St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1899-04-29

The farm was located in fat prairie,
and much of it was crawfsh land to be-
gin with, and it had been cultivated ty
one Ct the old settlers until it failed to
respond with more than IL bushels of
corn and 12O pounds of lint cotton per
acre. When the people became better
acquainted with the North Carolina
lrnatic, and found out that he was
harmless under average conditions,
they expostulated with him: what do
you mean by buying that old farm
where Henry Rankin almost starved
Do you propose to starve your family
tco?" MY friends" said the lunatic,
(whom we will call Tom Armour for
short, and also because that was his
name), ''this is better land than /
have been used to in North Carolina,
and 1 didn't starve there" The sympa-
thetic neighbors went away wagging
their heads and saying to each other:
'When Henry Rankin couldn't make .
living, it's no use for anybody else to
try, and first thing you know this man
Armour will wish he was back in North
Carolina" At the time we write of,
this wornout farm had wornOut
Clubhouse, and around the wornOut
Clubhouse were the cotton seed accum-
ulations of years. This mass was
hauled out and placed upon the field,
and in November and December the
land was deeply plowed and thorough
ly narrowed, until about sixty acres
presented the appearance. of we'll
prepared garden. This field was be-
side a public road, over which this
writer frequently passed, therefore
these observations are merely rec
ord of observations made en- passant,
as the chess players sometimes re-
mark. The conservative and sober
visaged farmers round about also no
ticed the sleek teams, bright tools and
farmer-like work being done. When the
spring time came and summer fol-
lowed, and the crops began to show the
effect of intelligent and well-planned
labor, these plodding neighbors began
tc think that Armour had some special
weather whereby he secured rain when
the rest of them had none. 1t seemed
to them that Armour did great deal
of useless work, for they had seen his
plows running when there were no
weeds; and, strange to them, it SEEM
ed that weeds did not grow for him
as they did for other people.
There were many things about the
newcomer these people did not under
rNn fn<
although they worked hard all the
time; and he went to town twice or
three times a week, a distance of four
miles. driving a pair Of sleek duns
hitched to slight spring wagon. Later
they learned that he was marketing
butter, eggs and chickens. He 3lso at
tended church in town every Sunday
when the weather did not prohibit.
with his family in the same spring
wagon drawn by the same duns. He
collected around him some good stock,
and rs the years rolled by the crops
became better. Some more North Car
olinians came and settled near, buy
ing other wornout farms, and follow
ing the example of their predecessor.
A few of the older settlers began to
think that perhaps there was more in
the soil of that fiat prairie than they
had been able to get out of it; so they
watched Armour, asked him questions
and copied his methods. Soon this
North Carolina idiot became the lead
ing man in the neighborhood, and the
neighborhood became one of the finest
of farmers, so far as in
telligence, moral worth and material
prosperity were concerned, to be
found anywhere in that section. Ar
n;our carried this thing 50 far that he
actually had the reputation of having
a bank account, and needy neighbors
were often accommodated during the
hard times that followed 1873 with the |
to pay their taxes and
other obligations. The writer was at
the house of one of this mans neigh |
twice as fertile, and who had been in |
scarifying the soil for 12 |
years. At dinner this farmer remarked |
that he had had neither flour OF |
sugar on his table for SIX months, and
this was when cotton was eight and |
nine cents per pound and corn so and |
IS cents per bushel. This fiourless and |
sugarless farmer was in better condi- |
tion and Jared more sslinptuously |
every day than most of his neighbors. |
But this was before the revolution in |
augurated by the lunatic from North |
HAD done its work. If we had |
more space, and it was at all neces-
sary, we could say much more about |
this farmer, whose work and influence
has made almost garden of what was
a barren waste, scantily supporting a |
few gaunt and sallow specters. alleged
to be farmers, but who really were soil |
butchers, making desoiate every acre
they touched before turning it loose. |
It is such farmers as Thomas Armour
who compose our catalogue of ideal |
Farm and Ranch.