Starve-acre

Some sandy soils are much overrun with the wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum), provincially called " rump," while the clays are swarmed with starve-acre (Ranunculus arvensis), and the clivers or burrs (Galium aparine), which are very troublesome to separate from the grain when winnowed.

It seems that a particularly tiresome form of rauunculus, well described by the nickname of “starve-acre," can be cxterminated with dressings of sulphate of ammonia, and that this method is equally efficacious in ridding land of the picturesque but unprofitable poppy. Where there is more starve-acre than grass, the farmer pays twice his nominal rent, and is otherwise wasting money by growing weeds on his pasture.

It is quite common for farmers to use cereal grains for seed which contain weed seeds, e.g. starve-acre (ranunculus arvensis), docks, wild oats, rye-like brome (bromus secolinus), etc.

There was no exaggeration in Marian's definition of Flintcomb-Ash farm as a starve-acre place.

They'd grown up together, had seen a lot of life, and were mostly inseparable, through six decades of raven, starve-acre days.

I suggest that he was instead thinking about his birthplace, where, for a while, those infants did live to inherit the earth, at least the mined-out, falling-down, starve-acre part of it that was the town of Hailey.