And yet the country was not depopulated, although very much of the arable land was abandoned for agricultural purposes.  A farm of a hundred acres might have ten acres under cultivation, this being as much as the farmer could “keep up,” as was commonly stated.  This meant that all of the farm manure and other refuse that could be secured from the entire farm or hauled from the village, together with what commercial fertilizer the farmer was able to buy, would not enable him to keep more than ten acres of land in a state of productiveness that justified its cultivation.  Tobacco, corn, wheat and cowpeas were the principal crops.  Corn was the principal article of food, with wheat bread more or less common.  The cowpeas and corn fodder usually kept one or more cows through the winter when they could not secure a living in the brush.  Tobacco, the principal “money crop,” was depended on to buy clothing, and “groceries,” which included more or less fish and pork, although some farmers “raised their own meat,” in part by fattening hogs on the acorns that fell in the autumn from the scrub oak trees.

One farm of one hundred and ninety acres owned by an old lady, who lived in the nearby country village was rented for $100 a year, which amounted to about fifty-two and one-half cents an acres as the gross income to the landowner.  After the taxes were paid, about thirty cents an acre remained for repairs on buildings and fences and interest on the investment.

Percy spent some time on a five hundred acre farm belonging to an old gentleman who still gave his name as F. Allerton Jones, a man whose father had been prominent in the community.  According to the county soil map which had been presented to Percy by the Bureau of Soils, the soil of this farm was all Leonardtown loam, except about forty acres which occupied the sides of a narrow valley a bend of which cut the farm on the south side.

“My father had this whole farm under cultivation,” said Mr. Jones, “except the hillsides.  But what’s the use?  We get along with a good deal less work, and I’ve found it better to cultivate less ground during the forty odd years I’ve had to meet the bills.  But I’ve kept up more of my land than most of my neighbors.  I reckon I’ve got about eighty acres of good cleared land yet on this farm, and the leaves and pine needles we rake up where the trees grow on the old fields make a good fertilizer for the land we aim to cultivate, and I get a good many loads of manure from friends who live in the village and keep a cow or a horse.

“The last crop I raised on that east field, where you see those scrub pines, was in 1881.  I finished cultivating corn there the day I heard about President Garfield being shot; and it was a mighty hot July day too.  My neighbor, Seth Whitmore, who died about ten years ago, came along from the village and waited for me to come to the end of the row down by the road and he told me that Garfield was shot.  We both allowed the corn would be a pretty fair crop and when I gathered the fodder that fall there was a right smart of a corn crop.  Yes, Sir, it’s pretty good land, but we don’t need much corn, no how, and we can make more money out of tobacco.  Of course it takes lots of manure and fertilizer to grow a good patch of tobacco, but good tobacco always brings good money.”