NEW PIONEER OF THE LAND

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVIII, Issue 23259, 21 July 1945, Page 3

NEW PIONEER OF THE LAND

Worn-out Farm Restored Fame Becomes Widespread Cosmas Blubaugh's neighbours said that lie. was crazy, but he restored a worn-cut farm to such rich productivity that its tame spread far and wide. For my money it is the most beautiful farm in America, writes Louis Bromfield in the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch." You see it best from the top of the hill where the whole farm lies spread out in an amphitheatre of plenty, with the contoured fields in semi-circular strips dyed various greens—forest on the crest, then a strip of orchard, then rows of black raspberries and alternating strips of light-green corn and emerald-green alfalfa. At the bottom of the bowl, in a grove of black walnut trees, sit the neat white houses, the big barn, the apple storage house and the corn drier. The big spring pond, blue as the brilliant Ohio sky above it, full of bass and bluegills, spreads its beauty in the very dooryard and near it graze fat cattle and hogs. Children play under the trees; neighbours and friends from nearby villages work in the fields and orchards. AU around is a country of abandoned or run-down farms, houses and barns fallen, the fields a wilderness of weeds. Underbrush and forest seedlings are reclaiming the once rich land. This country is the victim of bad and greedy farming. In the midst of it the Blubaugh place is like a jewel in a tarnished setting.

A big part of the beauty of this farm is Cosmas Blubaugh himself, in his blue-denim pants, checked shirt and old hat a slight, spry man with greying hair, a sunburned wrinkled face and a pair of the brightest blue eyes I have ever seen. There is a dignity in the small, wiry figure which makes him taller and more impressive than his size. That is because he is his own boss in the midst of a security as nearly absolute as is to be found on this earth. He has brought employment to the people working there about him. He has turned a farm which was once a liability into a productive asset. All over Ohio he is known as one of the state's good citizens. The state university has conferred upon him the title of Master Farmer. Blubaugh is as much a pioneer as his grandfather who. long ago. helped clear these hills. There are farms in Knox County which since Indian times have belonged only to Blubaughs. One of them, now abandoned, lies just over the hill. Sometimes Cosmas will drive you over the long curving road to see the sick fields and the wrecked buildings. That, was the way Cosmas’ farm looked a little more than 20 years ago when he left the city to return to his own county. Early Days On the farm where Cosmas was born the buildings are in pretty good condition. but the hilly fields have been allowed to go back to grass and hay. By the time Cosmas was 20 years old it was clear to him that the home place could no longer provide a good living for a whole family. It was like that all over the county. The young boys were going away to the towns and cities.

So Cosmas married and took bis young wife to Akron. He worked for a while at making rubber tyres for buggies, then went to selling insurance. He worked hard and saved his money, and there began to grow in his mind a dream of returning to the wild open beauty of the hill country. In 1924 Cosmas found a worn-out abandoned 140-acre farm and bought it on time with part of his savings. No one had lived on the place for 20 years. The barn needed repairs and the house had long since fallen down. During the first winter •‘"and spring the family lived in a sagging shack on a neighbouring abandoned farm while Cosmas repaired the barn and laid the foundation for a new house. When warm weather came his wife rebelled. She said she would rather sleep in the barn on mattresses stuffed with fresh clean whpat straw than stay longer in that wretched shack. And so w'hile the house w T as being built with lumber cut from their woods, the family slept in the barn. To the children the experience was like playing “pioneers.” They didn’t under- ■ stand until years later that they actually were pioneers on the frontiers of a new wilderness.

The first years were hard going. The soil was miserably poor in minerals, and in humus —that residue of decayed and decaying organic material without which all soil is dead soil. Cosmas spent some of his precious cash on fertilisers, mostly phosphates. The crops were miserable. The water supply which, within his memory, had been excellent, both in springs and wells, no longer held up through the summer. There were always troubles. Mockery of Neighbours Most discouraging of all was the mockery of neighbours. Most of them were past middle age. for the young ones had long since gone off to the city. Many of their farms were very near the end. They told Cosmas he was crazy to believe he could build back that worn-out farm and make it, pay. But Cosmas was learning from his land. He said. “I was feeling my way, but I did know enough to pile on that soil every scrap of manure and trash and litter I could get. Chemical fertiliser helped, but it would have done no good if there was no good rotten humus in the soil. We hauled old straw and spoiled hay and corn fodder from neighbour's farms and put in on our land. A big corn shelter in Danville gave us 5000 bushels of corncobs. We had a big sawdust pile in the woods Everybody said sawdust would poison the ground, but we used it to mulch the trees in our new orchard. Pretty soon all that stuff ploughed into the fields began to pay dividends.” Cosmas on his own had hit on the system of conserving soil and water that has made such striking progress in the past five years—building afresh the topsoil which nature needed hund-

reds of thousands of years to create, and which we have destroyed at an appalling rate. By returning the lifegiving humus to the land, man can now’ build an inch of topsoil a year. “But I found there still wasn’t enough stuff in the soil to stop the hillside from washing away,” he said. So one day he made a trip to the U.S Soil Conservation station some 40 miles away. There he saw hillsides planted on the contour in alternate strips of row crops and haysod. so that even if soil and water broke away’ on the cultivated strips it was caught by the sod strips and the water seeped into the ground instead of running' off. He saw trash farming, which chops manure and rubbish into the soil and makes it porous as blotting paper. He saw wide shallow ditches running on contour around hills tp impound any run-off water. With the help of his boys and workers Cosmas remade the whole pattern of his farm. The old square fields gave way to strips and contours. There was no more run-off water carrying off each year the tons of humus and topsoil he had worked so hard to create. From then on the revolution in that wornout farm went ahead two or three times I as fast. Increased Production In a little less than 10 years, corn yields leaped from 15 bushels per acre to 100 bushels; wheat from 18 to 35 bushels. Another miraculous thing happened: Springs which had nearly dried up began to flow again as they I had done when the first pioneers cut down the primeval forest. The wells. ■ which had dried up during his first ; years on the place, yielded an inex- ; haustible flow of water. The two ponds ; were full of water, even last summer i during the worst drought Ohio had | known in 50 years. The water trapped | on the hillside went into the ground ‘ and came out again in clear cold springs I instead of running off to the Gulf of I Mexico, carrying with it tons of precious topsoil. The orchard flourished and gradually the farm began to provide a good i income and a good life, not only’ for Cosmas Blubaugh but for two sons and their wives, a daughter and her. husband, and five grandchildren. Another house was built and improvements made on the first house, so that to-day the women on the place have every convenience of a city apartment. Gradually the story of the reclaiming of that old farm from wilderness to productivity spread through all Ohio and neighbouring states. People came to see it from long distances. Once 500 experts and notables visited it on a laboratory tour of the "Friends of the Land." People came from neighbouring farms and villages in the evening to swim and fish in the spring ponds. This year the original investment of 5800 dollars in savings, plus hard work, produced from cattle, hogs, wheat, hybrid seed corn, fruit anti forage seeds a gross income of 20.000 dollars, divided among Blubaugh and his children and grandchildren. Recently the family has acquired an adjoining farm of 160 acres. The 20,000 dollars is

only part of the story, for with it has been the best of diets, good and spacious living in one of the most beautiful spots on earth. What Cosmos Blubaugh has done is no miracle. It was accomplished by brains, hard work, and willingness to learn.' He has done a great job and already has taught countless others how to do it. He stands on his own feet, secure and economically independent as every American should be. He has a great, pride of achievement and that human dignity which is the greatest reward democracy can give. He is one of the New Pioneers, so badly needed to restore our agriculture and husband our precious natural resources. There are in the armed servic.es thousands of young men who are hungry for land and economic independence and security and the dignity which comes with all those things. There is no more free, rich virgin land to give them, and the naturally rich, land if for sale at all. commands prohibitive prices. But scattered from one end of Ibis country to the other tire thousands of farms in need ol salvaging. farms like the one Blubaugh brought back to life. A score or more of agencies, state and federal, will give advice and information and even physical aid to help to do the job of restoration. What we need is a race of New Pioneers like Cosmas Blubaugh.