Our State is Blessed, 1935

“Put a Wall Around North Carolina” by Ida Briggs Henderson in the July, 1935, issue of the Carolina Co-Operator

Put a Wall Around North Carolina and yet, because of the State’s great agricultural diversity, her citizens need not be deprived of anything necessary for their health and happiness. In other words, we can “live-at-home.”

A great scientific man recently stated that “There is one state in the Union around which there could be built an impregnable wall and its citizens need not be deprived of anything necessary to contribute to their health, comfort, or luxury…and that state is North Carolina.”

This is a very beautiful tribute and a very just one as there are no states whose soil, rainfall, and climatic conditions permit such wide diversity as does North Carolina. The State is blessed in rainfall which is evenly distributed; the mean annual temperature ranges from 46.4 degrees in the mountains to 63.4 on the coast; and there are three distinct divisions of soils, which can and do produce practically every species of crop and variety of fruits.

For long ages the waters of the Atlantic deposited rich ingredients on the portion now classed as the coastal plain, which, after the water gradually receded, held its deposits of lime, nitrogen, phosphates, and other chemicals derived from the disintegration and amalgamation of the crustaceous deposits into the soil.

This region extends westward for about 75 miles to contact with the splendid sandhill section and on up to the Piedmont plateau. Here the soil is heavier, of red clay texture and at an approximate sea level of 1,200 to 1,500 feet it produces some of the best tobacco and grain in the entire country. In fact, the tobacco raised in the State is of a superfine quality demanding high prices in local and foreign markets: one-fourth of the tobacco crop produced in America is on the farms of North Carolina and inasmuch as certain types of this tobacco are suitable for foreign manufactured products, a considerable quantity of the leaf is exported. Leaf tobacco is sold direct by farmer to manufacturer or dealer through some 44 tobacco markets in which 145 warehouses are operated. Type and grade are the controlling factors in price paid.

The Piedmont

The Piedmont plateau is rolling, hilly country, producing  small grains and cover crops and in the southern belt cotton is raised. This is a good section for such fruits as apples, pears, cherries, and though fine vegetables are produced these do not come in early enough to compete with the sandhill and coastal regions. The principal trucking areas are down near the coast, and it is there that occurs the famed double-cropping system, whereby two to four crops may be grown during a single year. Strawberries, dewberries, watermelons, and cantaloupes thrive extensively in the coastal plain, but dewberries and peaches are grown in huge commercial quantities in the sandhill region.

In addition to the very productive corn and cotton land, the soil is specially adapted to the production of forage crops such as clover, rye, oats, cowpeas, velvet and soy beans, lespedeza, vetch, and alfalfa; these together with abundant and varied grasses quite naturally offer wide opportunities for raising of live stock. The dairy industry is expanding and many commercial creameries have been established.

In the mountain section, particularly in the Isothermal belt which extends for miles and lies against the eastern reaches of the Blue Ridge and where, for some strange freak of nature it never frosts, are found vineyards quite equal to those of California; the grape culture around Tryon is specially valuable. Apples of these mountains are famed for their super-excellence and small grains such a buckwheat do well; also the superior nature of the pasturage makes this a superb dairying center; active plants furnish the famers with a steady market for their milk.

Cheese Important

In this section, especially in Ashe and Watauga counties, there is a growing cheese industry, little factories consuming an enormous amount of milk. While the mountain sides are rocky and steep, in the valleys occur super-excellent soil; these Appalachians are known to be the oldest in creation; thus for untold centuries through natural erosion and abundant rainfall the valuable deposits of leaf and mould and chemicals have washed down into the valleys an alluvial deposit of soil, in some instances about 10 feet deep which requires no artificial fertilizer.

North Carolina’s geographical position could not be improved; topographically the State is perfect, with unsurpassed climate through each season of the year. The nature of the flora and trees vary in different sections, as the range of temperature from the southeastern sea level to an elevation of almost 7,000 feet is accompanied by a change in typical trees and flowers from the palmettos and palms of the islands that border the coast, through the gums of the east and the world-famed Carolina longleaf pines, to the Canadian lilies which lift pure white chalices underneath the shade of the virgin growth of spruce pines and balsams that crown the peaks of the Smokies.