Tags
When Abraham Lincoln was seven years old his father once again uprooted the family and moved from the impoverished soil of Kentucky to greener Indiana. Young Abe, taller and stronger than average, “had an axe put into his hands at once; and from that till within his twenty-third year, he was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument.” Indeed, Abraham joined his father in the male-dominated duties of a new claim, while Sarah learned from their mother about running a household.
The Little Pigeon Creek land offered good soil for growing crops and sufficient water access for drinking and farming, as well as accessibility to markets down the nearby Ohio River to sell excess crops. But the next thirteen years gave the same result as the farms in Kentucky. When the soil is tilled year after year it oxidizes out all the vegetable matter, thus making it impossible for the useful bacteria needed for nutrient replenishment to exist. The result is a dead soil that exists only as a mechanical retainer of the concentrated fertilizer applied. Over time, the soil loses its capacity to grow crops.
And so they moved again, this time to Illinois, where the now grown Lincoln wisely abandoned his reliance on the soil to reap the greener pastures of law and politics.
[The above is adapted from my new book, Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, due in stores July 31.]
Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like”my Facebook author page for more updates!
David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores late summer 2017. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
Hot White Snow 
I tend to till about once every three or four years. Just rotating makes a lot of difference. Compaction is a big problem though. Disruption of the biology is also significant. However when I do till, it is amazing to watch the deer gather in the field that very evening. I reckon they smell the freshly tilled earth. It would be neat to obtain some pure geosmin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosmin) and test at least a part of that hypothesis.
This fellow was enormously influential in soil physics (and dimensional analysis)…https://wwwrcamnl.wr.usgs.gov/uzf/abs_pubs/papers/SSSAJ.69.328.pdf. The Buckingham pi theorem comes up in most physics/engineering texts at some stage.
Restless folks tend to move on. Sometimes they are just odd, sometimes they are uniquely genius, sometimes criminal. Perhaps that is the Hunter Thompson theory of settlement ( I think from Hell’s Angels), but I’m sure it is more debated than that.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’ll be delving into the science of frontier farming more in my book-in-progress about Lincoln. Overuse of the soil is a constant problem for any farm. Like you say, rotating and other methods help.
For the Lincoln’s there were other issues, and to be honest, soil depletion probably had little influence on their decisions to move. Faulty land titles and slavery (in Kentucky) were big factors.
Thanks for the linked article. I’ll check out Buckingham and others. Could be very useful for the next book.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve gotten interested in learning about the local geography in Western Kentucky…planning to go up for the eclipse next month. But I will keep mobile in case of rain.
The story that has interested me in the evenings lately is that of the tobacco wars from which the Robert Penn Warren novel Night Rider emerges. The term Night Rider must be much older that that, but around Hopkinsville KY was the center of that conflict.
LikeLike
I think we’re supposed to get a 85% or more eclipse in my area so not planning on traveling for it. I’m not familiar with the Warren novel, Night Rider. I’ll have to check it out.
LikeLike
Curious about soil mechanics lately… as are apparently the local Steller’s Jays, who will rip out new plants (probably to eat the grubs hiding beneath). Regardless, it’s difficult to grow much in the rather thin layer of topsoil here without resorting to chemical enhancements. The forty-eight bags of yard waste I just had hauled away testify to the painfully slow decomposition of forest products, explaining much of why hardscrabble farmers so often burn the land to clear it. Testifies to all of the forests that have probably been saved since Lincoln’s day by the development of modern fertilizers. Seems like a hard way to make a “living.”
My own familiarity with the Buckingham Pi Theorem doesn’t have much to do with soil (other than that it might no longer be suitable for growing much of anything).
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve seen other birds too pull up plants to get at grubs, worms, etc. Part of the natural cycle I suppose, though farmers don’t see it that way. In a prior life I did a lot of work with pesticides and with the fertilizer associations. Quite a contrast with the “organic” farmers. There’s a lot of money in making dead soil appear to be alive.
I suppose you’re right that fertilizers have saved some trees because any given acre can be made more productive, though it also has played a role in more acreage being stripped of trees for crops as population grows, which gets back to your population post.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Perhaps sort of counterintuitive, but if you till a lot you end up with compact soil…..at least in the long run. In the short term not. So it is one of those common things that are pleasing today but lead to bad outcomes. It is a problem because too much aeration leads to poor moisture retention (that’s just my experience and carbon oxidation) and too little leads to inhabitable solids. But if you shake thinks up continually, you end up with the finely divided crumbs in the bottom of the cookie box.
The Haber process for producing ammonia (for fertilizer and explosives) is one of the common things taught in intro industrial chemistry. Just takes a catalyst and high pressure to combine 4 molecules into two. I think there is an interesting history to the motivation for that and WWI.
I get a little baffled by the miles of monoculture pines around the Gulf Coast…the national forests seem to do better than other managers.
Armadillos are are still the major garden excavator in my realm. Just digging to eat insects in areas that are irrigated. They have migrated I think really far in the last twenty years. Used to, I’d never see them north of Birmingham, but I think they are well into Illinois now. But then possums used to be warm weather critters too. It is amazing to see an armadillo jump when startled.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks for the info on tilling and compaction. I definitely have more to learn on soil dynamics. I remember writing a piece about ammonia for a pesticide company a long while back; I’ll have to dig it out to see what I wrote since I moved on to industrial chemicals for the last part of my consulting career.
Interesting about armadillos. Being a northern boy I don’t know much about them. Opossums, on the other hand.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yep, I’d see the occasional possum in the northern midwest in the 80’s. I think they just needed a place to overwinter and human constructions afford that. I kinda think armadillos have been limited by river crossings, but I don’t know…I’ve seen them swim. Just maybe not a favorite thing to do.
LikeLiked by 1 person