The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-05-29
MAYOR HEARIN'S STORY OF
 ALABAMA'S "ALFALFA KING
BY WALTER HARPER


 haps the Alfalfa King ofsAlabama.
 He has 600 acres of alfalfa, the queen
 of hay crops. This GOO acres is under one
 fence and presents one of the most insplr-
 ing views in the state.
 The story of MT. Thornton's success
 reads like a romance. Two thousand
 acres of his present plantation Of ooo'
 acres was the plantation home or ms
 father As boy J. Inpis grew up here
 among the cotton fields and the pianta-
 ton negroes There was not stalk oi
 alfalfa in the entire black belt The peo-
 ple had not heard of it. perhaps. and
 believed that nothing could be grown with
 profit but cotton.
 When he was young man MT. Thorn
 ton left the home of his father and went
 to California, where he superintended
 work on one of the large stock and al-
 falfa farms of William R. Hearst. AS he rode through these rich black lands and drew long breaths of the rich alfalfa
 he thought the soil looked strangely fa-
 nlliar.
 It looked suspiciously like the nlacK
 lands on his fathers farm in Alabama.
 He saw men growing rich on the same
 soils in the west--lands that were heid
 at from $1o0 to s150 per acre.
 Here in the west, also irrigation was
 necessary and expensive.
 He had an inspiration.
 He returned to his fathers old run
 down plantation at Gastonia and began
 the work of reclamation on modern
 scale.
 What he has done is bets told by Mayor
 Jesse B. Hearin of Demopols in the fol-
 lowing article published in a Demopolis
 paper last fall:
 "some 12 years ago MT. Thornton re- turned from California to his native home at Watsonia, F miles from Demopolis' to A find the old plantation of his father run ' down and worn out by careless cultivation and waste of the soil by negro tenants Until that time but little attention had been given to the rotation of crops In thls IN section. Lands were plentiful and com mercial fertilizer had largely been re- l lied upon to keep up crop yields. The common practice had been to o-follow cot | ton with corn in case any rotation at all was attempted or to intersperse corn in the cotton year after year without rota- tion of any sort. Since both these crops require clean cultivation, they rapidly ex- haust the humus in the soil. Where ma nure Is not used the only way to replenfsh ! the humus Is to introduce some crop into the rotation which will leave stubble or | .od to be plowed under Oats had been suggested to many of our farmers as the e,t,, hat iQ 4 planted in this section, and it was found | profitable to grow this crop in rotation with cotton and corn.
 But it is the leguminous crops-cow- X peas, crimson clover, or the familiar | lespedeza-that the more intelligent and progressive farmer relied upon as the best I legume to be turned under to add humus and specific benefit in enrichng the soil with nitrogen.
 2 MT. Thornton learned the lesson of s Intelligent farming, and the chemistry of l soiis as well as the value of farm prod ucts, on a California farm where land was worth from s1OO to $50 per acre. There he learned that none of the covers were as rich in humus as alfalfa, and
 that alfalfa not only produces more tons
 of hay per acre than any other high
 class hay, but that it always has a ready
 market and brings the highest price of \ any known hay. Tf4
 \ 'It is fact not to be disputed that
 nowhere else in the south, other than the
 Black Lands of Alabama, can alfalfa be produced with profit, for only in this ! black belt section is to be found the necessary amount of lime mixed in the
 black lands Every other section requires | either the application of lime to the soil II or the artificial inoculation of the soil, I enc or both.
 \ And with this knowledge MT. Thornton Il turned his face back to the home of his < father and returned here to take up the z task of putting new life into the thou ! sands of acres of land joining the old farm, paying little over three dollars \ an acre for the entire tract. On this ! he pastured cattle, planted cotton and corn, and, for an experiment, planted ten acres of alfalfa in the black lime lands J of the plantation. It was but a short N time before he found that the soil of |F the '.blacks belt" contained, as was de- |t termined by chemical analysis practical Nv the same elements necessary to the growth of alfalfa as are to be found in f the high price soils of California and the E west. and when 1t is taken into consid- | eration that the tremendous cost of irri- \ gation, as well as thezgreat saving in the ' price of labor, is saved on the lands of q this section, 1t was readily seen that if q there be any disadvantages of soils in q the black belt of Alabama, this Is easily ( overcome by the advantage of cheap la bor and the saving of the cost of irriga- | tion. #A
 "On the Thornton place the first ter \ acres was seeded in March, 189s The soi l was, already ipoculated by the growing y of mellilotis, which grows wild over al 1 our prairie lands and good stand oi
 alfalfa was obtained from the first plant
 ing The hay was cut only three times
 the first year, owing to late planting
 and produced 30 tons, selling at SIS pei
 ton, f. o. b. nearest railroad station.
 "The next year 100 acres additional were | planted and the best possible selection ol seed was made. This second year thert 1 jd kere four or five cuttings. producing ir n proportion to the cuttings on the first tor AEcres planted the year before, tho origi I H- |.|