DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



139 



Campbell and advise all who anticipate engaging in farming in Montana 

 to procure his manual and follow the methods therein outlined, at least 

 imtil they have mastered them or discovered other and possibly better 

 methods, which are especially adapted to their particular soil. Soils vary 

 and require different handling the same as people and no occupation re- 

 quires more brains than farming. Study the conditions carefully and note 

 the effect of different methods of handling on your own particular piece 

 of land and apply the method that gives the best results. 



The beginner naturally looks for instruction as to the best way to 

 break out his land and is anxious to get results the first season. In many 

 instances this very anxiety to get a crop leads to his undoing. Those who 

 have recently located on land around Broadview will hardly get any land 

 broken next spring before June, when it will be too late to put in any 

 crops that season. The best plan for them to adopt would be to break 

 out their land during May and June with flat bottom plows and roll it 

 thoroughly so as to press the sod down flat and then go over the field 

 with a smoothing harrow with the teeth slanting well back to avoid tear- 

 ing up the sod. The Acme harrow or the John Deere pulverizer is better 

 than the smoothing harrow as they cut up the surface of the sod and 

 tend to fill the cracks between the layers of the sod better than the latter. 

 The object sought is to form a sod mulch which corresponds to the dust 

 mulch which Prof. Campbell advocates. Land prepared in this way will 

 be in good shape the middle of August to back set for winter wheat or 

 wheat may be drilled in with disc drills and harrowed immediately before 

 the wheat comes up. If it continues dry during the fall the harrow should 

 be run over the field several times, provided the sod is well rotted, but 

 should the sod remain intact it must not be harrowed because the young 

 wheat will be torn by the roots. If the soil, however, was not broken too 

 deep, say two and one-half to three inches, and well rolled and harrowed 

 during the summer, it ought to be pretty well rotted and not interfere 

 seriously with harrowing, provided the harrow teeth are set well aslant. 



In case the sod is back set, ie., plowed again with the disc plows, it 

 should be broken five or six inches deep and the plows followed imme- 

 diately with the Campbell Subsurface Packer. By "immediately," I mean 

 all land plowed should be packed each half day before the team leaves the 

 field, otherwise the ground will dry down to the depth of the plowing 

 and there will not be sufficient moisture to sprout the winter wheat and 

 it will not come up until the following spring, in which case the yield will 

 be cut short. 



The breaking may be continued all summer and fall 'but as soon as 

 the ground gets dry so that the mold board plow does not do good work 

 the disc plows should be substituted. Land plowed in the fall should be 

 left rough in order to catch the snows and thus acquire additional moisture 

 during the winter. As soon as possible in the spring these lands should 

 be disced and harrowed and worked down into as fine a condition as possi- 

 ble. As soon as the soil is in good condition, even in March, small grains 

 may be drilled in. Never sow broadcast, but use some form of drill, and in 



