The morning star and Catholic messenger., 1875-04-04
A Model Southern Farmer.
HOW A PRrscELr ESTATE Is MANAGED.

A correspondent of the Atlanta Herald
recently visited the plantations OF Col. Lee
Jordan in southwest Georgia. and furnishes
that paper with Interesting account of
what he sax and heard. Col. Jordan has
now under his immediate management over
twenty thou sand acres OF laDo. This i'm
mense body of land. a mos: a whole county,
is originally divided into eight planta
tlons aud COS: az iea-. $3.50 900; or we
may say in round hgures a ha,f million OF
dollars. /! IS said that this amount was
fired for tbis ? ace IN l-G7, but Col.
jordan, tielGIrg 10 the advice of his
friends refused u take the Offer. At that
time plating lands were 10 great demand.
One OF these places, the Fowl Town
place, was bought from ME. Joseph Bond,
famous ante be!lum planter, ip l-j9. for
Sl2 90 in gold. This was over $50 an
acre. Col Jordan has about eight hundred
!aboEers Oh biz place, but is grad ualiy
adopting the tenant system. He fhds the
negroes reliable and steady as tenants, aud
finds it pays hlm best to adopt this plan
with them. Those whom he does hire he
pays 81 day gross wages. or forty cents
per day and feeds them. His allowance OF
food is three and half pounds of bacon
and one peck of meal a week. He pays off
quarterly, but always reserves one third of
the iabofers wages, in order to preTent
bis breaking his contract. Ii any laborer
leaves before his contract is over he folfeits
his wages. To feed these laborers and
their families requires over l20 700 pounds
of -four aud 30, 900 Thousand bushels OF
corn. The corn Col. jordan raises on his
own place, raising nearly twice much as
he needs. TIL bacon lie bugs of his fac
tors. The hands work five days aud a half
each week, and seem to be as happy aud
contented az they were in slavery daya,
which is saying great deal. The negroes
have large double room cabin homes with
window UlaSaea and unnH dnnra in IL
aud are much more comfortable than the
houses of the average farm hands in many
sections of the State. As to the tenants,
Col. Jordan makes his arrangements with
them according to the quality of the land
he gives them, taking fixed amount of
proportion of the crop. He superintends
the general run of his tenants planting and
fixes the crops they shall pnt in.
Hls force for the year 1875 is as follows
He has abnut 300 hands that work directly
for him. He then has about l6O tenants,
each Of them employing from one to ten
hands. TIE Keaton place, very rich and
with 800 acres under cultivation, is in
charge of 20 negro tenants. There is not
a white nan Oh the place. On tb,s place
last year twenty pegro hands made one
hundred bales of cotton.
Besides his owu experimenting atten
too, Col. jordan has six frst-rate farmcrs
salary of $500 per anuum. Que of these,
Mr. A. &. Williams, formerly of Marion
country, IL one of the tTustlrst and most ac-
c"mpished farmers in the State The total
cotton crop of the whole place LAST year
was a title over 400 bales, fully one
third OF the planted crop being cut off 10y
hy bad seasons. The crop should never be
less than . 600 bales. Ahont two weeks AGO
Col. Jordan sold $40 600 worth of cotton
in one pile.
The plantations, the correspondent aavs.
are among the best in the State. They
produce clover, grain, and all crops raised
In North Georgia, as well as cotton, The
plantations lie beautifully, and there are
fields that stretch out without a hreak, and
rolling gently as a prairie for 200 acres.
| The place is watered by several bold and
busy creeks, among which l remember the
Fowl Town that has six miles of length in
the plantation, RockdaIe Calewahee and
| Chickexehatchic. Colonel Jordan doesn't
use fertilizers at all. He formerly spent
as much as $l2 900 a year for these aids to
cultivation, but has now eschewed their
use altogether. He says when cotton
brings twenty five cents a pound it will
pay to use fertilizers. He thinks that
their use brings caterpillers, by forcing the
cotton plant into undue greenuess and
tenderness. He says that the caterpiller
will notNattack the cotton plant to anv
serious extent if it is lett to grow natur-
ally. 1t proves to be too tough and fbrous
for this epicurean bug. He says that since
he has been planting without fertilizers he
has the caterpillars to skip around his
plantations, only eating their way come
fifty or hundred yards in the edges of his
field, aud then deserting them for greepeT
and jucier leaved crops. His land, how
ever, has good lime foundation, and he
makes u simple fertilizer of his own that
works wonderfully well. He adopts the
Dickson way of planting, of which plan
deep ploughipg and shallow cultivation
is the formula. He rotates his cropa.
and believes strongly in turned under pes
vines as an enricher of the lands. Col
Jordan is in favor of fence law, and
thinks the Legislature ought to pass il
without submitting it to the people, as in
his county the people, being a majority OF
them negroes, would be likely to kill it.
He has forty to fifty miles of fencing to
keen up, and il Ia nnita q fny o "