The Brinkley argus., 1913-08-15
HOW AN ARKANSAS MAN
Got a Paying Crop on a
 Rocky Hill

We reprint on this page an ar-
 ticle written for the Country
 Gentleman by w. R. Lighton,
 telling how a "worn-out farm"
 in northwest Arkansas respond
 ed to "deep thinking, deep plow- ling cowpeas and common sense. :" 1 This land had been cultivated
 since 1847. When MT. Lighton
 bought it part of the farm was
 in wheat, which yielded only six
 bushels to the acre. Pota toes
 yielded just next to nothing at
 all." A small field of clover cut
 twice turned out half a ton of
 hay to the acre, which contained
 many bettles and cockleburs.
 And yet the tennant with all his
 family worked early and late.
 Three years later a measured acre of the very ground which
 had been in corn that first season gave 98 bushels of fine corn. This year, 1913, the fourth that Mir. Lighton has owned the place 15 acres of wheat are threshing out 30 bushels to the acre, this crop being harvested in the same field which gave six bushels to the acre in 1908. On what ap- peared to be the poorest part of the farm there is this year a stand of clover so thick that it choked the mower down. 7 In ad- |dition there are sweet potatoes. asparagus, fruit and garden stuff ''equal to the very best grown in any mans country" Moreover, in the four years not a cent has been spent for fertilizer.
 How was this done? By hard work, guided by the teaching of agricultural science. Loose stone was carried off the fields and we are told that ''it's enough to bleed blisters and backache just to sit and think about the hun dreds of wagon loads that w e r e hauled. Corn stalks and other organic matter were turned un- der instead of being burned. The soil had always been broken to the depth of about four inches. Mir. Lighton bought big breaking blows and the first year turned up about two inches of the clay subsoil. Corn resisted dry wealth CT very well in that year and yielded 25 bushels to the acre.
 Mir. Lighton says the cowpea is n.oneo the greatest little old plants in Or out of catalogs. ' Cowpeas and sorgum together give a hay crop worth from $60 to $75 an acre; and the great root system of the cowpea tears up the refractory clay Jumps. s
 The next year two inches more of the clay subsoil were brought up by the breaking blows. The Summer of 1910 was dry, butthe crop yields showed a respectable increase over those of the pre- ceding year. In the following year, with another inch of the subsoil brought up, the measur- ed acre yielded 98 bushels of corn and this year the corn fields promise 10O-bushel crop or better. The old soil, we are told, has become loam. black and deep, as good as the best virgin fields that have been rid of timber and brought under cultivation.
 There has been no difficulty in this regeneration" says MT. Lighton ''nor anything like mystery. we've fixed the fields so that real farming implements may be used on them; we've brought up some subsoil and put the mass in condition to hold moisture; we've kept the soil in crop continuously; we've used the nitro-storing cowpea; we've stopped the old time sur face washing, and we've turned under stalks, weeds and other vegetable matter. That's all. N Nice Resident Lot At A Bargain
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