good weather.

The phosphate has also been put on some of the other forties. I convinced him that the money will pay a higher rate of interest in phosphate than it would in the savings bank, even if he put it on before manure and clover could be plowed under. The experiments of several states show this very conclusively.

The corn is on No. 3 this year and it is the best crop in the six years. Percy says the "Terry Act" (which means lots of work in preparing the land) is some help, but he thinks the phosphate shows against the check strips. The young wheat on No. 2 is looking fine, and with both limestone and phosphate on that field and the extra work on the seed bed, we hope for a better crop than we have ever grown on a full forty; even though we must depend solely upon our reserve stock of nitrogen for the crop. We are all about as jealous of that reserve stock of organic matter and nitrogen as we are of the Winterbine bank account.

I cannot forget how Percy tried to persuade me to postpone our wedding for a year because, as he said, the hogs had taken his corn crop and given nothing in return for it; and above all how he objected to my reimbursing the Winterbine reserve from my teacher's wages to the extent of $250, which he had drawn in part to tide over the hard times, and in part to come to see me that Easter. But I am glad to have him still insist upon it that that uncertain venture proved his best investment, even if he does tease by adding that it paid one hundred and fifty per cent. net profit at Winterbine.

We are selling some cows this fall,—trying to weed out our herd by the Babcock test which shows that "some cows don't pay their board and keep," to quote Governor Hoard's lecture on "Cows versus Cows," which Percy heard at Olney the winter Professor Barstow was married. The "versus cows" are worth only $45.