Montana farmer-stockman., 1949-04-01
BY JERRY LESTER

BY JERRY LESTER
GOOD CROP and high prices-a per-
feet combination for Montana's dryland wheat
farmers-but a combination not without a darker
side darker with the dust of blowing soil and
a departure from the good farming practices de-
veloped by necessity during a less productive era
that should be still fresh in the minds of many
farmers.
Evidence of the increasing departure from ac-
cepted farming practices on dryland are to be
seen everywhere in the state but it was brought
forcibly to mind in a trip through north Valley
county last summer-which is by no means the
worst example in the state.
Continuous cropping is being carried out on a
good many acres of dryland grain, and evidence
of the lack of adequate strip cropping and sum-
merfallowing are only too visible in many Sec
tons of the state. At the time of the trip into
Valley county, it cannot be said that an I'M
usual amount of blowing on the many acres of
block farmed land was taking place but let there
be dry years again and the picture could easily
change.
Soil on the Move Again
The evidence of wind erosion was still there
as is shown in the accompanying pictures. The
first field we noticed as we went north into
Valley county was a newly broken section of
obviously gravelly range land, and it is highly
questionable what the outcome of such a venture
will be.
Then we came to a section of the county road
that had been built up by good top soil from the
adjoining field scraped out of the borrow pit.
Just this years blowing on this blocked field
had already started to fill in the ditch again and
had blown three wires high on a four-wire fence.
Because it was heavy soil, this last mentioned
field probably wouldn't have blown despite the
block farming, except for a lack of proper cult
walton. The field had been smoothed and pull
verified with a harrow instead of leaving it rough
and cloddy after planting so that wind erosion
could be resisted.
Then we came to several fields where at
tempts had been made to stop blowing on block
farmed areas by f%urrowing with a pillow or driv-
ing back and forth over the fields. There was
no noticeable blowing on any of the stripped
land seen in the meantime.
Keeping UP With the Joneses
We stopped in at a well kept farm and had
occasion to ask the farmers opinion on the de-
parture from summerfallowing. He said that it
wasn't that summerfallow wasn't a good idea
but rather a need for more land Che farmed 425
acres). Further he was frank enough to admit
that it wasn't really that a man couldn't make
a good living with 200 acres of summerfallow
but rather that everyone else around him had a
thousand acres or so, and that much more for
machinery, homes and better living.
So keeping up with the Joneses,' we find, is q
factor even in good farming practices.
Some miles farther we came into a land Oh
lighter soils where stripping is essential to any
long range program. Here we noticed on the
edge of a large acreage of strip-cropped land
natural blow in the sandy soil that had a gooc
cover of range grass now but at one time hae
been most certainly blown out.
The farmer here knew the soil and knew tina
stripping and summerfallow were the only way