Sharecropping

“ Now, that is an inter-crop.
Down in Florida, when we used to get together in our citrus seminars and in our horticultural and agricultural meetings we used to try and make a man say on what class of soil his home or orchard was located, so that we might get his viewpoint. For the successful nut orchardist, in a small way, must, of necessity, be a successful agriculturist. He must understand soils. You can't have successful inter-cropping without understanding soils, and, therefore, I can't tell you definitely what would be good for your northern soils. ”

“ We passed a few huts and tumble-down shanties, belonging to "croppers," or men who break up and "crop" the land for a couple of years, at a rent of ten shillings per acre, after which it is sown in grass for the owner, the cropper moving elsewhere.
It was wonderful in this bleak, hilly country, generally called "tussock land," to see what changes of colour and vivid bits of colouring there were; a patch of bright green against the dark earth of a newly-ploughed field, the yellow of the tussock-grass against the bit of chalky grey cliff, and over all the clear wintry sky flecked with clouds. ”

“ One diligent and skilful man, will govern five hundred acres: But if through any accident a beast shall break into his master’s field; or the wicked hunter make a cap for his dogs and horses, what a clamour is there made for the disturbance of a years crop at most in a little corn! whilst abandoning his young woods all this time, and perhaps many years, to the venomous bitings and treading of cattel, and other like injuries (for want of due care) the detriment is many times irreparable; young trees once cropp’d, hardly ever recovering: It is the bane of all our most hopeful timber. ”

“ Plum-growers very generally recognize the several distinct and valuable purposes which cover-crops serve in orchards. They protect the tree from root-killing, from cold, keep the soil from washing, add humus and, with legumes, nitrogen to the soil, modify the physical structure of the soil and hasten seasonal maturity of the tree. There is one other function which is not so often taken into account. Plum orchards in which cover-crops are regularly grown, even though the crop be not a legume, need less fertilizers than those in which no such crop is grown. ”

“ Every rule of human forestry and gardening appears to be broken, and the result is an easy triumph for what seems waste and rank carelessness. Trees tottering with age still dispute the soil with superabundant saplings, or, falling, lean upon and are held up by undecaying neighbours. Dead trunks cumber the ground, while mosses, ferns, and bushes half conceal them. Creepers cover matted thickets, veiling their flanks and netting them into masses upon which a man may sit, and a boy be irresistibly tempted to walk. Aloft, one tree may grow upon another, and itself bear the burden of a third. ”

“ That done, they take up the sods with their hands, carefully, one after another; and, with like care, lay them down upon the sheet, the grass sides underneath. Then, seizing hold of the tools—spade and shovel—they proceed to scoop out the earth, placing it in a heap beside.
They have no need to make use of the mattock; the soil is loose, and lifts easily. Nor is their task as excavators of long continuance—even shorter than they anticipated. Within less than eighteen inches of the surface their tools come in contact with a harder substance, which they can tell to be timber—the lid of a coffin. ”

“ Some gentlemen do indeed introduce into their Agreements, clauses affecting to provide against the mischievous pruning which is here condemned, but, except in the neighbourhood of a mansion, where a strict look out is generally kept, they are quite inoperative—they are a dead letter, for not only does the pruning go on, but, as I have just hinted, the trees are often attacked below too, and deprived of their roots, as well as their branches, thus cutting off their supply of nutriment from the atmosphere above, and from their legitimate sources of supply from the soil. ”

“ Leaving out the doubtful value of cover-crops in increasing the supply of plant-food and thereby producing an increase in yield, there are at least three ways in which cover-crops are valuable in the vineyard. Thus, it is patent to all who have tried cover-crops in the vineyard that the land is in much better tilth and more easily worked when some green crop is turned under in fall or spring ”

“ In layering we induce the growth of adventitious roots by partly burying in the ground a branch or shoot still adhering to the stock that nourishes it. When, acted upon by the soil, roots have started in sufficient number, the shoot is gradually cut loose until at last it is quite severed from the parent stock. In grafting by approach it is also proposed to make a branch, a shoot, a tree-top, while still united to its own stem or stock, take root, so to speak, not in the ground, but in the substance of a neighboring tree. ”

“ A rotation of crops, based on the clover culture, is, I have no doubt, the most certain system by which the permanent improvement of the soil may be effected. The exemption of the land from stones and large stumps, the ease with which it can be tilled, the mildness of the climate, and the additional time this circumstance affords for labor, are all highly important inducements for the cultivation of these lands, and should be considered in deciding upon a system of tillage. ”

“ The few merchantable trees he spares, together with those now unmerchantable, will, in perhaps twenty years, make another excellent crop. By leaving a fairly dense stand he prevents the windfall danger which threatens the survivors of too vigorous cutting, and also prevents them from assuming the branchy form of trees which receive too much side light. The fire danger is much reduced by resultant shading of the ground and slightly by the lesser cover of debris. In short, he makes the most economical use of the ground, and the capital represented by the trees he spares is well invested. ”

“ A great increase of revenue may be derived from a better mode of managing the stock, both of timber and underwood: the latter may, by timely and judicious pruning, by a proper attention to draining, &c. be brought to maturity at a much earlier period than it has hitherto been done in many places, and thus, of course, be made to return a greater rent.
It is incredible how little is done to Ancient Woods compared with what ought to be done, in the way of draining, pruning, stubbing up rubbish, and filling up with young plants ”

“ This occurred more frequently in the one-crop areas of the deep South where exhausted soil and crop dependency made for a high debt risk each year. Beard maintained that the sharecroppers of the late 1930s were respectable people, merely renting land until they could afford to purchase their own. In several instances, they were young local couples who went on to buy their tenured land and to become established members of the community. ”

“ If the situation of the plot does not admit the use of a plow, let the gardener begin at one side and trench the area to at least the depth of eighteen inches, taking pains to mix the surface, subsoil, and fertilizer evenly and thoroughly. A small plot thus treated will yield as much as one three or four times as large. One of the chief advantages of thus deepening the soil is that the plants are insured against their worst enemy—drought. ”

“ With regard to the first, it will at once be perceived, by a practical eye, and a sound judgment, whether a wood is in such a state, as to the prospect of a crop, that it is the proprietor’s interest to make a sacrifice in the underwood and cut it, although it may sell for nothing but faggots, rather than finish, or run out, the term, at the end of which it would be cut in the usual course. ”

“ This clearing is ready for the plough. Besides, there is a piece of flat, marshy ground below our shanty on the left, and this was only covered originally with flax, swamp-grass, and small shrubs. In the dry season we have burnt this off as it stood. The soil is not deep, but it is good, and we shall plough this in with the other. There will be about fifty acres of plough land altogether, and twice as much more next year, or the year after.
We have borrowed a plough and harrows from a [Pg 222] neighbour, and are going to work. Ploughing is quite a new industry up here. ”

“ Of the Hedge-Rows I affirm, that they are, very generally, either left entirely to themselves, or to the tender mercies of the occupiers of the soil, who, having no interest in their success, but rather the contrary, cannot, of course, be expected to exercise any care in their preservation. ”

“ One year the grove cone-crop was a total failure. As a result, Mr. and Mrs. Frémont temporarily abandoned their old home and moved to new quarters on a mountainside about half a mile distant. The day they moved I was by the brook, watching a water-ouzel, when they chanced to cross on a fallen log near-by. In passing, one paused to give a hasty, half-glad, half-frightened, chattery bark of recognition. They hastened across the grassy open beyond as though they felt themselves in danger when out of the woods. ”

“ The soil is thus brought into immediate culture and productiveness, and one successful crop will generally return the expenditure. The method used upon these lands ordinarily is very unlike that pursued with other wild lands. The usual course elsewhere, is to cut the heavy timber, to clear off, pile and burn the under-brush and rubbish; to seed down with a crop dragged in on the fallow, and leave the roots and stumps to decay through the processes of Nature. ”

“ He put the farm-hands into the clearings from the log-camps, and rough-worked his land as fast as he could find space to plant.
He was doing so well with his coming crops that his mind began to soar with new ideas. He would have one great farm of twenty thousand acres. He would have machines to cultivate it, and have farm crews to do the labor, like his logging-gangs.
He would build himself a mansion, and from the steps of his house he would watch the work up the wide basin through good spy-glasses. He bought the glasses; he sawed and planed the lumber in his mill ”

“ Another purpose is, on all light soils, to place the soil close around the seeds after they have been covered. When this is not done, seeds will vegetate very unevenly, and, in dry weather, some of them not at all. Another advantage of rolling a field-crop is the greater facility and economy with which it can be harvested. ”

“ Intercropping.—The question of intercropping a young orchard is one to be carefully considered. As it is often practiced it is very injurious to the orchard, but it is possible to manage crops so as to be of very little harm to the trees. While the practice may be inadvisable in many commercial orchards, yet on a general farm we should by all means think that it was the right thing to do. ”

“ They hoped to be the mustard-seed which, planted in a congenial soil, would grow into a tree in whose branches all the birds of the air might dwell. It was the initial misfortune of the Brook-Farmers to establish themselves on a picturesque but gravelly and uncongenial soil, whose poverty went very far toward compassing the collapse of their undertaking. ”

“ Leaving the mill with its distracting noise, we ascended the main logging road towards Passaconaway. It follows Downes Brook southward, now clinging to one hillside, then crossing the ice-bound torrent by a rude but massive bridge of spruce logs to stay for a while on the opposite bank. On each side the timber had been cut and hauled away. The survival of the unfittest is the rule in the forest after the lumber thief has been through it. He leaves the crooked, the feeble, and the diseased trees, and packs around their roots the fertilizing branches and tops of the logs which he hauls away. ”

“ Although it is upon exceedingly weak and poor land, it would have produced, if it had been properly managed, a fine class of Larches, which would have yielded to the proprietor an abundant return upon his outlay. If any one doubt this, let him look around and see if he cannot find a Plantation of forty or fifty years growth, which is crowded with trees—say of Larch only—and he will, upon examination, perceive that there are two or three distinct classes of trees still standing, all of which ought, long before, to have been taken out ”

“ There are other reasons which apply more or less strongly, according to the condition of the wood, as to its stock, and the staple of its soil. Carting, or rather teaming, for carts are not often used, will inevitably do much injury in woods that are well stocked, if the utmost possible care is not taken, whatever the soil may be ”

“ This large Plantation will, in the course of a few years, under the present enlightened and skilful management, to a great extent, be cleared of the Scotch firs; in place of which, the noble proprietor will have a race of fine oaks, thus proving, to actual demonstration, the great mistake which was originally committed, in occupying the land with a class of trees which, when they have arrived at maturity, are of comparatively little value. ”

“ If blanched shoots are desired, the crowns will have to be [Pg 102] covered with six or eight inches of soil. The same object may be obtained by shutting off the light, which can easily be accomplished under greenhouse benches. Where it is not practicable to make excavations under the benches, a pit may be constructed by placing boards against the posts and filling in the space thus furnished. To secure a succession, new roots from the reserve stock have to be planted every three or four weeks. ”