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it down, because if a rain came, it'd blow it out. We used concrete shafts.
It was cut out concrete, get around and go around it, and finally just blow
them out, but if you started with grass, it won't do it. Well, it's just
like a forest on a mountainside, it would just hold it. I got them on that.
Then when I went to Taylor County, I tried to get them to get stumps out of
the field, and get away, and start them using tractors. Well, I had an old
cattleman who had about seven or eight horses, and we farmed, probably put
in six, or seven hundred acres. He said it would blow the land away, and
would kill the earth. He said the stump kept the land from blowing. Well,
a lot of people would think that stumps wouldn't be that thick. Well, the
stumps were fairly thick, but said a stump was setting here, but
you'd have to get back here say five feet, ten feet starting, you know, to
go around it, and coming back. Well, had come up there, and you had
that all over your field.
Hercules Power Company came in, and a local man got the contract to get
stumps, and ship them. He started off, and some farmers, they said, "Yeah,
they'd give it to him. I sort of laughed about it, because I wanted
them off. I wouldn't say nothing, because we had land in Santa Rosa County,
we got four dollars a ton for them. They started clearing the land and-
it took me ten years to get this old "buggar" to get the stumps out of his field.
There was a man who plowed up a field with a tractor next to him, and it
happened to be a dry time, and there came a big blowing March wind. It just
a-blowing, and dust a-flying, and one thing or another, and he said, "Yeah,
that's that tractor, he got them stumps out there." Well, the fella plowed
too deep, I think that was his trouble, it was dry times. Anyway, they got
all the stumps out. That's why it took me that long.
K; In all the time that you were associated with the extension service, what do
you think is the most valuable technique they developed for farming. What
technique which helped local farmers most?
M: There were several. Take tobacco farming and fumigating for nematodes for
example. About my time the weed-killers, herbicides, weren't coming in. I
forget how many million pine trees I planted over in Taylor County one year.
On that good flatland, some of those pine trees could be harvested within twelve
or fourteen years, and after about sixteen years, with the damp land they had
then, you could harvest those over there. It's just thousands and thousands
of acres in land you'd see. That used to be a farm and people wouldn't know
it today just passing through. That was a conservation measure that has paid
off. The terraces paid off, and then the crops.
When Dr. Hull was developing the corn he came to Holmes County, and wanted
some corn. I said, "Well, what kinds?" He said, "I just want the fellows
to grow good corn. I want to go through it to see that it is good." I
went with him and he got scared. I said, "Now, I haven't got time to go up to
all these houses." We'd just go from one farm to another, and from one district
to another, and jump over the fences--he was scared about doing that. We'd
look at a stalk, and get the ears he wanted. I imagine I got four or five
bushels that day. He was breeding up hybrid corn.