Tombstone epitaph., 1915-04-18
BEST WAY OF BREAKING SOD
Some Difficulty Experienced Ia Turn ing Sod Up With Ordinary Flow
 Sure of Good Crop.

l have broken sod at different depths and handled it in different ways and this is the way I have found best: Break it as nearly eight inches deep as is possible. Now in breaking sod eight inches deep, we find some difii- culty in turning the sod bottom-side up with the ordinary blow. l take my breaking bottom and have extensions put on the moldboard and have those extensions rather sharply turned SO that the sod is forced over and down: then l set the blows to cut so wide that the under edge of the sod lacks across, writes J. s. Murphy in Denver Field and Farm. This has the effect of steadying the furrow and holding it where wanted until it is about to be turned down fiat when the uncut inch is torn loose.
 l have turned sod so completely bot tom-side up in this way that one could drive an automobile across it. going ten miles an hour and hardly get iarred. Breaking stood up on edge and kinked in every which way is not good workmanship, and it is almost impossible to work it down or keep 1 such field from drying out. l follow the breaker right up within the hour with a corrugated roller. weighted down with about 2.00O pounds of rock. and follow the roller with a disk, having the disk well set over and not weighted, and disking as lightly as possible. only getting a mulch of not more than two inches. Then 1 fol low the disk with light harrow. and this fills up all the cracks between the furrows and a good mulch is estab- lished. Land handled in this way. even in a medium dry year. is sure to produce good crop of grain. de- pending somewhat on the rainfall. However. if one can at all possibly afford 1t. l advise against putting in a crop the first year. By not planting you are dead sure to get good crop the next year, assuming. of course. that you have maintained the mulch. kept out the weeds and have done the necessary thing by frequent harrow ing. Also by not sowing crop the first year, you will have driven down the moisture; and in a year of ordi- nary rainfall, you will have probably a three-foot content of moisture. Again, by not using the moisture in the pro- duction of a crop. the green, damp sod, helped by the packing given it, will have rotted the subsoil down good two inches. so that when backset you can without the expenditure of much power. turn from two to three inches of subsoil
 In the early days it was the custom to break in the spring and backset in the fall. That method is foolish in the semiarid region. In a season of exceptionally large rainfall one might have indifferent success by backset- ting in the fall; bat in the average year you will be simply tumbling lot of partially routed clods around. My experience convinces me that our sod should lay two whole summers and one winter. or. if the years are dry. two summers and two winters. Should circumstances force a settler to put in a crop the first year. he should be sure to disk the stubble the day he cuts the crop and disk it fairly deep.
 Flax takes no more substance from the soil than other crops and net so much as some crops; but. because its root system Is so much different, the soil is apt to dry out more with flax than with most any other crop. The ideal time for breaking is when the native grass is growing the fastest, because 1t is then tenderest and the sod rots the quickest. Dry farming Is new system of agriculture. con- structed on the basis of the old prin- ciple, but with the conservation of moisture as the heart and brain of the idea. The soil in semiarid re- zion is apt to lack humus and land with much humus is capable of retain. ing and carrying much more moisture than land with little humus and you l can maintain or restore humus in land by a proper system of crop rotation. There are some fourteen clements in our soil which must be kept up, but old Mother Nature looks after eleven of those herself, leaving three for you to watch and look after-nitrogen, phos phorus and pOtash