Meade County news. [volume] (Meade, Kan.) 1900-1918, 1909-11-04


When we came here, we knew
little of the nature of the country
we were coming to. We were at
once favorable impressed with the
beautiful lay of the rich black
ground and wondered what could
have been the drawback, which had
delayed the development of such an
ideal territory. Soon we discover
ed that the trouble was the shortage
of rainfall. The more we inquired
and investigated the more certain
were we that the lack of moisture
was the one thing which had caused
this county so long to resist agricul-
tural invasion.
Having settled upon the difficulty
the next step was to seek the remedy.
Almost everyone we talked with of
fered a solution. Some said pillow
as little as possible, farm every acre
you can and take your chances.
Others said, gamble on wheat: make
your living on cattle and horses;
Still others said use "The Campbell
System. We took all the advice,
gambled on large acreage, poorly
prepared, began the preparation of
some Campbell ground, and made
practically nothing except on cattle
and horses.
This story is about the piece pre-
pared according to the Campbell
idea but by the way of Introduction
it is well to state that the one hun
dred acres chosen for summer cul-
ture had not been plowed for sew
eral years and was at that time May
Ioo8) into wheat which was badly
damaged by drouth. 1t was our
/ plan to follow the header with the
disk and to MAINTAIN surface mulch
from then until the time for plow-
ing in the following season; but
early in June, there came an acct
dent which upset our plans and
brought opportunity for grave mis-
take. The incident was a heavy
rain and hail storm, enough rain fell
to make up for lost time, and the
hail moved the fields until they
were as black as though newly
plowed.
Not knowing just what to do. we
did the wrong thing, instead of
disking the ground and retaining the
moisture, we waited for a second
growth.
The second growth did very we'll
and would with a little more rain
have made five or six bushels to the
acre. Failing to get the required
moisture it was fit for nothing but
cattle feed and it was moved and
stacked for that purpose. When
thinking of that miserable little stack
Off feed, the writer is reminded of
the first money he has earned. He
let pillow team stand idle half day
to take man to town for quarter.
in place of that stack of that stack of
weeds aud shriveled wheat we might
| have had a hundred acres in condi-
ton to raise thirty or more bushels
of wheat to the acre.
By the time we had cleared the
land it was so hard and dry that our
disks rode over it much like they
would over a travelled road After
a day or two we quit In disgust and
decided to wait for rain. To this
day the desirable results of the disk
ing are clearly discernabIe, which
shows that it pays to disk after the
header no matter how dry the
ground is.
| 1t did not rain enough to do any
good until November and when
little later we again tried to disk the
! ground was moist enough to make
the disks take hold. However the
piece had not been plowed for so
long that when we got through, we
found that We had very imperfect
mulch. Besides there was so much
trash on the ground that harrow