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(At this point I shall relate a story of a farmer and his land both before and after a plan was adopted.) I refer to C. A. Maier and his farm in Botetourt County, where I was agent before coming to Rappahannock.
It started in the early spring of 1936, just after I had been made County Agent of that county. Mr. Maier tricked me into visiting his farm by asking me to come for the purpose of showing him how to vaccinate cajves when the real problem, which he admitted before I even got out of the car, was MAKING A LIVING on worn out soils derived primarily from shale and sandstone, two of the poorest parent materials of any soils in that area! At this time the Maiers had been on the land (130 acres) for two or three years. Mr. Maier had put most of his life’s saving from employment as apprentice instructor at a Pennsylvania Railroad shop into the farm. He had been forced to retire a bit earlier than usual as the result of a head injury. The extra money had about run out and his pension was too small to live on as they wished. An abandoned tomato cannery £tood near by; it told as sad a story as did the Maier farm which had been gutted by the planting on steep hillside of tomatoes for the factory year after year in a rotation of tomatoes followed by abandoned land followed by more and deeper gullies.
I have never felt weaker in the stomach in my entire life than I did after walking over that farm with Mr. Maier and his son, Bernard. There was one gully after another and where there were no gullies sheet erosion had taken everything in the w'ay of top soil. Wheat stubble was spindlng in a sparse stand of hay for the coming year. Now and then a corn stubble the diameter of a lead pencil could be seen among the wheat.
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