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People who have been mewed up in the cities for the winter now take to the open road all the peddlers and agents and umbrella-menders, all the nursery salesmen and fertilizer agents, all the tramps and scientists and poets all abroad in the wide sunny roads.
We have worked hard, and we have kept as much stock as we could, but we could never produce enough fertilizer on the farm to go very far on a thousand acres. "Yes, Sir, we have just about a thousand acres here and we still own it, and with no mortgage on it, I'm mighty glad to say. But, laws, the land is poor, and you can get all the land you want about here for ten dollars an acre.
After his spading was done in late September, Amos, with his wheelbarrow, followed by the two children, began his trips between the dairy farm and his garden patch and he kept these up until the garden was deep with fertilizer. There never had been a more beautiful autumn than this. There was enough rain to wet down the soil for the winter, yet the Sundays were almost always clear.
Almost five million pounds of meat were saved, and over three million pounds of bones for fertilizer; but the meat averaged only about seven pounds to each hide taken and that was trifling. Evidently an enormous quantity of buffalo were still being wasted. It was considered nothing at all to shoot a buffalo.
It is said that if the sewage of cities, which in this country is often turned into rivers and streams, polluting them and causing disease, was reduced to commercial fertilizer, it would supply the equivalent of from six to nine pounds of rock phosphate per year for every acre of cultivated land in the United States.
For the first few days it seemed to her that she could not stand it she suffered almost as much as Jurgis had from the fertilizer, and would come out at sundown with her head fairly reeling. Besides this, she was working in one of the dark holes, by electric light, and the dampness, too, was deadly there were always puddles of water on the floor, and a sickening odor of moist flesh in the room.
In spite of splitting headaches he would stagger down to the plant and take up his stand once more, and begin to shovel in the blinding clouds of dust. And so at the end of the week he was a fertilizer man for life he was able to eat again, and though his head never stopped aching, it ceased to be so bad that he could not work. So there passed another summer.
"But you have not made analyses for total plant food in the soils or conducted actual field experiments with crops grown to maturity?" asked Percy. "No, we have not done that," answered the Chief. "Those are old methods of investigation which have been tried for many years and yet no chemist can tell in advance what will be the effect of a given fertilizer upon a given crop on a given soil."
Afterwards all it requires is an occasional weeding and fall mulching with fertilizer and leaves. As for the tools that keep gardens and grounds in condition, a special shed is advisable. Don't try to keep them in a tool house or section given over to saws, planes, chisels and bits. They get in a hopeless jumble.
"I've talked some with the fertilizer agents, but they don't know much about fertilizers, except what they read in the testimonials published in the advertising booklets. I have had some good help from the agricultural papers, but most that is written for the papers doesn't apply to our farm, and it's so indefinite and incomplete, that I've just spent this whole evening asking Mr.
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