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Land and Life in Boone County, Kentucky: Beyond Economics

Notes by Jas. Duvall, M. A.

2008

"Economia is that land where everything has a price, and everything can be sold or destroyed, for a price."

Dr. Socrates Ruggles

Is agriculture an industry or a way of life?  Land & Life

Factors:

Sanity – man must remain in touch with nature and the land.
Beauty – man must improve the land and its fertility.
Wealth – the land must bear a constant and steady supply of food and other natural commodities, by means that result in happy and healthy lives.

Enriching and reconstructing agriculture and the rural farm population. Policies should result in greater employment and soil fertility. We must inculcate the values and ideals that make rural life possible. These cannot be “reconstructed” like soil fertility, they can only be taught by example, preaching, and philosophical teaching.

Change must take place if there is to be a new attitude to the land. There must be some major resolution of the major tensions in the beliefs of our time. This includes religious beliefs about God, man, and nature. It includes also uncovering our metaphysical presuppositions.

Land as a “sacred” aspect of life.

or,

What is Wrong with the "Green" Movement?

The roots of the current Green movement, both on the right and the left, are to be found in Fascism. The Fascist attempt to solve the industrial problem also included a theory of returning to the land and the ecological problem. Both are characterized by an attempt of the elite to control or destroy the existence of the “unenlightened”, or society as it actually exists.

The inventor Charles F. Kettering once said that the reason so many people present theories of how to improve the world is that they never had to present a working model. Any improvement made in society must be done while the whole thing is a going concern, like those roads that are improved while traffic continues to move on them.

Modern ecological movements are generally not attempts to improve the natural environment we have; they insist on destroying the whole fabric and beginning anew. They are opposed to human freedom, and especially to democracy. They, like the Gnostics, hate humanity, as it actually exists, and are willing to destroy society for the hoped for benefit. As it stands the movement, by and large, is an assault on humanity, with an entirely destructive agenda. “Nature” is treated as a victim, and the Green movement claims to speak for it, though it is a constituency which cannot reject it, whatever harm it does.

This does not mean that ecology is not important. On the contrary. Human relation to the land is the single most important problem facing society today; especially in places like Boone County, Kentucky. Land is not merely a means of production. Some land should not be farmed, built on, or used for any commercial purpose whatever. Thoreau wrote of such land:

I think of no natural feature which is a greater ornament and treasure to this town than the river. It is one of the things which determine whether a man will live here or in another place, and it is one of the first objects which we show to a stranger. In this respect we enjoy a great advantage over those neighboring towns which have no river. Yet the town, as a corporation, has never turned any but the most utilitarian eyes upon it and has done nothing to preserve its natural beauty. They who laid out the town should have made the river available as a common possession forever. The town collectively should at least have done as much as an individual of taste who owns an equal area commonly does in England. Indeed, I think that not only the channel, but one or both banks of every river should be a public highway, for a river is not useful merely to float on. In this case, one bank might have been reserved as a public walk and the trees that adorned it have been protected, and frequent avenues have been provided leading to it from the main street. This would have cost but few acres of land and but little wood, and we should all have been gainers by it. Now it is accessible only at the bridges, at points comparatively distant from the town, and there is not a foot of shore to stand on unless you trespass on somebody’s lot; and if you attempt a quiet stroll down the bank, you soon meet with fences built at right angles with the stream and projecting far over the water, where individuals — naturally enough, under the present management — seek to monopolize the shore. At least we shall get our only view of the stream from the meeting house belfry. As for the trees which fringed the shore within my remembrance — where are they? and where will the remnant of them be after ten years more?
So, if there is any central and commanding hilltop, it should be reserved for the public use. Think of a mountaintop in the township, even to the Indians a sacred place, only accessible through private grounds. A temple, as it were, which you cannot enter without trespassing — nay, the temple itself private property and standing in a man’s cow-yard.

[Henry David Thoreau, Wild Fruits: Thoreau’s Rediscovered Last Manuscript, (New York: Norton, 2000), p. 236-237.]

Other land should be used to produce food for man, but not at the expense of destroying the fertility of the land, which is merely pushing starvation back a generation or two. Certainly this should not be done for mere monetary profit. Land has value in itself as the habitation of man. Decisions made about land are never merely economic, but have philosophical and metaphysical consequences.

What is at stake it the nature of civilization and human life. Agriculture involves our relation to the land, and the question of how man will live in nature. Our health, sanity, and the beauty of the countryside, depend upon this relation. This relation cannot be the result of a simple economic formula. Agriculture and industry are in fundamental opposition. Agriculture, unlike industry, produces living products to sustain life, and this is done through human means. Land is priceless. We may set a commercial price upon it, but that does not mean this is its true value. Its beauty and fertility must not be permitted to decay. The wild creatures upon it, like man himself, must be permitted to live and thrive. Man and animal must be allowed to enjoy the land.

It is only in this sense that land is "sacred".  As Wendell Berry, or foremost Kentucky writer on ecological and agricultural themes has written, there is no place that is not sacred, places are either sacred, or desecrated.  We do not worship land as such, but we hold it in reverence, because our life depends upon it, and the life of the race.  Just as we hold human life sacred from its conception, so we must also rightly respect that which is required for its existence.  In the terms of the Old Testament, the land must become "married"  (the meaning of the Hebrew word Beulah), and this is man's proper relation to the land.

31 March 2008.  Slightly revised, 22 Oct 2010.

Draft of article on Conservation in Boone County, Kentucky
Written while I was the Local History Research Specialist for the Boone County Public Library

James Duvall, M. A.
Big Bone University:  A Think Tank, Research Institute, & Public Policy Center
Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem.
Big Bone, Kentucky



Agriculture in Boone County, Kentucky

A Draft of my essay Agriculture in Boone County, Kentucky



The Early Period: Settlement to the Civil War

Draft begun 28 July 2006



Settlement in Kentucky is intimately related to agriculture. The earliest explorers were interested in hunting, but those that followed were invariably looking for lands to cultivate. If they were speculators they had an eye to lands that farmers would be interested in. Agriculture in Boone County is part of the story of farming in northern Kentucky.

The farmers found that once the Indians were no longer threat the biggest obstacle they faced was the forest. The pioneers did not like trees, at least not large forests full of trees, and they set to work to clear the countryside as soon as possible. John Tanner, the boy who was captured by the Indians, tells in his book how his father, the preacher John Tanner, who was the first settler in the Boone County, cleared trees with the help of his slaves for a cornfield, then stood guard with a rifle while the crop was planted. The clearing of the trees was all done with the ax, and with fire, at an enormous cost in labour.

John Taylor, another Baptist preacher, who had sold Tanner the land he cleared, and followed him soon after, tells of clearing fifteen acres, with the help of his slaves, in a year. Trees were something to be gotten rid of. They were unproductive, and could not be used for crops until the clearing was done. In addition they might hide lurking Indians. No settler contemplated the beauty of these primeval forests, but they loved to see large expanses of cleared land in crops and pastures.

Along the banks of the Ohio river, in the alluvial flood plains, lies the largest amount of prime cropland in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The only area that can match it is the inner Bluegrass. Boone County, with almost fifty acres of river shore, one of the longest in the state, offered a quantity of such land as a prime attraction to early settlers. Much of it is in the area of Petersburg, in northern Boone County. Though not so extensive, there is also many acres of this kind of land around Middle Creek and the town of Grant, known today as Belleview. Even today these river bottom lands have the highest yields of corn per acre any where in the nation. It was not long before all of these lands were claimed. The lands at Big Bone, though claimed early, contain very few acres of this prime land; most of what there is lies in narrower strips along Big Bone and Mud Lick creeks.

Aside from the flood plains Boone County falls into two distinct sections based on soil type: These sections are the eastern and western, and this has had a huge impact on settlement and agriculture in Boone County, for the best lands (excepting the river areas) were furthest from the river, which meant difficulties in transportation. Picture a wavy line running roughly down the center of the county, with a single band running along the Ohio River: this band is considered to be 75 to 100 percent prime. To the east the land is considered to be between 25 to 50 percent prime, which means that the land is considered suitable for cultivation. To the west the land is considered less than 25 percent prime, which means that it is considered suitable for pasture for stock, and occasional cultivation. The soil is mostly composed of silty clay, and the steepness of most of the land means that the top soil is but a shallow layer in most places. Most of it is marginal agricultural land. Its best use would be as woodland and pasture, with a some intermixture of crops on the most suitable land.

(See maps)

Sir Albert Howard, widely regarded as one of the founders of organic agriculture, writing in 1947, sums up the reasons for erosion and soil damage in the United States:

“Such, in this great country, are the results of misuse of the land. The causes of this misuse include lack of individual knowledge of soil fertility on the part of the pioneers and their descendants; the traditional attitude which regarded the land as a source of profit; defects in farming systems, in tenancy, and finance — most mortgages contain no provisions for the maintenance of fertility; instability of agricultural production as carried out by millions of individuals, prices, and income, in contrast to industrial production carried on by a few large corporations. The need for maintaining a correct relation between industrial and agricultural production, so that both can develop in full swing on the basis of abundance, has only recently been understood. The country was so vast, its agricultural resources were so immense, that the profit seekers could operate undisturbed until soil fertility — the country’s capital — began to vanish at an alarming rate.”

Sir Albert Howard, The Soil and Health, (Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, 1947), p. 88.


Did agriculture in Boone County conform to this pattern, or did the mixed farming in the area save us from the worst effects of the country wide pattern?

Mortgages that specify the farm must be left in conditions of good husbandmanry, and that so many acres of fruit trees must be planted each year.  (Cite these from the Boone County Deed Books)

Nature of mixed farming: Plant and animals together are necessary to maintain fertility.  Boone County always had mixed farming.

Relation of agriculture and economics in Boone County.

Chart prices when possible

Prices of land over time

Division of lands

Slaves and laborers on individual farms

etc.

Updated 13 March 2008.


Note this was compiled from Documents and Notes made while I was the Local History Research Specialist at the Boone County Public Library.  I have not had time to complete this essay, but plan to complete it in the near future.  I have collected many items since March 2008, and plan to do more research in the future.

Thank you.

James Duvall, M. A.
Big Bone University:  A Think Tank, Research Institute, & Public Policy Center
Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem.
Big Bone, Kentucky

Do the Job Right!

"A Grave in Honduras"

"I saw several churches and cathedrals in Honduras with a row of bullet-holes in the front wall, about as high from the ground as a man's chest, and an open grave by the road-side, which had been dug by the man who was to have occupied it. The sight gave us a vivid impression of the uncertainties of government in Central America. The man who dug this particular grave had been captured, with two companions, while they were hastening to rejoin their friends of the government party. His companions in misery were faint-hearted creatures, and thought it mattered but little, so long as they had to die, in what fashion they were buried. So they scooped out a few feet of earth with the tools their captors gave them, and stood up in the hollows they had made, and were shot back into them, dead; but the third man declared that he was not going to let his body lie so near the surface of the earth that the mules could kick his bones and the next heavy freshet wash them away. He accordingly dug leisurely and carefully to the depth of six feet, smoothing the sides and sharpening the corners, and while he was thus engaged at the bottom of the hole he heard yells and shots above him, and when he poked his head up over the edge of the grave he saw his own troops running down the mountain-side, and his enemies disappearing before them. He is still alive, and frequently rides by the hole in the road-side on his way to the capital. The story illustrates the advisability of doing what every one has to do in this world, even up to the very last minute, in a thorough and painstaking manner."

From Three Gringos in Venezuela and Central America, by Richard Harding Davis (1895).