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A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

SCRUBB OAKS TO CORN AND PEANUTS

During my second year as Columbia High School Band Director, which would have been about 1958, 1
purchased a farm containing 160 acres from a man named Jacob Blanton, about 2 miles down the
County road off the Pinemount Highway. I paid $75.00 an acre for that 160 acres, and almost all of it
was covered in scrubb oak and blackjack oaks.

I hired Fred Hill and his father, Buck Hill, to take their bull dozers out to that farm and completely clear
up all of the woods except for the few big oak trees that were on it, and rake them up into piles and burn
them, and then with what they called new ground harrows, they harrowed up the land and put it in shape
to be planted in crops. After the so-called new ground was prepared, and since that type of situation does
not permit much grass or weed growth in the first year following clearing, I hired a man to go out and
sow peanuts over the whole thing, and also corn. We made no attempt to plant the peanuts and corn in
rows, as we did not anticipate having to plow it.

Sure enough by late summer, 1 could tell that I had a whole world full of peanuts, not to mention the
com, until I went and bought about 300 head of young hogs at the market, and turned them out on the
land to fatten on the peanuts and corn. They did their job, and gained weight to the point of perhaps
tripling the weight they had when 1 bought them, and when I sold them early in the winter I made a quite
good profit on those hogs.

At that time, it was my plan to put the land in row crops the next spring, but when the weather warmed
up a little bit following that winter, peanuts began to come up everywhere from nuts that the hogs had
left in the ground, and I could see that 1 was going to have a solid ground cover of peanuts again, and in
mid to late summer I went and bought me another bunch of hogs, to fatten on that second crop of
peanuts.

What brought all this to mind is something that was said in my hearing, and really has no bearing on
anything, but 1 found it amusing and have never forgotten the conversation. Late one afternoon I ran
across my good and life-long friend Glenn Jones, and he had his little boy with him who [judged would
have been somewhere between 4 and 7 years old at that time, and I told him I was on my way out to call
up my hogs and take a look at them. He agreed to go and when we got there I got out of the car and said
well J am going to call the hogs up and at that moment young Glenn Jones Jr. looked up at his dad and
said, in a sawmill whisper “Daddy how does he remember all their names?”

I have never forgotten that, and if he reads this book he will probably get a kick out of saying something
that was still being remembered 50 years later. Incidentally, by having the land grow peanuts and corn
for 2 years, it qualified for the Soil Bank Program which was in existence at that time, and the
Government paid me to plant all of that land in pine trees, and then paid me about $20.00 per acre for
the next ten years to grow the pine trees and take the land out of crop production. That just goes to show
how silly the Government is, because 3 years prior to that time the land had never been in crop land
anyway. But, the money was there for the taking, and I am not all that different from everybody else. I
planted the pine trees and took the money.

About 22 years later, I sold the pine trees off that land for roughly $2000.00 per acre, after having paid
$75.00 an acre for it, and fattening two large crops of hogs, and then after the stumps rotted out and I

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