“The next year I took the next field in rotation and worked it in the same way, probably more.  I got thirteen bushels more wheat per acre than ever grew before.  Thirty-six bushels of wheat!  Such a thing was never heard of in our section before; land that would not grow anything a dozen years ago.  Do you wonder I have been an enthusiast on tillage since then?  Why, they call me a crank sometimes.  It is a good crank, as it has turned out prosperity for us.

“After a time I began to think, can’t we carry this matter a little further?  People generally don’t cultivate their crops more than two or three times in a season.  Can I cultivate more to advantage?  I began to try it, six or eight times, eight or ten.  I think there have been dry years when I have cultivated our potatoes as many as fifteen times.  I don’t believe we ever went through them when it didn’t pay.

“I remember one fall, when it was a wet season.  When the tops began to die and got to the point where I could see the space between the rows, I started the cultivators again.  I had money then to hire men and I hired plenty of them.  I started to cultivate between the rows.  People said, ’ What is the idiot doing now?’ I said, ’He is going to raise five bushels more by doing that work, that it what he is after.’

“Now, remember, more hay to the acre, better hay, increased fertility by growing clover, increased fertility by working this land over and over in the different ways I have told you of.  They used to send for me to talk on this subject, before I knew anything about it, except that I had done it.  In Wisconsin, some twenty years ago, I helped at the first institute held in the state.  They sent for me to come up.  I told them what I was doing and how I thought it came about, what I thought clover was doing for me.  When I was through I asked Professor Henry, who was in the audience, to tell me, honestly, what he thought about my talk.  He said, ’As a farmer I believe you are right, but as a scientific man I dare not say so in public.’

“Professor Roberts came to my place one time, to investigate a little.  I knew what he came for.  I showed him around, and showed him the land we had not touched, not to this day.  He was a surprised man.  I remember the second crop of clover was at its best.  It was above his knees.  He says, ’This will make two tons of hay to the acre, and it is the second crop.’  He didn’t say but very little.  I couldn’t get him to talk much.  He went home and began that system of experiments at Ithaca that has practically revolutionized the agriculture of the east—­experiments in tillage.  Pretty soon we had his book on the fertility of the soil.  I think he got his inspiration from what he saw.  He said to himself, seems to me, ‘Terry has something that scientific men do not know.’  He got samples of soil all over the state.  They analyzed the soil and found what the average soil of New York contained.  They found about four thousand five hundred pounds of nitrogen, six thousand three hundred pounds of phosphoric acid, and twenty-four thousand pounds of potash in an average acre eight inches deep; and they had been buying potash largely. (Laughter.)