From Days Gone By June 25, 1921

June 25, 1921.
    Mr. M. E. Crow who was Johnson County's county agent wrote about a Johnson County farmer who he thought had the right idea to combat the boll weevil.
    In the sandhills of southeast Johnson County there is a man named Baker, from Missouri; and he is showing the people how to divorce themselves from cotton. He has nearly four hundred acres in a body there and has seventy-five acres in corn and velvet beans that he will hog off and graze off with his herd of grade Durham cattle.
    He has seventy-five acres in oats and he will house them to winter his herd on. Then sow it back in cowpeas and pick some of them; the rest will be turned under and seeded back to oats next fall and have a good pasture all winter, and more oats next spring, and his land will soon be in a high state of cultivation.
    He has one of the best pure bred roan Durham bulls in this part of Georgia. His hogs are all good grades except his herd boar, which is a Duroc, and he is a registered one, Dr. Brinson by name. Mr. Baker has some two hundred acres in pasture and they are sown in Dallas and carpet grass, Lespedeza, red top timothy and different clovers.
    Now, if Mr. Baker, at 77, can come here and see in so short a time that it pays to diversify his farming, why can't some of our good farmers, who have been here always, see where it will pay them to do the same thing.
    Some will stick to cotton until Gabriel blows his trumpet, and then say if we all do that the market will be glutted. You have been raising cotton since before Whitney invented the cotton gin and you have failed to see where you were growing too much cotton.
    There will be shipped into Georgia in year 1921, over two million dollars worth of feed and meat and lard. Shall we do as Mr. Baker is doing, or shall we continue to grow boll weevil and a half crop of cotton at a loss to ourselves and keep impoverishing our lands by taking all off and leaving nothing there to build our farms up with.
    Let some of us get the Baker way of doing our farming. Go and see his farm one mile west of Meeks, Georgia and more fence, better stock and better land. More hay and money.