Random Thoughts

I got to thinking about this area and the way it used to be. Less than a hundred years ago this area was largely treeless. The trees had all been clear cut to make room for agriculture. the main cash crop, of course, was cotton. Many acres would belong to one family, what they could not farm themselves they would share crop. Another family would live on the land and farm it, sharing the proceeds with the owners. The history books make the owners look like some kind of evil landlords but in reality they were almost as dirt poor as the sharecroppers. This was sustenance living and I wouldn't want to go back to it. The land looked very different then and erosion was a real problem. The farmers didn't have the luxury of expensive fertilizers and couldn't afford to let the land lie fallow. You could see for miles and all you saw was farm land punctuated by deep gullies caused by unregulated runoff. When Kudzu was introduced to control erosion it was considered a blessing. Now it's largely regarded as a foreign pest. We don't have the severe winters needed to control its' growth. We also don't have the farm animals to eat it and limit its' spread. Back then the farmers would usually let trees grow along the edges of their fields, they would call these "wind breaks". When a tree got to a certain size, however, it was usually cut for firewood. Thus, no large trees ,except perhaps, in the cities. The large two story houses the landowners would build were usually not plumbed and were heated by fireplaces that required constant attention and large volumes of fuel. The "Good Old Days" were filled with a lot of work. When the farm children abandoned the farm and went to work in the mills they attained a luxury they couldn't believe. They had indoor plumbing and regular work hours with more leisure time than they had ever known. The picture is our Koi pond.