326 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Windbreaks by the Mile. 



T. A. HOVERSTAD, AGRI. COMM'R. "SOO" RY. CO., MINNEAPOLIS. 



Shortly after I was appointed agricultural commissioner on 

 the "Soo" Road I was asked to take charge of the work of plant- 

 ing trees along the right of way to take the place of the snow 

 fences. Our company has about 4,000 miles of road in the North- 

 west, where the snowfall is apt to be large. It is a great big prob- 

 lem to know how to protect the cuts so as to keep the trains mov- 

 ing regularly. The patrons of the road are not satisfied unless 

 they have regular train service, and it is no simple problem. The 

 price of material for snow fences is almost prohibitive. This 

 year alone we paid out about $16,000, and after a snow fence is 

 built it is only a little while before it is destroyed. Then we 

 have the expense of taking it down and putting it up again. If 

 we put it outside of the right of way we have to pay a big rental 

 for the use of land 



A thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars does not go very 

 far, and when we have a winter like last year we have to throw 

 away all thoughts of expanse. When the train is blocked we 

 have to open up the track, no matter what it costs. So this matter 

 of tree planting is not anything we care particularly to do, but 

 we do it because we have to do it. 



A great deal of our line is in the Dakotas, and we are also 

 in Montana, and where we are planting trees is where it is the 

 more difficult for us to make them grow. We plant mainly along 

 the cuts, and those are more often gravelly, and it is on the high- 

 est points and the dryest points. It is close to the edge of the cut, 

 where it is the very dryest place we can find. 



We first start out with the preparation of the land. We 

 found it to be a very hard, dry soil, and last year we plowed 

 and subsoiled. This year we abandoned subsoiling. We plow the 

 land twice and disk it thoroughly for two years. The reason we 

 abandoned subsoiling was this. We didn't feel as though it was 

 necessary to subsoil except just in the row when the trees are be- 

 ing planted, and we have made a machine that subsoils and plants 

 at the same time. 



We are doing our work in various ways. Sometimes we 

 hire men and do the work by contract. We have to board the 

 men and teams and hire tents, etc. We move them on the 

 track, of course. We have also the farmers along the road to do 

 the work, and that is very much cheaper. They do the work just 



