FLAVEL GRIEVE 

 rU never farm the old way again." 



V^ ^^ AUL Bunyan, according to 

 Lj stones 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 .S~ 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 

 hnilberjacks. is why townships have 

 onlv Vi settions today. 



Slaying the Giant- 

 Soil Erosion 



The Story of Two Stark County Fanners Who Are 

 Doing Something About Saving Their Farnts 



1 hat story has amused countless tun 

 ber workers. But farmers too, have a 

 giant. He is not a friendly one for he 

 is at vvork on our tarms now tak- 

 ing them away, section by section, 

 just as the giant Paul Bunyan is said to 

 have done in years gone hv Our giant 

 is Soil lirosion. 



In Stark county are two men, Flavel 

 Grieve and Charles Welch, wrestling 

 with ok! man lirosion. Thev have 

 stopped him in his tracks. 



The Grieve and Welch farms, located 

 in the northwest corner of the county, 

 lie near the source ot the Spoon river 

 Like the top of many another water 

 shed, this sectic^n of Stark county is 

 rolling with an abundance of steep 

 ridges and narrow valleys. 



The main divide between the Spoon 

 and liduards rivers runs northeast and 

 southwest across the corn.er of Henrv 

 county adjacent to Stark. There are 

 numerous lesser ridges in Stark countv 

 which run parallel to the mam divide 



Across one of these ridges. like a 

 saddle blanket on a horse, lie the farms 



ot GrR\e ind Welch Iheir line lencc 

 run .ilmost parallel to the backbone 

 ot the ridge. 



( harlie Welch's cjuaricr section on 

 the north slope consists of two hills 

 and .1 \alley. FLuels land is similar 

 except that the lulls are not as steep 

 nor the valley as narrow as on Charlies 

 tarm 



A year ago last winter. Burton King, 

 acting superintendent of tlic soil con- 

 serv.ition service cam|-> near Galva, 

 stopped in at \X'eKh s g.irage in I'Imira 

 He asked Charlie if he knew oi a far- 

 mer in the vicinity wlio would co-oper- 

 .ite with the conservation service in try- 

 ing strip cropping on the contour 

 .IS a means of erosion control. 



(harlie revealed that he had a t.irm 

 northwest of town that needed some 

 tv|ie ot control it it was to be kept in 

 tile countv He asked King to look it 

 o\er and it it was suitable he would be 

 w illing to try anything the Sf S might 

 suggest. 



King, together with Albert Hiil and 

 Art Mor.u/. the aL'rcjnomist and camp 



STRIP CROPS SLOW UP RUN-OFT, SAVE SOIL 

 Corn, soybeans anci 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 v^ith a pov/er lift disk to speed 

 up operations around grass waterways, more farmers would 

 leave waterways sodded down. 



NOVEMBER, 1937 



15 



