The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1915-07-29

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more wet weather than any land I've
ever had; and that was true. lf3you
have boulders on your farm, you VIII
find them coming up from year 80
year. Now they don't come at all,
but your top soil has been washed
away or blown away, imperceptaby
but none theeless truly.
Were it not that nature is making
a soil below by her slow processes,
your farm would be worthless before
a great many years. But as the up
per soil is washed away, the frost
goes deeper and the carbon dioxide
brought in by the rains pulverizes
the rock, and this soil formation Is
constantly going ON. Now when
rains come on your we'll titled fields,
as they did last fall, you find great
gullies, and rivulets running into the
gullies, and soil washed into the
rivulets. You are contributing the
best OF your land to this soil-soup
that is going down to the gulf.
What about it? How can you
help It? Nature helped it before you
were born, before man had a place
on the earth. She helped it by keep
ing the soil constantly stored with
vegetable matter. = She covered the
prairie with grass and the forest floor
with leaves. When the rains came
they sank in, the soil soaked up the
moisture and held it. There was
comparatively little run-off then, and
what there was was slow and gradual.
The streams ran clear, for they We're
deep; but now the streams through
the farming country run muddy and
the silt is filling them up. 1t has
in fact filled up that great arm of the
sea, which once extended from New
Orleans to Cairo, where we now have
the Mississippi river. 1t is still fill
ing up and we have to dyke it.
Every now and then it breaks through
and carries it's soil-soup over thous-
ands of acres of farm land.
The only way you can prevent this
washing is by doing what you ought
to do anyhow; keep your soil full OF
vegetable matter, grass roots; get
back to the conditions when the soil
was virgin earth; have a Rotation;
keep much of your land in grass,
deepen your soil by growing clover
and alfalfa. 1t is quite possible UNI
der good farming to have your soil
grow deeper and deeper from year
to year, instead of growing thinner
through having the fine -four wash
ed out of it. * 1888
We are frequently asked by farm
ers: How can l stop gully? First,
do some good farming. Follow ma
lures process; then get nature to
nelp you. If you have an unsightly
slough running through your field, a
good way is to put in couple Of
posts in firm soil at the lower end;
stretch some woven wire across the
slough and fasten it to the posts,
giving it a chance to sag slightly.
Then put in brush, weeds, spoiled
hay, corn stalks, anything that will
catch the soil coming down from
above. If you have piece of un-
broken slough, don't pillow up the
grass that nature put there to pre-
vent the soil from washing, until you
have tile drained it, SO as to carry
the surplus away underground. In
short, study nature; take leaf out
of her book. Man wastes the soil;
nature saves it. Man is destroyer;
nature a builder. Her processes are
slow, but they all tend, toward soil
betterment and human betterment.
Man is the great destroyer, he Is q,
ruthless robber, selfish and greedy
and rwants everything that he can
get for Observation-Disclosures Farmer.