The Marietta journal and courier. (Marietta, Ga.) 1909-1918, 1911-05-19
VRANSMOGRIFICATION
A OF A FARM.

Pardon me for intlicting such a big
word upon you, but nothing short of
that would express what has been done
to the old farm near Powder Springs
where "Uncle Pat" and "Aunt Katie"
kept house before the war and made
life worth living to so many young
people.
The house is not so greatly changed
and many of the old conveniences,
like the smcke-house, the hen-house
and the house in which clothes were
washed - before laundries were dis
covered-are still there.
The same oaks are on the wide lawn.
with the burr oak that grew from an
acorn brought from Texas, like
stranger among the big-leaved giants
with its fine foliage and straight round
trunk. The. cedars and beautiful hol-
ly tree by the gate are there, but all
the orchard trees once forming love-
ly background for the house are gone
and fields OF corn and cotton intrude
their plebeian, materalistic selves right
against the fence around the house.
The "boss" who is a college bred
farmer from Lexington, KY, talks
about the phenomenal cotton and corn
crops he expects to raise on those DO
acres once gloritied with the beauty
and fragrance OF blossoms and fruit.
Think of colonial country house
bereft of its orchard.
Young peach orchards are growing
away from the house and the tenants
have fruit trees on their places-but
this is not a fruit farm. In mid
summer when the crops are at high
tide for verdancy with all shades OF
green in evidence, it is inspiring to
come out and hear the whispers of the
corn trees and see the Towering cotton
bushes There is tall 'siIo" in the
COW barn, also running water and beds
of clean straw for fastidious English
cattle. 1t has become really model
farm an object lesson in best methods.
The we'll is there too, with the same
sweet water, but it hardly knows itself
because pump has been placed in
its depths and a small house stands
beside is with some kind of automatic
engine and motor that are set to work
to pump water whenever a faucet is
turned even out in the cow-pen. This
arrangement would seem perfectly
magical to Aunt Tidy and Aunt Lin
dY, now past ninety, who once fried
chickens and boiled vegetables in that
kitchen with gang" of small
darkeys to supply water and wood to
keep pots boiling.
There are still hams and side meat
and jowls in the smoke house hanging
aloft to be sure, but on two sides in
bins are hundreds of bushels Of Irish
potatoes that have somehow been in
duced to grow the same size. Then
all the chickens are snow-white leg
horns - without the old timey many
colored, speckled, brown and black
barn yard kinds no one felt compunc-
tions about killing. But the grass on
the lawn is as green as ever and the
vegetables in the garden almost as
fine.
The only mule is Spanish Jack
called Hamburg Boy who cost $500
and whose voice is neither cultivated
nor strong but he is moulting at this
season and not in a singing humor.
There are ten bay mares and two
gray ones from St. Louis. Some OF
them are coquettish beauties, putting
on airs when harnessed to buggy.
Others are sedate and conscientious
workers.
There are black Berkshire pigs fat
and lazy, and red Hereford cows with
their calves in meadow of rye. The
pigs enjoy outings in patch Of alfal-
ia. The cows are allowed to MUNICH on
a mountain of wheat straw in the
barn yard.
There are all kinds of labor saving
implements and improved methods on
this farm but we saw only one collie
frisking about where a pack Of fox
hounds once abounded Not dusky
face did we see around the house.
itThere are cOlored tenants some
where on those two thousand acres OF
land but no house servants singing
around the premises.
Before the war, this farm was cult
waited and enjoyed as a home by so
negroes but it was not the intensive,
narrowing cultivation it gets now by
machinery and motors. Cotton in
those days was not so important as
the grains and other food crops. Now
fine red Hereford cattle has become
one uf the chief products OF this place
and Atlanta is enjoying steaks from