“That is very kind of you,” Percy replied.  “I want especially to learn some of the things you know about the soils of Westover.  Can you show me the best land and the poorest land on the estate?”

“I think I can.” said Mr. West.  “We have some land that has not grown a crop in fifty years, and we have other land that still produces a very fair crop if properly rotated.”

“And what rotation do you practice?”

“Well, the system we have finally settled into and have followed for many years is to plow up the run-out pasture land and plant to corn.  The second year we usually raise a crop of wheat or oats and seed down to clover and timothy.  We then try to cut hay from the land for two years, and afterward we use the field for pasture for six or eight years, or until finally it produces only weeds and foul grass.  Then we cover it with farm manure, so far as we can, and again plow the land for corn.  Wheat and cattle are the principal products sold from the farm.”

“In this way,” said Percy, “you grow one crop of corn on the same field about once in ten or twelve years.”

“Yes, about that, and also one, or sometimes two, crops of small grain.  We usually have about seventy-five acres of corn, nearly a hundred acres of small grain, and we cut hay from somewhat more than hundred acres, thus leaving perhaps five hundred acres of pasture land, besides about two hundred acres of timber land which has not been cultivated for many years.”

“Was the timber land that we see about here formerly cultivated?” asked Percy.

“Oh, yes, nearly all of it was under cultivation when I was a boy, although some had been allowed to go back to timber even before I was born.  On our own farm we have some timber land that, so far as I have been able to learn, was never under cultivation; and the character of the trees is different on that land.  There you will find original pine, but on the worn-out land the ‘old-field’ pine are found.  They are practically worthless, while the original pine makes very valuable lumber.

“With our system of rotation we keep about all of our farm under control; but the smaller farms were necessarily cropped more continuously to support the family, and they became so unproductive that many of them have been completely abandoned for agricultural purposes; and even some of the large plantations were poorly managed, one part having been cropped continuously until too poor to pay for cropping, while the remainder was allowed to grow up in scrub brush and ‘old-field’ pine; and, of course, the expense of clearing such land is about as much as the net value of the crops that could be grown until it again becomes too poor for cropping.”

“Then the recleared lands are not as productive as when they were first cleared from the virgin forest?”