Tombstone epitaph., 1915-06-13
DRY FARMING SUCCESS
Two Distinct Systems Are Now
 Being Employed.
Deep Flowing Insures Larger Crop Yield and Also Saves humus. Which Is Important In Con
 serving Soil Moisture.

By F. R. PARSONS. in Dry Farm Bull
 letinD
 There are two distinct schools Of dry farming.
 One relies pore on the intensive tillage of the top five or six inches rather than on systematic deep work Ing of the soil.
 The other might be termed sub- Ioil farming. for the results are ob- :ained by deep blowing. deep roofing and a reservoir of moisture from two 70 six feet under the surface where practically nothing can extract the moisture but the roots of crops.
 Anyone who plants trees two feet ieep in the subsoil of a well cultivated farm and watches them grow can at once appreciate the difference be- tween the two systems.
 In the intensive surface system the farmer blows his sod two or three inches. rolls it fiat and runs a slanted harrow over it. He plants a crop on 1t. The next season he backsets 1t. sets 1t back where it was before, and plants a crop on the other side of 1t. The least said about the yield the better.
 In the deep blowing or subsoil sys- tenn of farming, as advocated by the writer and such men as Farrel Of Utah, Spalding of Denver. Colonel Bester of the Transvaal. etc. etc. we first disk the sod in wet weather as deeply as possible, then turn 1t under from eight to ten inches deep. and disk the underside, which is now up. permost.
 In grandfather's time they used to blow the sod shallow and leave 1t to rot. Nowadays we do most of this rot i ting with the disk, and alternate the disk with the harrow until the whole thing is reduced to mellow seed bed
 A seed bed prepared in this manner and allowed time to soak up and set tie with the precipitation of winter or spring. Is good for 40 or 50 bushels of corn or three tons of sorghum feed the first year.
 Deep work also saves the humus. which is as important as conserving moisture. for when sod is worried to | pieces on the surface until 1t is worn out its fertilizing value (estimated at about s100 an acrel 1t is almost en- tirely lost-burned up by the atmos- | phere.
 The next season We do not back fG blow it, which cross chops the whole l field, making the tiith finer yet An I other reason we prefer cross blowing | Is that the blow, instead of following and skidding along the same ruts, at | tacks them at the side. going under them and through them. and works up | all the cut and cover slices in the l ing.
 If this were thoroughly understood | there would be no more backsetting, | for the second year should produce | the finest crop in the life of the field, rather than a catch crop of nubbins on two or three-inch backset.
 A delusion cherished by the shallow school of dry farming is that water may be caused to rise from the sub soil to the seed bed in dry weather by packing. and that, therefore, there is no reason to blow deeply. The professors of physics tell us that within certain well understood limits the densest, most compact soil has the stronger capillary pull, SC | even if there was free water present the seed bed would have to be com. pac.ed until more solid than the sub soil in order to obtain a rise of mois- ture from down below. For instance, a brick will take moisture from a sponge, but the sponge will not take moisture from brick. | It can also be readily understood that when a man Is farming over a hundred feet of dry subsoil, there is | no free water. for it Is all absorbed, and converted into film water as fas; as it falls.
 The idea, of course. has been i'm, ported from the humid states where free water in the soil is rather the | rule than the exception.
 It is quite true, however. that after narrowing a newly piowed field in spring weather, moisture seems to come to the surface. It does, so long as there is any free water in the top six inches which has not had time tc be absorbed into the subsoil, but this is simply the top inch robbing the second and third and does not come from any depth.
 As all dry farmers know-who have ever plowed a feld-that in. stead of moisture coming up from be. low in dry weather. the seed bed com mences to dry out, and if it has been overpacked a crust forms under the mulch which in shallow plowed field I l-gIl ha