THE EROSION GIANT WAS STOPPED IN HIS TRACKS I 



Brush dams built acrou main gullies spread out run-oU water, slowed it down, 

 held in place three feet of silt. Charlie Welch, right, stands on fill; Flavel Grieve stands 

 on the apron. Early next summer the dam will be covered, the filled-in gully sodded, 

 made into a permanent, non-eroding waterway. 



engineer, respectively, drew up their 

 first plan of attack against old Soil 

 Erosion. There were gullies to fill and 

 sheet washing to stop before a perma- 

 net plan could- be worked out. 



In May, 1936, King and a truck 

 load of CCC boys started to fill gullies 

 in both Welch's and Grieve's farms. 

 Their problem was to reduce the speed 

 of run-off water and spread the stream. 

 The narrow swift flowing rivulets are 

 the ones that cut the soil away. King 

 explained to Welch. 



The CCC boys built brush dams 

 across the major gullies as the first 

 step in slowing the water down to a 

 walk. They dug shallow trenches square 

 across each gully at intervals marked by 

 the engineer. On the downhill side of 

 each trench they erected a woven wire 

 fence with sturdy hedge stakes driven 

 three feet apart. The boys were careful 

 to have the top of the wire level. 



Hedge brush was thrust upright in 

 the trenches and held in place firmly 

 against the wire with tamped earth on 

 the uphill side. The ends of the brush 

 protruding above the wire were care- 

 fully clipped off even with the level top 

 of the fencing. 



An apron of brush was laid on 

 the downhill side of each dam to fur- 

 ther protect the soil. The aprons were 

 secured with stakes and wire arranged 

 in spider web fashion. 



Although the dams averaged three 

 feet high, by the end of their first year 

 they had stopped enough silt to fill the 

 gullies level with the top of the brush. 



Plans have been made to seed these 

 waterways, now that the water has been 



16 



discouraged from washing the soil. 

 Once a satisfactory sod has been secured 

 the former gullies will remain as per- 

 manent escapes for run-off water. 



In March, 1937, King and his helpers 

 made a survey of the two farms. They 

 discovered that from 50 to 100 per 

 cent of the original top soil has been 

 removed. In order to check further 

 sheet erosion during the year, or until 

 permanent wide base terraces can be 

 built, they asked Charlie and Flavel to 

 plant their crops on the contours. 



Charlie had never farmed. For thirty 

 years he had worked in a blacksmith 

 shop or a combination machine shop 

 and garage with his father and brother. 

 Although he is a competent mechanic, 

 Charlie likes to grow plants. In fact 

 iris breeding is his hobby. 



So it was quite natural that he was 

 ready to quit his shop work to operate 

 the farm Mrs. Welch had inherited. 

 The farm has been cropped for fifty 

 years or more and has been operated by 

 neighbors for the last several years. 

 There are no buildings on the 160 acres 

 except a corn crib that Welch built this 

 fall. 



This spring, Charlie bought a tractor 

 outfit and prepared to start farming in 

 a manner foreign to Stark county. 



Arthur Moratz, the conservation 

 service engineer, marked the contours 

 with stakes. Charlie plowed and planted 

 a strip at a time until his oats, corn and 

 soybeans were all in. During that time 

 Charlie was the busiest man in the 

 county and Flavel was a close second. 



Neighbors snickered and shook their 

 heads every time they saw the pair cut- 



ting didoes around the hills with their 

 machinery. But before the crop was in, 

 both the men knew how to farm on the 

 level and they like it better than drag- 

 ging plows and discs up and down hill. 



Both the corn and soybeans were 

 drilled in rows. Cultivation was easy 

 and best of all, even the heaviest rains 

 failed to wash the soil. 



"We have planned to build terraces 

 on two different fields on the farms as 

 soon as the corn has been harvested," 

 says the camp superintendent. 



A waterway to take the run-off from 

 the terraces has already been built. It 

 runs straight down the face of the 

 ridge to the stream in the valley. It was 

 first scraped smooth. Then black soil 

 from the bottoms was spread evenly 

 over the floor to provide food for blue 

 grass sod. Then sod was cut from a 

 nearby pasture and tamped firmly in 

 place. Berms, ledges of earth, were laid 

 up along the sides to keep the water on 

 the course and the waterway was com- 

 plete. 



After the terraces arc built this fall, 

 Charlie and Flavel will spread about 

 two tons of lime to the acre. Next 

 spring they plan to sow alfalfa in strips 

 (buffer strips) between the crop strips 

 on the contours. The alfalfa strips will 

 be left as long as a heavy stand can be 

 maintained. 



Beginning in 1938, the crop rotation 

 will include corn, spring grain and 

 sweet clover. Crops will be rotated only 

 on the strips. 



Being a plant breeder it was natural 

 for Charlie to plant hybrid corn. His 

 crop appears better than his neighbors'. 

 He says his superior crop is the result 

 of drilled rows on the contour holding 

 more water than the check rows across 

 the fence. 



Charlie says that more farmers would 

 leave grass waterways in their fields if 

 the implement makers would devise a 

 disk that could be lifted like a plow. 

 It takes a lot of time to stop and raise 

 the blades of our present equipment 

 and disking across the sod soon destroys 

 the grass. He hopes to make a power lift 

 disk before he puts in another crop. 



Wayne Gilbert, Stark county farm 

 adviser, recommends that farmers work- 

 ing the more level land try farming on 

 the contour. He believes that the most 

 serious erosion is sheet washing because 

 we fail to notice the vast amounts of 

 fertility and soil the water carries away. 



While "level " farming is the only 

 way to get an income from land as 

 steep as the farms of Grieve and Welch, 

 flatter farms, too, need erosion contrtJ 

 to hold soil fertility. 



Slow the water down, spread it out 

 and erosion ceases. i 



L A. A. RECORD 



