Chapter 10

Owen resumes the Narrative:

Events really seemed to speed up after this. Mr. Hickey finished the field portion of his survey of our property by the end of February. He had marked out each of the plots of land and divided those indicated on the drawing that we had given him in half so the farmers would know the extent of the fields they were renting. He had also marked out each of the eight plots of land for the new houses. Knowing the length of each parcel, it had been easy for him to calculate the width and mark all of the corners of each new parcel. The new plats of the six original parcels and the eight new house parcels would be finished within ten days he assured me before leaving.

Those plats soon arrived, and we needed to take them into the courthouse. At the Office of the Recorder the sale of the land was recorded, and the old deeds superseded by the new plats so that new deeds could be created. Margie had made copies of all of the new plats somehow as they were done in less than an hour. She had also made enlarged copies of them so we could show the farmers where the fields they would be renting were located and their extent.

The grading and compaction of the sub-base of Plantation Lane was also finished about the same time that Mr. Hickey finished his survey, and the road crew had even done the portion from our gates to within ten feet of the house. Rain at that point slowed work on the Lane until it dried out some, but a day or so later, they started bringing in the rock for the base course. Margie and Robert were busy during all of that as it appeared that they now had two Portals in operation; one to the equipment yard and the other to the crusher site for the delivery of crushed rock. The steam tractor was now towing trains of dump wagons filled with crushed rock from the crusher site to Plantation Lane where teams of horses or mules were hitched to each of them in turn to spread the rock for the base course.

There was also now a steamroller available to roll and compact the rock after it had been sprayed with water from the water distributor wagon. The compacted rock was then called the base course when it reached the prescribed thickness of six inches. The surveyors were constantly checking that the base course was at the correct elevation all along the road. The steamroller differed from the steam tractor in that its rear wheels were smooth, and instead of front wheels it had a smooth drum that could be filled with water to increase its weight.

The crew of the steam tractor collected the empty dump wagons and towed them back to the crusher site before returning with more filled dump wagons. Once a sufficient length of roadway had been covered with base course, a second steam roller arrived to assist the first one along with a second water wagon. They completed the base course on the entire Lane before starting on the second or intermediate course of crushed rock. Upon completing that layer, they started on the surface course which had the smallest size of crushed rock or gravel. All of these courses were very thoroughly compacted by the steamrollers with the aid of the water wagons. The shoulders of the roadway were also spread with the same material as the surface course being first watered and then compacted.

While all of this was going on, the farmers who would be renting our land this year had come out to check on the condition of their fields. They were surprised to see the work being done on Plantation Lane, and even more surprised to see that the weeds and the brush had been burned off and that the fields were ready for tilling and planting as soon as the weather improved. We rented all eight of our available fields this year.

On Monday the 4th of March, the chickens that we had ordered arrived in Statesboro, and we needed to go into town to pick them up on Tuesday. We now have ten hens and one rooster. They are all 5 months old. We had cleaned up the chicken coop previously with several spells and had lined the interior and the nesting boxes with straw, and had obtained a new automatic galvanized watering pan for them to drink from and a hanging galvanized poultry feeder with twelve stations. We also had feed on hand for them. Joe and I had constructed a fenced area for them to run in during the day. It had netting over top of it to discourage hawks and other birds from attacking our chickens.

The cats had filled out at an amazing pace and were no longer the thin, undernourished little things that they had been when we acquired them. They received quite a surprise when the female tried to stalk the chickens and got pecked by several of them. Margie had a quiet meeting with them, and they no longer go near the chicken coop or its wire enclosed area.

Saint Patrick’s Day was on a Sunday this year, so the usual party that the O’Connells and all of the Irish have that day needed to wait until after church before it started. Margie and Robert brought O’Connell ale with them to our party, along with Celeste and Frank. Joe doesn’t really understand why the Irish are so dedicated to Saint Patrick, but he had some ale with us. Grace and Margie only had a small taste of the ale and drank tea the rest of the time. They had also brought the small music system with them, and we slow danced in the music room, which was more than large enough for our small gathering.

We were rather late getting up on Monday, the 18th of March, as the party had lasted well into the night, and there had been no studying of Magic that day. Following breakfast, Margie appeared with a young man of about 19 years of age or or so.

“This is my Cousin, Bartley O’Connell. We’ve transferred one of the Clan’s tractors here, and he will be tilling your fields over the next couple of days,” she told us.

“Hi, I’m Owen O’Connell, and this is my wife, Grace,” I told him, as we shook hands. He had a good firm grip.

“Yes, I saw you at the wedding reception,” he acknowledged with a smile.

“Bartley will be staying here while he is tilling the fields,” Margie reminded us.

“Yes, we’ve had a room set up for the past two weeks for whoever came to work on the fields,” Grace told her.

“Shall we go out and look at the fields?” Bartley asked following that. “You can look at the tractor also, as I don’t imagine that you have seen one like it before,” he added with a grin.

I led the way out the back door, but stopped in my tracks on seeing the tractor. It was huge! Not as large or as clumsy looking as a steam tractor, but still rather large with wheels some five feet in high at the rear and they were cleated like those on the steam tractor had been, and there were somewhat smaller wheels in the front. The centers of all of the wheels were made of metal but the remainder of the wheel looked like it was made of rubber like the latest bicycle tires. It also had a large cab like a locomotive with large windows, and the whole thing was painted green and yellow presenting an appearance that was rather garish, but there were also signs of use on the finish.

I finally noticed that there were two other pieces of equipment sitting behind the tractor. The first was a plow, but what a plow! I could see seven plow blades on this piece of equipment ... We had seen ride-on two bottom plows in the equipment displays at the county fairs that my family and other relatives had attended, but they required a four-horse or -mule team to pull them. I couldn’t imagine how much power this plow would require to pull it.

The second piece of equipment, I recognized as a disk harrow. It was a ten-foot-wide model and again it would require a lot of power to pull it.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Bartley asked from behind me.

“Yes, it is, and this runs on gasoline?” I asked.

“Actually, no, it runs on compressed gas like the street lights use, rather than liquid gasoline,” he told me indicating the difference.

“Compressed gas?” I asked not understanding.

“Yes, natural gas or rather its equivalent. We recycle all of our waste, and have a machine which produces gas from it along with several other by-products. The gas is filtered and compressed before being stored. Because it’s quite easy to use and maintain, we converted all of our tractors to run on compressed gas along with quite a bit of other equipment,” he told me proudly.

“Let’s move to the southern field,” Margie suggested, and we all joined hands before she cast the transfer spell.

“Very good,” Bartley said on looking out over the field of some 20 plus acres. “Robert told me that he had burned the fields for you several weeks ago,” he told us, as he reached down to get a handful of dirt and squeezed it before looking at it carefully.

“Yes, nearly anything will grow in this,” he told us before dropping the dirt and dusted his hands off. Margie transferred us to the northern field then for him to look at it also. When we returned to the yard, where Joe was looking at the tractor.

“What be dis?” he asked in a soft voice, as if afraid to know the answer.

“It’s a tractor, Joe. Mr. O’Connell is going to till the fields with it for us. Oh yes, this is Mr. Bartley O’Connell,” I told Joe before turning to Bartley.

“This is Joe, our assistant and general handy man,” I told him, as Bartley reached out to shake Joe’s hand. Joe was quite surprised by this, but shook hands with him.

“Good to meet you,” Bartley said before asking, “Will either of you be riding along on the tractor with me?”

“We could do that?” I asked in surprise.

“Yes, we have a jump seat on all of our big tractors, so the youngsters can ride with us when they are old enough. Everyone gets a chance to run the tractors as they get older, but some are more adept at it than others,” he told me with a big grin.

“Shall we start now?” he asked next. “I’ll need to mount the plow first,” he added and moved toward one of the other pieces of equipment to attach it to the tractor.

“Won’t that make a mess here in the yard?” I asked while looking at the plow as he attached it to the tractor.

“No, I’ll raise it out of the way before we start moving,” he told me.

“I’ll go with you for a while to see what it’s like,” I told him.

“Okay, let me get on first, and I’ll open the jump seat for you,” he told me, as he quickly got up on the tractor and moved something in the cab.

“Come on up,” he told me, but I was much slower getting on the unfamiliar machine. We were soon both seated, and Bartley explained the controls to me before starting the machine, but there were more levers, dials, and switches than I could keep track of that quickly.

“Don’t touch anything unless I tell you to,” he warned me, and I could see why.

“Stand back,” he warned the women and Joe who were still watching us. He pressed one of the buttons, and the machine roared to life but soon settled down to a low rumble. He then moved a lever, and I heard something moving behind me. On turning and looking out the back of the cab, I was just able to see that the plow attachment was now off the ground behind us.

“That’s its travel position,” he told me over the noise of the engine. “I’ll only need to raise it part way when I turn around between furrows,” he added, before giving the engine more gas, to increase its speed, and we moved off in the direction of the northern fields.

We soon arrived at the western edge of the north field, and Bartley stopped the tractor, but paused before lowering the plow.

“With the seven bottom plow, I can till about four acres an hour in this kind of soil,” he told me over the lessened noise of the engine now that we were stopped, and I gasped in surprise.