For Years To Come (1944)

Off and on during the winter, Chris kept thinking about his land, whether he should change over to soil conservation methods, whether it would yield more production. So, when he would take the vegetables and eggs and butter to town, he got into the habit of asking friends and neighbors about conservation. Like any good farmer, Chris wanted to find out all he could about the new methods before he tried them out. Meanwhile, the Mussers were all busy with their regular daily chores, thinking. And that's what Chris Musser was doing at harvest time that year. He knew that some of his neighbors had taken to plowing across their sloping land, along the contour, to save soil and water. And their crops had turned out better, too. But as a boy, Chris had learned to plow a straight row, straight as an arrow. It's hard to break an old habit like this, even when you know that straight rows waste your land and hurt it. With every hard rain, the water pours downhill, down the rows, and washes soil along with it. Sooner or later, that means trouble. But it was fall, and harvest time is a busy time. Dropping the evenings, Chris worked long hours at his desk. There were records to keep, and plans to make for the year ahead. He read reports on conservation farming, too. How it was done and how it increased production, for production is the big farm job, always. And then one night later on, Chris called on some old friends. He told them he was finally convinced by what he had read and by talking with his neighbors that conservation farming would increase his production and protect his soil at the same time. He said he was ready to try it and wanted to know if he could get help in doing the job. His friends were the supervisors of the York Soil Conservation District, elected by the farmers to encourage soil conservation and see that it was carried out in a sensible, practical way. They agreed to provide him with a conservation map of his land and information from the Soil Conservation Service to get him started off on the right foot. All the rest of the winter, as he worked in the woods, Chris was thinking of his snow-covered picturing his fields with the new rows on the contour and the strip cropping. And he was counting, too, on the better production he would get through soil conservation. The middle of April, the ground was ready to work. Melvin Blech, the Soil Conservation Service technician, was on hand with a conservation map of the farm, a map which he and Chris had worked out earlier, which showed the kind of soil, the slope and erosion, and the conservation needs of every field. Never before had Chris known the physical facts about his farm in such detail. He looked over the land again, marked out in his mind where the contour rows would be and how the crops would look. Chris had taken the first two steps in soil conservation. He had learned the facts about his land and he had decided to put each acre into the kind of crop it was best suited to produce, whether that be grass or grain, row crops or trees. Marking off contour lines came next and that required a level. A small pocket model would do. Some farmers use a carpenter's level. It doesn't have to be shiny or expensive. To prove it, Chris had made a very good level out of wood and two screw eyes. The horizontal bar was nailed at right angles to the longer hanging bar. And the whole device swung freely on a round wooden pin made from a broomstick handle. Simple, isn't it? The whole business of contouring is simple. All you need is a good eye, a level, a few dozen stakes, and somebody to help place them. Here's how Chris did it. Beginning at the side of the field, the first stake was driven into the ground. Then Gordon, with a few more stakes, paced off about 30 ft across the field at right angles to the downward slope. Holding one of the stakes, he faced back toward his father. And Chris, sighting along the top of his homemade level, waved him first to the right and then back a bit until he could see the peak of Gordon's cap in a direct line through the two screw eyes. That was the spot for the second marker. Then, with Chris moving over to the second stake and Gordon pacing off another 30 ft across the field, they began the same process all over again. It didn't take long. Within an hour, the stakes marking the first contour row were in the ground. Furrows running along this line would be level all the way across the field. Level rows act as little dams, each one slowing the downhill movement of soil and water. And that's the object of contouring, to keep water from pouring downhill every time it rains. By slowing the water, you prevent the soil, seed, and fertilizer from washing away. And when you do that, your crops are bound to be better. It isn't necessary to place stakes for every contour row. On gently rolling land like this, you only need to sight stake out the contour or about once in each hundred feet of slope. And once the contour line is marked out, you can plow a furrow or two along the stakes as a guide for the next line. Plowing or any other operation along the contour isn't hard at all. Most farmers find it saves time, saves fuel because there's less gear shifting. Operations are easier on the contour. Chris was taking a crop from land that had lost little or no soil, seed, or fertilizer in the spring rains. There had been no replanting to do, either. And that had meant savings in time, labor, and money. The corn, thick-growing barley across the slope, now held the soil in place. The contour rows of potatoes and soybeans were coming along very nicely. And on the steepest land, too steep to cultivate, hay had taken the place of row crops. There is no more erosion here. In the corn field, contour rows were holding back water so it could be stored in the soil for the young crop. The straight rows on this field last year wasted water, saved little for the corn. With water stored in the soil by conservation, corn production went up, even though rainfall was less than half of normal. Chris got more corn from 28 acres this year than he did from 33 acres last year. The potato fields told the same story. Precious water stored in the soil brought the crop through in fine shape, well above the county average. Well, that's the story. Chris Musser and Spring Run Farm happen to be in Pennsylvania, but almost the same story could be told about farmers and the land in Georgia or in Minnesota, Oregon or Utah, Arkansas or Nebraska. All over the country, soil conservation is increasing production, increasing it now when we need it most. And soil conservation is protecting our land against erosion, conserving it for our own use and our children's use for years to come.