Hauled cotton and sugar from Shreveport to Waco, returning with goods from Huntsville Penitentiary to deliver in Nacogdoches. Hauled one load of powder from Shreveport to Marshall. Settled the farm I am now on in 1840, which is now producing its sixty-seventh crop. My son, now 68 years old, is cultivating the sixty-seventh crop on my land, which bids fair for a good crop, consider in the unfavorable spring weather. I have kept my land fertile by peas only, paying no attention whatever to rotation of crops, and have used very little fertilizer, and only then from my barnyard.
Peas are the best fertilizer for land.
Your land properly cultivated and peas abundantly planted need never wear out. I have never failed to raise a heavy pea crop. The cotton industry of this section has been turned to truck growing. Tomatoes, peaches, and other fruits are being developed rapidly, and no doubt this country will soon be one of the greatest truck-growing countries. There is now a company of men with headquarters at Cushing inspecting the minerals of this country and no doubt in the near future several oil wells will be sunk and perhaps a foundry be erected to develop the rock here in the mountain.