FLA VEL GRIEVE 

 "I'll never iami the old way again." 



^^^^ AUL Bunyan, according to 

 Lj stories told by lumberjacks, 



_/■ had a big blue ox called Babe. 

 Babe was so big and strong that when 

 Paul hitched him to a forest he could, 

 by pulling a little to the left and then 

 to the right, loosen a whole township 

 and drag it to the nearest river. 



Paul had a sufficiently large crew of 

 choppers stationed at the river to log 

 off a township a day. All Bunyan and 

 his ox had to do was to pull a town- 

 ship to the river every day and replace 

 the one that had been cleared. 



The story tellers say that townships 

 in those days contained 37 sections. 

 And they tell us, that as time went on 

 Old Paul grew careless. He always left 

 each township too near the river at 

 night and one section always washed 

 away before morning. That, say the 

 lumberjacks, is why townships have 

 only 36 sections today. 



Slaying the Giant-- 

 Soil Erosion 



The Story of Two Stark Coanty Fanners Who Are 

 Dohig Something About Saving Their Farms 



That story has amused countless tim- 

 ber workers. But farmers too, have a 

 giant. He is not a friendly one for he 

 is at work on our farms now tak- 

 ing them away, section by section, 

 just as the giant Paul Bunyan is said to 

 have done in years gone by. Our giant 

 is Soil Erosion. 



In Stark county are two men, Flavel 

 Grieve and Charles Welch, wrestling 

 with old man Erosion. They have 

 stopped him in his tracks. 



The Grieve and Welch farms, located 

 in the northwest corner of the county, 

 lie near the source of the Spoon river. 

 Like the top of many another water 

 shed, this section of Stark county is 

 rolling with an abundance of steep 

 ridges and narrow valleys. 



The main divide between the Spoon 

 and Edwards rivers runs northeast and 

 southwest across the corner of Henry 

 county adjacent to Stark. There are 

 numerous lesser ridges in Stark county 

 which run parallel to the main divide. 



Across one of these ridges, like a 

 saddle blanket on a horse, lie the farms 



of Grieve and Welch. Their line fence 

 run almost parallel to the backbone 

 of the ridge. 



Charlie Welch's quarter section on 

 the north slope consists of two hills 

 and a valley. Flavel's land is similar 

 except that the hills are not as steep 

 nor the valley as narrow as on Charlie's 

 farm. 



A year ago last winter. Burton King, 

 acting superintendent of the soil con- 

 servation service camp near Galva, 

 stopped in at Welch's garage in Elmira. 

 He asked Charlie if he knew of a far- 

 mer in the vicinity who would co-oper- 

 ate with the conservation service in try- 

 ing strip cropping on the contour 

 as a means of erosion control. 



Charlie revealed that he had a farm 

 northwest of town that needed some 

 type of control if it was to be kept in 

 the county. He asked King to look it 

 over and if it was suitable he would be 

 willing to try anything the SCS might 

 suggest. 



King, together with Albert Hill and 

 Art Moratz, the agronomist and camp 



STRIP CHOPS SLOW UP RUN-OFF, SAVE SOIL 

 Com, soybeans and oats grown on contours stopped 

 sheet erosion in a single summer, saved soil and water, 

 promoted bigger yields. 



"IMPLEMENT MAKERS SHOULD HELP IN THE HGHT." 

 Charlie Welch believes that with a power lift disk to speed 

 up operations around grass waterways, more ianners would 

 leave waterways sodded down. 



NOVEMBER. 1937 



15 



^m 



