Centennial (128 page)

“Not as good as this. Gentlemen, within the hour you will see my miracle. You will see the Word of God come down to earth and made real. I started dry-land farming on that sacred Sunday morning when I was staring out the church door at the bleak and empty plains of my youth. Nothing grew on those plains, and I heard the minister reading from the Book of Genesis, ‘And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.’ And the word of God descended upon me at that moment, and I understood.”

Grebe was looking at Dr. Creevey as these words were spoken, and he observed the sincerity in the man’s face. Then Creevey added, “And subdue it! That is what God wants us to do with this land, and I shall show how each of you can go forth and subdue your portion.”

When the auto-buses drove into the yard of Dr. Creevey’s experimental farm, the visitors knew that they were in a special place, for the farm machinery was clean and the barns were in order. But the group did not linger there, for Dr. Creevey was eager for them to wander over his fields and see for themselves what could be accomplished with dry-land farming.

They walked several miles. Some fields were fallow, some were growing grains Grebe did not recognize, and some were about to be plowed. The pattern bore no relationship to what an Iowa farmer would be doing with his land in September, and Grebe quickly realized that if anyone were to dry-farm, he must listen to the experience of someone like Creevey, because this farm in western Kansas was flourishing. Much more of it lay fallow than would be permitted in Iowa, but the fields that were working were performing miracles.

The other visitors were equally impressed, and all wanted to hear Dr. Creevey’s secrets. So after their inspection they assembled in one of the barns, where a blackboard was set up before rows of benches, and when they were settled, a representative from the Rock Island Railroad rose, and with a piece of chalk in his hand, said, “Gentlemen, I am going to place upon this board the one irrefutable fact about this wonderful farm you have just inspected.” With that he wrote a huge 14. “There it is, gentlemen, the basic fact you must remember as long as you are with us. On this land, only fourteen inches of rain falls a year. We have no irrigation, no tricks. Only the genius of this man, Dr. Thomas Dole Creevey.”

The little doctor walked to the board, his vest unbuttoned and his eyes flashing. “I affirm,” he said in his lowest voice, “that any man in this room who follows the principles I have delineated can move onto any land in the west, if it have topsoil and at least twelve inches of rainfall a year, and duplicate what you have just seen.”

Bursting with enthusiasm, he jumped around before the blackboard, jabbing his right forefinger into the faces of men in the front row as he laid forth the ten principles which would revolutionize the west.

“One, the whole secret is to catch, store and protect from evaporation whatever rain falls on your land.

“Two, you can never catch and store enough in one year to grow a good crop. Therefore, you must allow about sixty percent of your land to lie fallow. If you’ve been farming eighty acres in Iowa, plan to farm at least three hundred and twenty out here. And allow most of it to rest and accumulate water.

“Three, you must know your soil. Don’t move a foot west of Iowa without an earth auger. It looks like this and enables you to bore beneath the surface and see what’s going on. How deep the topsoil is, how wet.

“Four, keep a mulch of some kind on your fields throughout the year, for this will prevent what moisture you do get from evaporating. You must never allow even one drop of rain to escape.

“Five, whenever it rains you must do two things. Fall on your knees and thank God. Then jump up, harness your horses to the disk and turn the field over while the last drops are falling. This will throw a mulch that traps the water. If you wait till tomorrow before you disk, half the water will evaporate.

“Six, plow in the fall. If you keep a small family garden, you will naturally want to plow that in the spring, but plow your big fields in October and November.

“Seven, plow at least ten inches deep. Then disk. Then harrow.

“Eight, plant your wheat only in the fall. Plant only Turkey Red.

“Nine, after a field has lain fallow for a year, it’s a fine idea to raise a crop of lucerne or milo and plow it under. This roughage aerates the soil, adds nitrates and enriches.

“Ten, farm every day of your life as if next year would see the drought.”

As he finished his decalogue he clasped his hands in front of his round belly and bowed his head. He knew that he was asking inexperienced men to engage in a dangerous gamble, and some would be so faltering in courage that they would fail; for them he felt deep sadness. But he also knew that some of his listeners were men of determination like the pioneers who had settled this land originally; for them he felt an abounding joy. They were about to enlist in a great adventure, and he knew they could succeed.

In the quiet barn he delivered his challenge: “I do not offer you men an easy life. I offer you riches if you will work. I do not promise your wives a life of ease. I do promise them partnership in the last great challenge of this land. And to husband and wife I offer that divine promise so beautifully expressed in Isaiah 35:

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing
...
Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees
...
for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water ...

In the next three days Dr. Creevey demonstrated each of his principles, showing how to use the earth auger and the mulch and the system of summer tillage. Since it did not rain during their visit, one morning he said, “We shall make believe that rain falls at ten o’clock, because you must fix in your minds what to do when it does.”

So at ten a small sprinkler was hauled onto one of the fallow fields, and four horses dragged it back and forth for an hour to show how far the water would penetrate. As soon as they left, Dr. Creevey shouted, “Rain’s over!” and he hitched four other horses to his disk and proceeded to turn over barely four inches of the moistened soil, throwing it to the bottom of the furrows where its water content would be protected from evaporation. He then unhitched his team, fastening them to a harrow, with which he smoothed the roughened field. In this way the rainfall was conserved.

“When I plow this field in October,” he told the men confidently, “and plant it with Turkey Red, I am assured a crop, even if no moisture falls during the winter, for I have trapped the moisture down there and it lies waiting. The only thing that can injure me is a sudden hailstorm.”

At the end of his exposition he placed before his visitors his farm accounts for the past five years, and they could see for themselves what he had accomplished on this Kansas farm, on the one near Denver, Colorado, and on the one in California. There were the rainfall records; there were the crops harvested; there were the funds deposited in the bank. One hundred and thirty-one farmers were satisfied that it could be done, and more than ninety were prepared to follow in his footsteps. Their plows would tear apart the sleeping west. Of the ten principles Creevey had expounded, nine would have permanent applicability; only one was defective, and this only because he had failed to take into consideration the interaction between it and a natural phenomenon which swept the plains at rare intervals.

During the first twenty years of his experiments, the nature of this fatal deficiency would not become apparent, but when it did. it would come close to destroying a major portion of the nation.

On the train back to Ottumwa, Earl Grebe was preoccupied with the task of convincing himself that he ought to leave his farm in Iowa and take the risk of dry-land farming farther west. He was a cautious man, and the idea of leaving the fields on which he had been raised was distressing, but since he had worked them for some years without moving any closer to ownership, he was receptive to any solution which promised improvement. Magnes Volkema was certain that Colorado was the answer.

“Look at the pictures,” he told Grebe. “Same kind of land, same kind of results.”

They studied the sixteen-page pamphlet which Creevey had distributed as they boarded the train. It detailed the rich future that awaited any man who bought a dry-land farm in the vicinity of Centennial, Colorado. The wheat was tall. The furrows were straight. The pages were filled with photographs of expensive homes that had been built by enterprising men and women who had moved west. Pages of statistics showed what the rainfall was and how long the growing season, but the persuasive portion of the brochure came in the words of the man who had compiled it. The photograph showed a frank, sincere businessman in a dark suit, sitting at his desk beneath a shiny new sign which said:

Sl
ap Your Brand on a Hunk of Land

MERVIN WENDELL

RANCHES AND ESTATES

Wend Your Way to Wendell

Below the reassuring portrait were the words: “In 1889 I arrived in Centennial penniless, but through the prudent purchase of irrigated farmland, I now own the palatial residence portrayed on the opposite page. You can do the same with your dry-land farm.” The photograph showed a fine new mansion at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Ninth Street, with Mervin Wendell standing on the lower step and looking up fondly at his handsome wife on the porch. It exuded success and stamped Real Estate Agent Wendell as a man to be both trusted and emulated.

Grebe and Volkema were particularly interested in the map of the region open to the lucky families who moved west, for it showed where the proposed new town would be located. “Line Camp,” the brochure said, ‘soon to be the Athens of the west. The school will be housed in this fine building, facing this edifice in which the civil officials will maintain their headquarters.” The photograph showed the two stone buildings built there by Jim Lloyd back in 1869. They were sturdy and clean and the years had not marked them. They sat solidly upon the plains, lending an impression of permanence and promise.

“The land office will be housed here,” the brochure promised, “and all you have to do is go onto the prairie, locate the 320 acres you prefer, and claim it for your own. Three years to a day from the moment you step foot on your chosen land, it’s yours, and you’ll have a paper signed by the President of the United States to prove it.”

“Can you imagine owning 320 acres like the ones Dr. Creevey had?” Volkema asked. “A man could make his fortune on that.”

Grebe was looking at the photograph of a dry-land farm operated by a man named John Stephenson, who, the caption maintained, had come to Centennial penniless in 1908, had purchased some land from Mervin Wendell and now lived in a palatial home. The land looked good and the wheat was tall.

“He wouldn’t dare lie about this, would he?” Grebe asked suspiciously.

“No! When we get to Centennial and ask, ‘Where is Stephenson’s farm?’ Mr. Wendell’d be in real trouble if there wasn’t any such farm. This is real, Earl. People are making their fortune out there, and you and I ought to be part of it.,

So the two men studied the seductive publication, and the more they saw, the more convinced they became, so that by the time their train reached Ottumwa they were not reporters, they were missionaries, and each man went home to talk to his wife and neighbors.

Alice Grebe was a tall, thin young woman of twenty-two. She had been reared on a farm east of Ottumwa, one of seven children of deeply religious parents, and Earl had met her at church. He had courted her over a period of three years, and when he formally proposed, at first her parents seemed reluctant to let her go, even though their home was crowded. But her father and older brother launched an inspection of Earl’s life and came away satisfied that he was worthy to join their God-fearing family.

The wedding had taken place only the year before, with three members of Earl’s family in attendance and nineteen of Alice’s. As she stood before the minister she looked more dedicated than radiant, for she was not a beautiful girl. Her quality lay in her capacity for work and her desire to found a Christian home. The women of Ottumwa who watched as she pledged her vows concluded that here was a girl who would give her husband little trouble and much support. She was, indeed, an ideal wife for a young farmer, and the fact that she preferred rural life enhanced this promise.

This first year of marriage had been close to perfect, because each honestly sought to be a good partner; their only disappointment stemmed from Earl’s inability to acquire a farm of his own. Iowa prices were simply too high, and the young couple had to content themselves with leasing a farm owned by a banker in town. They inspected several farms up for sale but could not meet the required down payments and had resigned themselves to working for others when Dr. Thomas Dole Creevey arrived in town.

Alice Grebe had been the first to see the announcement and it had been she who had encouraged her husband and Magnes Volkema to attend the first night’s lecture. On the second night, when Dr. Creevey promised to get down to specifics, she and Vesta Volkema had sat near the front, and it was partly because of their visible enthusiasm that the audience had nominated their husbands to take the trip west to investigate Creevey’s experimental farm.

“It’s all he promised,” Earl reported as they sat together after supper. “Look at these photographs of the land we get free in Colorado.” When she saw the alluring pamphlet, and the friendly countenance of the real estate man who was volunteering to help them acquire land around the new town he was planning, she experienced the same excitement that had gripped her husband when he had first seen the publication.