THE BELGIAN FARMER
Leaving Holland with regret, we crossed the Schelde into Belgium, the cockpit of Europe. It is here that one sees what intensive farming is like. No fences to occupy space, no animals roaming at large, nothing but small strips of land tilled to the utmost, chiefly by hand. Little machinery is used, and much of the work is done after primitive fashions; but the land is productive, and it is worked to the top of its bent.
The peasant-farmer soils his cows, his sheep, his swine, in a way that is economical of space and food, if not of labor, and manages to make a living and to pay rent for his twenty-acre strip of land. His methods do not appeal to the American farmer, who wastes more grain and forage each year than would keep the Netherlander, his family, and his stock; but there is a lesson to be learned from this subdivision and careful cultivation of land. Belgian methods prove that Mother Earth can care for a great many children if she be properly husbanded, and that the sooner we recognize her capacity the better for us.
Abandoned farms are not known in Belgium and France, though the soil has been cultivated for a thousand years, and was originally no better than our New England farms, and not nearly so good as hundreds of those which are practically given over to "old fields" in Virginia.
It is neglect that impoverishes land, not use. Intelligent use makes land better year by year. The only way to wear out land is to starve and to rob it at the same time. Food for man and beast may be taken from the soil for thousands of years without depleting it. All it asks in return is the refuse, carefully saved, properly applied, and thoroughly worked in to make it available. If, in addition to this, a cover crop of some leguminous plant be occasionally turned under, the soil may actually increase in fertility, though it be heavily cropped each year.
It would pay the young American farmer to study Belgian methods, crude though they are, for the insight he could gain into the possibilities of continuous production. The greatest number of people to the square mile in the inhabited globe live in this little, ill-conditioned kingdom, and most of them get their living from the soil. It has been the battle-field of Europe: a thousand armies have harrowed it; human blood has drenched it from Liège to Ostend; it has been depopulated again and again. But it springs into new life after each catastrophe, simply because the soil is prolific of farmers, and they cannot be kept down. Like the poppies on the field of Waterloo, which renew the blood-red strife each year, the Belgian peasant-farmer springs new-born from the soil, which is the only mother he knows.
After two weeks in Holland, two in Belgium, and two in London, we were ready to turn our faces toward home.
We took the train to Southampton, and a small side-wheel steamer carried us outside Southampton waters, where we tossed about for thirty minutes before the Normania came to anchor. The wind was blowing half a gale from the north, and we were glad to get under the lee of the great vessel to board her.
The transfer was quickly made, and we were off for New York. The wind gained strength as the day grew old, but while we were in the Solent the bluff coast of Devon and Cornwall broke its force sufficiently to permit us to be comfortable on the port side of the ship.
As night came on, great clouds rolled up from the northwest and the wind increased. Darkness, as of Egypt, fell upon us before we passed the Lizard, and the only things that showed above the raging waters were the beacon lights, and these looked dim and far away. Occasionally a flash of lightning threw the waters into relief, and then made the darkness more impenetrable. As we steamed beyond the Lizard and the protecting Cornish coast, the full force of the gale, from out the Irish Sea, struck us. We were going nearly with it, and the good ship pitched and reared like an angry horse, but did not roll much. Pitching is harder to bear than rolling, and the decks were quickly vacated.