St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1914-02-07
for every thing and you will wonder
why you did not start system sooner

on your place. Without system great
companies who are worth millions
OF dollars would go bankrupt; rail-
Dads would go to the wall and the
country would almost face panic. If
aire to the wall, what will it do for a
poor farmer? Keep his nose to the
grind stone, of course.
noticed down near Slidell farm
er taking the field by rows and pick
ing up every corn stalk and piece of
litter he could find in the field and
piling it up in heaps to be burned.
This same. farmer, no doubt, will ask
his merchant to credit him for COM
merclal fertilizer, or go to the bank
and try his luck. This is robbery
high robbery-robbing the land of its
just dues-taking from it that which
belongs to it. Every acre of land
that produces 25 bushels of corn Will
leave approximately $40 worth Of
fertilizer in the stalk and fodder.
destroy about 400 pounds of fertiliz-
er-rhat is, if you burn it. Better
haul all the humus making material
you can get into the field instead of
trying to burn it all up and then buy
ing fertilizer to try and keep the
land from showing signs of exhaus
ton. Commercial fertilizer is all
right, has its place to fill, and cannot
be exactly filled by anything else, but
it does not and annot take the place
of humus in the SOIL A SOL without
vegetable matter is like wagon
with one wheel missing|just got to
have it before you can go or do any
thing. Some farmers seem to take
a delight in burning dead grass,
and other litter, but they are work
the land, making it poor for the
children to have on their hands in
years to come.
Some have said that the southern
farmer is the LATEST man under the
U. S. flag. If he was not lazy every
one would be rich. I do not agree
with this. think he is smart. Any
man or class of men that can muster
up grit enough to take a big field row
by row and pick up all stalks and
litter and do it by hand and burn
them is not exactly lazy. Any man
that will pillow around the same
'stumps that he plowed around when
boy, when dynamite and stump
pullers were unknown, and hoe. and
be aggravated all his life with them
is not exactly lazy. 1t takes man
with game in him to do that. Takes
man who can make up his mind
to not only work for absolutely moth
ing, but to be willing to lose in the
deal-lose good, hard cash money.
A northern man cannot stomach such
proposition as that, and all our
good old southerners do not do it,
but large per cent do and these
are the ones we want to stir up.
Any man who has the heart to
walk up and down a row five and SIX
times with little pony hitched to q
little pillow in order to get about three
inches of soil scratched up to plant
on is not lazy; he deserves credit
for walking such tremendous dis
lance to get an acre of land scratch
ed. We are willing to shake hands
with a man who had rather go six |
times with a goat team and pillow
than to go three times with farm
ers' pillow and team to get row
ready for planting.
We have plenty of smart men in
this parish, men who will work some
OF. the time like Turks, and work the
other part Of the time as the notion
strikes them. If every man could
be induced to use his strength to
an advantage and not to disadvan-
tage, st. Tammany would be on the
boom in a short while. Use your
labor in such way that it will every
bit count and make something for
you. Picking up corn stalks does
not count. Flowing, hoeing and
sweating around stumps does not
count. Using small pillow and a
little horse does not count.
G. C. LEWIS,
Farm Demonstration.