Crooked Farming 

 is Good Farming 



■»v« . -j>> 



F. A. nSHER 

 "It's the Fanner's Biggest Problem" 



BELOW, D. C. GOEKE 

 "I've seen the com rowi this iuU oi water.' 



Z IN 



lool- 

 bout 



"You can tell a ^ood fanner by the 

 Straighliiesi of his corn roiii." 



^^i». OREST A. FISHER, state direc- 

 J, tor of soil conser\-ation 



^^ chuckled over this one as we 

 drove westward to look over results of 

 erosion control work on farms in north- 

 western Illinois. He picked the quota- 

 tion from an experiment station bulletin. 



"Just to show you how our ideas 

 change," he said, "today we measure a 

 good farmer in our work by the crooked- 

 ness of his corn rows. Believe it or not. 

 crooked farming is good farming. And 

 we have plenty of practical demonstra- 

 tions to prove it." 



try to keep my mind open. I"m always 

 willing to give a new idea a trial. It 

 seemed like a lot of extra work at first 

 but I wouldn't farm any other way now. 

 I was always interested in stopping the 

 ditches and this way of farming appealed 

 to me. 



"We have rearranged our farm from 

 five to three fields, and two hog pastures. 

 It may take a little longer to farm this 

 way until we get better accustomed to it, 

 but we more than make up for it in the 

 increased yields. Besides it is saving our 

 soil. I have been working on our ditches 

 ever since 1902 (you can't find anytliini: 

 resembling a bad gully on this farm) and 

 richt over there was a ditch years aeo 



That's What Farmers Are Sailing On Kollinii 



Land Where Saving the Soil and Better 



Crops Go Hand in Hand 



A little later near the village of Da- 

 kota, in Stephenson county, we found a 

 man, Dave C. Goeke, a practical farmer 

 of 60 or thereabouts, on an undulating 

 152 acre farm where fields and fences 

 had been rearranged, where contour 

 plowing and strip cropping had replaced 

 the conventional way of doing things, 

 and where there was real enthusiasm for 

 this new way of conserving moisture, 

 stopping gullies and sheet erosion, and 

 saving the soil. 



"How do I like this contour farm- 

 ing.-'", repeated Mr. Goeke. "Well I 



that you could hide a horse in: 1 think 

 that every dollar the government spends 

 on erosion control work is worth SlO 

 spent in other ways. " 



The rotation on the Goeke farm is 

 corn — oats — and red clover with 

 buffer strips of alfalfa and timothy in 

 between the regular crops grown in strips 

 around the hill rather than up and down 

 over the hill. 



"It takes less power to farm on the 

 contour." commented Mr. Goeke 

 "You're on the level plowing, planting, 

 and cultivating around the hill, and the 



DISTRICT SUPERVISOR W. T. "BILL " ANGLE 

 left, oi Fr'eeport. and Otto Nagel 

 "Since we started strip croping we haven't had any more 

 mud washed over the sidewalk." 



t 



'it. ' '■■«* 





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ELMER MOORHEAD FARM 

 Contour iurrows are helping the grass 

 to reclaim this guUey in a steep sloping 

 permanent pasture. 



^"^^.-I'-t.-!- 



TYPICAL 10 DAVIESS COUNTY TOPOGRAPHY 

 Strip cropping, terracing, and contour farming will sav* 

 this good soil ior iuture generations. 



