When we received the first bulletins from our congressman and learned what information was available, we started to look over the farm and its soil.
We had rented about 193 acres of land. Two-thirds were forested, and one-third was pasture. We decided not to cultivate more than an acre because it was even harder to get hired help during the war than in peacetime.
The ground, except for the piece in front of the house that we kept as lawn, was uncultivated and wild. It was thick with weeds, but it had not been over-farmed, used up, and destroyed, the way the land has been in large sections of America.
I wrote a card to the department of the USDA that is responsible for soil testing and soon received a cylindrical container in which I was supposed to send in a sample of our dirt.
A little while after this was done I received a report on the composition of the soil we intended to cultivate. It also told us what kinds of fertilizers were available, in which places sowing legumes was recommended, and where we should sow millet to drive out the present weeds.
During the war it was hard to get fertilizers, but that suited us because we thought that well-rotted manure should play a larger role on small farms than expensive commercial fertilizers.
This correspondence about soil composition took place in the first fall of our arrival on the farm.
In the winter we collected necessary information from the bulletins, as I have already told in the previous chapters, and laid out a systematic plan.
We agreed on the kinds of animals we would get, where we would buy them, which breeds they should be, and what their housing should look like. Then we went on to study feeds.
That is truly a course of study. We learned with astonishment about the many types of nourishment needed by poultry for growing and egg-laying, by goats for milk production, and by pigs for a fattening diet.
There was meal and grain feed for the chicks, young chickens, laying hens, geese, ducks, goats, and pigs. The feed contained corn, wheat, barley, oats, soy beans, alfalfa, bone meal, meat and fish meal, skim milk, sunflower seeds, linseed oil, cod-liver oil, etc. The mixture varied according to the type and age of animal, and its purpose. Carefully compounded mixtures could be bought ready-mixed in the warehouses of the large feed companies under the names: chick feed, strengthening meal for growing chickens, laying meal, fattening meal, scratch feed, milk feed, “manna” for calves, sheep and goat feed, and pig feed. Then there were ground oyster shells (mussel lime), which the laying hens ate to form strong eggshells, and gravel, which all the poultry needed for good digestion, and which varied from the finest to the coarsest according to their age ranges.
In addition we planted alfalfa, soy beans, ladino and red clover, turnips and peas, parsnips, stock beets, and corn for the animals. For ourselves we planted sweet corn, potatoes, and a vegetable garden. We kept a grassy meadow for the chickens, where they promenaded as though in a park, just to throw themselves most of the time on the large manure pile, even though it was heaped up a distance away in the shadow of a barn.
Thinking back, I ask myself why we didn’t make ourselves more comfortable, why we didn’t simply throw the chickens a little corn, leftovers, and potatoes, let them walk around on the manure and sleep in the goats’ shed. Why didn’t we feed, house, and treat them as they are treated in countless farmyards in Europe and still are on many small farms in America?
The question is not so easy to answer.
It was probably because for us farming was not laden with custom and tradition. Our teachers were not our fathers and forefathers or farming neighbors, but the USDA, which rapidly put the results of its scientific experiments to practical uses and distributed these results in commonly understood terms. That meant, since we didn’t know the common practices, we had the will and the desire to jump into something quite new and unknown, and were caught up in the excitement of exploration, experimentation, and results.
By following exactly the feed method described above, for example, we could make the moulting period for the chickens very late and short, so that the bad laying time often lasted only two months and didn’t begin until December. If we replaced the fattening mash for the young female chickens with the laying meal at the right time, they were already laying at an age of five or six months, and this in the fall when egg prices climb and you can count on a comfortable profit from the proceeds of fall and winter egg production.
The USDA has established on the basis of its statistics and through experiments on its demonstration farms that a farm hen lays 80–86 eggs per year on an average, and that a hen whose breed has been specialized for production, resistance to disease and climate changes, and has been expertly housed and fed, brings a minimum production of 160 eggs in a year and might also produce up to 200 or 250.
It is not only a question of increased production, but also that in America, especially in the country, you are completely on your own. You cannot and dare not count on farmhands or household help—it is rare and expensive. In order to cope with all parts of the unfamiliar work, we had to develop a method cut to fit a way of life which was new to us. The cutting is, for the most part, performed in America by the USDA, but you must of course sew up the pieces for yourself.
That the USDA concerned itself with new farm machinery, with new varieties of corn and wheat, that it battled against animal and plant diseases, that it explored the effect of light on plants, that it developed hormone preparations against infertility and for increased milk production in animals, that it recommended scientific fertilization, that it employed chemical preparations, bacteria, and insects against insect pests, that it undertook every kind of soil improvement, and in all of these areas initiated and maintained an immense research operation, did not seem so amazing to me as the fact that it concerned itself with the smallest details of farming, with apparently immaterial bits of housekeeping, and with the primitive aspects of daily farm life.
What sort of institution could it be that concerns itself with the production of cotton, tobacco, corn, wheat, cattle, wood, and all the other gigantic factors of farming that play a decisive role in world production, and at the same time counts the steps a housewife takes in her kitchen in order to discover what technical equipment may spare her two-thirds of these steps?
What sort of a government bureau would describe for farmers how to upholster chairs, which wallpapers and pictures they should select, how they can update hats and the best way to clean their teeth, what kind of colored house aprons make you happy, how you can recognize antique early American furniture, what you can make for Christmas presents, which neckties to buy, and how you can develop an attractive, comfortable appearance through correct posture?
On the basis of these questions it seemed to me to be worth knowing how this remarkable Department of Agriculture was established, how far-flung its functions are, and how high the cost is to keep this apparatus in motion.
In America one quickly becomes accustomed to statistics and astronomical figures.
The distances, areas, and the overview of huge plains are so large and hyperdimensional that in the beginning you find yourself wishing to count time in light-years. Gradually you learn to understand the inclination of Americans for huge numbers and the feeling of space, and at the same time you must not forget that many of them came from the narrow confines of Europe.
However, when I found the dimensions of the USDA for the first time, it took my breath away for a moment.
I read that the USDA has eighty thousand permanent employees and distributes more than a billion dollars a year to six million farming operations.
I found a map which showed where the fifty main experiment stations are located, with countless little dots for smaller laboratories and experiment stations. In addition there are the many offices in the 3,074 counties of the states which distribute the results of research in the form of brochures and have a direct relationship with the individual farmer.
The functions of the USDA include three main areas
: administration, research, and information. They deal with all the branches of agriculture from road building, farm credit, and market prices through information about insects to household economy, as I have already mentioned in other chapters.
The USDA was first represented in the Cabinet as the independent Department of Agriculture in 1889. The Cabinet already had the Secretaries of State, the Interior, War, the Navy, and the Treasury, the Postmaster General, and Attorney General. It was enlarged in 1913 by the addition of the Secretaries of Trade and Labor.
The USDA began in the Patent Office.
The Patent Office received experimental seeds sent from all over the world.
Now there was at that time a Patent Commissioner by the name of Mr. Henry L. Ellsworth, who was a farmer from Connecticut. In his capacity as Commissioner of the Patent Office, and at the same time as authorized agent for Indian Affairs, he made tours of inspection through the entire country. Mr. Ellsworth, it is reported, was deeply impressed by the agricultural possibilities of the western prairies, and also by the ignorance and bitter poverty of the settlers there. He was convinced that they could be helped by the development of better tools and seed adapted to the climate and soil. He saw the need for this as so pressing that, on his own authority without asking Congress, he had seeds and plants distributed to the farmers throughout the country, and especially in the West.
Under this energetic Mr. Ellsworth, the Patent Office became a separate office on July 4, 1836, and only three years later this new office was granted one thousand dollars for scientific agricultural purposes.
The year 1862, under President Lincoln, saw three important pieces of legislation for agriculture. On May 15, 1862, a Commissioner of Agriculture was named, but without a seat in the Cabinet. At the same time, however, a separate Department of Agriculture was established, and the responsibilities of this department were outlined. It should assemble worthwhile practical agricultural information; introduce useful plants, seeds, and animals; answer farmers’ questions; and choose themes for publications according to their inquiries. It was to study and experiment with tools, soil development, seeds, fertilizers, and animals; undertake chemical analysis of soils, grains, fruits, vegetables, and fertilizers and publish the results; collect botanical and insect information; and furnish libraries and museums.
Five days after the establishment of the Bureau of Agriculture, the Homestead Act was passed on the twentieth of May. This meant that every man and woman over twenty-one years of age could claim 160 acres of land from the public domain, the available government property. After five years of working and improving it, they could register as owners of the land. The statute held for Americans or foreigners who wished to become American citizens. The only persons excluded from this distribution were those who had fought against the United States.
On July 2, 1862, the Land Grant College Act was passed. This put eleven million acres of public land at the disposal of the state universities. From the proceeds of these, the individual states were to endow their agricultural colleges.
With the passage of these three statutes, agriculture was placed on a foundation of assured support and information.
In the Bureau of Agriculture one division followed another: the Food and Drug Administration, Bureau of Animal Industry, Office of Experimental Stations, Weather Bureau, and so on.
After the USDA became a cabinet-level bureau, bureaus of Soils, Plant Industry, Forestry, Chemistry, Entomology, Office of Public Roads, etc., were added.
The history of agriculture and the establishment of the USDA is a remarkable and interesting conglomeration of history, science, and politics, but at the same time a document of perseverance, endurance, and arrogance, of the sins, virtues, indifference, and unbreakable spirit of mankind.
One can only understand the importance and the present size of the USDA if one recognizes a few fundamentals of the agricultural history of America.
A university professor from Tennessee wrote the following concise description of the early farmers in America:
The first farmers in America had to battle with countless great obstacles: with the natural wilderness, the attacks of Indians and wild animals on their herds, with the difficulty of obtaining tools and seeds, with the necessity of becoming familiar with climate and soil which was completely different from what they were accustomed to at home. The first settlers were limited to the most primitive methods. They felled and burnt the smaller trees and the underbrush. Then they plowed the earth superficially with home-made plows and cultivated corn and tobacco with wooden rakes. The settlers accepted the harvest that nature gave them without thinking and used it wastefully. They cultivated the soil until it was exhausted and useless. Then they pushed on with their families and cleared new tracts of land. As long as there was immeasurable land available, no attention was paid to the conservation and fertility of the soil. America was such a wide and fruitful country that men used it this way for more than a hundred years before they discovered that there were limits even to the most productive land.
At that time, when some notion of these limits began to dawn, it appears to have occurred to people to plant the seed of the USDA in this barren, unfruitful soil. It is no wonder that in our time the starting point of all agricultural problems for the USDA lies in the question of how we can make productive again the enormous areas of America which were destroyed through wantonness, speculation, and ignorance.
You have to picture the situation clearly. For centuries countless Europeans came from their poor little fields and went into debt to set up farms in this immense land. They enacted a story like the sagas and old legends.
They had to fight their way through impenetrable forests and frightful dangers, endure heat, storms, and cold, live in caves or primitive log cabins and go through all the stages and tests of courage. If they didn’t perish on the way, they could succeed in amassing great fortunes.
However, these experiences and tests of courage changed the basic character of these Europeans and awoke in them an unquenchable desire for further wandering. As they hurried on from place to place, the tests they had to endure turned into adventures. They became accustomed to a nomadic, unstable way of life. They believed that limitless profits could be taken out without returning anything. They farmed wastefully without thinking about it because they forgot that everything needed to be conserved and cared for, including the soil if it is going to produce harvests.
The USDA has returned about fifty million acres of land to productivity in recent years. That is only a tenth of the area that had been ruined by erosion and turned into barren, unfruitful land.
In the yearbook of the USDA for 1943–1947, I read:
Education and research go together. Even more important than mere teaching of technology is the teaching of the scientific method. Its cultural values perhaps exceed its purely practical ones, great as these are. The methods of science are those of democracy. Each citizen needs to learn how to use science himself and not rely wholly on the expert.
Nowhere is this more important than on farms. It would be a sorry day for democracy if farmers generally turned to experts to make decisions for them. They need to learn from scientists, of course. It is the job of scientists to give them information in ways they can understand and use, and to work with them. It is definitely not one of doing the job of farming for the farmer.
The lag in time between the development of new knowledge and techniques through research and their use by farmers is too great. This is especially true of those things that require a considerable change in the farming system for realization of the benefits. The use of hybrid seed corn spread quickly because no change in practice was necessary other than the source of seed. But the substitution of new pasture and feed crops for cotton on soils better adapted to them may require a complete change in the farming system. Such changes come too slowly. . . .
Each step is vital to the others. . . . None should be allowed to lag. Nor should the time of peace be
wasted.
In another place in the same article, we can read: “We know that science is bound to remake the world even faster, either in an orderly and not too slow a way, or in a series of catastrophes. This very fact of change gives us another chance to solve the problems that lead to war. Any solution will recognize that because farm science touches all our lives, a good world will be one where farm science is strong and alert.
“What some of us do not realize, perhaps, is that science can make abundance physically possible. That is important, because we should know by now that no group can be secure while others are without confidence and hope.”
This means that the USDA wants to educate farmers to be independent, to use the results of research experiments. It means that the USDA has been intended from its beginning to be a source of knowledge in understandable terms for solving practical everyday problems, a collector and distributor of common resources.
This means that, while the USDA is concerned with the smallest and most trifling details of present living, it is prepared to teach people what they need to know for a new world. It shows that the USDA is an attempt to take action before it is too late, a manifestation of the will to correct the mistakes of the past, an expression of well-timed concern about present conditions and of a determination to build a better future.
Thus the USDA could hold the key to keeping peace, preventing hunger, and preserving life.
MARIE
One evening we were sitting at the table with the children, who were spending a short school vacation with us. We were all in that pleasant mood that makes life seem easy and unburdened and brings laughter over small and insignificant things.
The cheerfulness that evening came, on the one hand, from the practical fact that Zuck had sold an article to a magazine and that some money had come into the house again. On the other hand, it was because Michi, whose specialties were baking, sewing, and knitting, had decided to produce some genuine Mardi Gras fritters. This was a daring enterprise, since it was February and the temperature outside had plunged to thirty-five degrees below zero.
The Farm in the Green Mountains Page 13