"But, what are you going to do about it?" you say. "You can't change the slope of the hills, can you? And the farmer has _got_ to plough his land--you just said so yourself."
Yes, he's got to plough his land, to be sure; but so has he got to have pasture for his live stock. If he hasn't any live stock, that just shows what kind of a farmer he is. Every farmer ought to have live stock. Corn always brings a great deal more when it goes to market "on four feet," as the saying is; and, besides, the live stock give back to the fields, in the shape of manure, a large part of what they eat. Now, if you have live stock you must have pasture, and all land with a slope of more than one foot in thirty should be used partly for pasture and partly to grow wood for the kitchen stove, and hickory-nuts and walnuts for winter firesides. Although the land slopes, the mat made by the grass roots will keep it from washing away.
"But suppose you lived where there wasn't any land to speak of that didn't tip up; in New England, say--what would you do then?"
Leave the upper part of the slopes in the woods. Then the water that carries off the soil will not run entirely away, as it does in ploughed fields, but will creep down slowly, and, charged with the decay of the woods, help fertilize the lower lands and change the rocks beneath them into soil--the acids from the decaying vegetable matter eating into them.
"But still," you say, "there are farm lands that must be ploughed even if they do wash away; they're all the land a man has, sometimes. What then?"
Plough deep. Then the soil soaks up more of the rain and lets the water pass away in clear springs. This not only saves soil but, as we have just said, helps to decompose the subsoil and the bed rock.
Then there's another thing that good farmers do in such cases. They plough ditches along the hillside leading by a gentle slope to the natural watercourses; so the water of the rains, instead of going down the hills with a rush, and going faster the farther it runs--like a boy on a toboggan--is caught and checked in these sloping ditches, and much of the soil it contains deposited before it reaches the streams.
[Illustration: HOW THE FRENCH PROTECT THEIR HILLSIDE FARMS