DRV LAND FARMING IN LA STERN COLORADO 
21 
A corrugater roller is a fair sub surface packer, though not nearly 
so effective as a machine with sharp rimmed wheels. 
With good management in storing the rainfall and in holding it 
in the soil, the earth will be kept moist from the bottom of the mulch 
to a depth of 8 to 9 feet. 
REDUCING THE EEFECTS OF THE WIND. 
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A dry land country is always a land with much wind, and the 
dryer the season the steadier and the harder the wind blows. 
The first principle for reducing the damaging effect of the wind 
is to keep the surface of the ground corrugated. Engineers, in 
measuring deep mountain streams, often find that where the water 
is moving so swiftly on the surface that a man can not stand against 
it, there is almost no current at the bottom, where the velocity is 
checked by stones. It- is on the same principle that the surface of 
dry land should be kept corrugated; the uneveness impedes the motion 
of the wind. 
When freshly plowed dry land soils are rolled with a smooth 
roller, the wind moves as fast along the surface of the soil as it does 
at the height of a man above it, and will often sweep the soil off the 
field as deeply as it has been plowed. 
The sub surface packer leaves the ground more deeply corrugated 
than the grain drill. The packer wheels have iron spokes, and while 
the rim fines and packs the soil, making a good seed bed, the spokes 
bring small clods to the surface, and packed ground has both the 
corrugations and the clods to retard the wind. The writer has many 
times seen a highwind blowing across a field that had just been 
treated with a sub surface packer, and a little fine dust only would 
be sifting around the clods and across the low ridges, while from 
adjoining fields, left smooth, the dust was rising in clouds. 
All grain should be drilled in with the furrows running at right 
angles to the prevailing winds. 
Deep fall plowing, left rough, will carry land through the winter 
with reduced losses from blowing, especially if the lower soil that is 
turned up is a little heavy. An earth mulch must be made on fall 
plowed ground as early in the spring as it can be worked to save 
the moisture. 
The dry land farmer will find it profitable to start wind breaks 
and shelter belts around his buildings and garden as soon as his farm 
gets on a living basis. It sometimes pays to have them on the north, 
west, and south sides of the farm to check the wind’s force. Professor 
Longyear, of the Colorado Experiment Station, recommends using 
two year old seedling trees, planting them eight feet apart each way. 
The two outer rows to consist of Russian olive, the third and fourth 
rows of black or honey locust, the fifth and sixth rows of ash, the 
seventh and eighth rows of American Elm or Golden Russian willow, 
and the two inner rows of cottonwood or Carolina Poplar. 
