New Britain herald., 1916-02-19


 likely he would still be living in the city, and this comeback story would never have been written; but MT. Pagan saw not a dead, discoura ged farm, but a stretch of fair, kindly l land, greening in the spring sunshine, though the color was contributed by weeds. Then again, here was land which for all these years had ma1n- tained one oId-time family. Say what.we will, this idea of pedigree ap peals to the mind. The farm was somewhat like the ancestral acres in the old country which the common man might look at but never enjoy, since the entail kept him away like a legal barbed wire fence. To a man of some little sentiment, the spirit of this old farm meant much. There is no fertility in the ghost of some wise old farm owner, yet it may help put the bounce into man. So. MT. Pagan bought the farm at what seem ed a ridiculous price, and back he came to the land. Ask him how low down the farm was, and he will tell you that there was not enough grass on it to set a hen. That is the limit, when we consider that a hen really meaning business will do a
 
 the edge of a cross cut saw.
 What crop would you naturally suppose a man like MT. Pagan would select? A mans favorite crop is 8 part of himself, and represents to a large extent his bringing up and tho history of his country. The Indian grew corn and beans for his succo- tash. The Yankee invented baked
 
 cotash, but he could not get away from the crop. Plant a Western man on the farm, tand hog and hominy would surely follow. So naturally MT. Pagan decided to grow potatoes, and determined to make that farm do it. He was wise too. Within dr1v- ing distance of his farm, in the fac tory towns, people were eating half a million bushels of potatoes each year, with hardly a handful of them produced locally. Why not?
 Sitting on stone walls or on cane bottom chairs, or on the sunny side of barns, were various wise old tim CTS, who told you 'why' by hanging out the sign:
 This is not a potato section You can't grow good potatoes in this soil"
 It was happy thing that Joe Fa- gan, forty-four years old, and know ing little about potato growing, rec ognized that this was the spirit which of this farm. He would have to wipe that sign out and put up another one, or else retire at the end of a year or two and sell the land again to some new back-to-the-la lander; for these men sitting on the stone walls and in the sunny places represented the spirit which had skinned the New England farm, sold the skin, and sent The land was there, as good land as ever the sun shone upon, but it had fallen a victim to the failure of the Yankee to recognize the fact that his soil as well as his factory needed mo- dern improvements and modern care For long years nature had been skim ming the cream from the hills and wiping it thickly on the low lands of the valley. When man grew weary and let the farm go, nature stepped in to nail down it's fertility and keep it from running away. It was pure bred farm, and in the days of it's mis- fortune it looked like a pure bred man, down at the heel and shabbv but still carrying the capicity and 1 the power waiting for another chance 1 What nature did. when man grew weary, was to clog up the soil and try to put a shell over the surface. i The drains slowly closed up. This meant that the lower land became soggy and sour; it would not produce ! al oy,f 4 run away from it. Weeds and briars | grew so thickly along the stone walls that you could hardly get within a rod of them. The pasture slopes were 1 covered with birches and cedars, i black berry briars, and a jungle o f l brush. To the human eye this means i evidence of the poorest kind of farm ing, yet it is natures way of taking care of her own, for the weeds and the brush hold the surface soil to- gether, and prevent wash and loss , while the slow accumulation of the l leaves they shed continues to build upand enrich the soil. To the old tim . CTS, living in the past and bankin2 upon the exhausted account of what ] their ancestors had done, this WAS 1 waste and ruin. Joe Pagan had read l enough of modern agriculture to req lize that it was not all a waste, but
 8 wise investment for him.
 1 The Bounce Did It.
 Very likely you have seen a young heir eagerly waiting for the distri-
 button of his estate, so that he may
 scatter the liquid portions as ne
 would a barrel of water. If this were
 handed him Tn available form, he