[AT] massey combines at portland

[john hall]

Farmer, how much of that land leveling are you attribuitng to erosion.? 
We've got a field that is on a long slow hillside. It ends at our property 
line, which happens to be a wood line. The ground immediately drops off 
about 3 feet.

John Hall

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Indiana Robinson" <robinson46176 at gmail.com>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 7:29 AM
Subject: Re: [AT] massey combines at portland



I usually describe my farm as "gently rolling". I only have one small
hill-side that is dangerously steep and I have placed it back into
permanent pasture. Actually I let some of the local Scouts use it as a
natural amphitheater about once a year. Back when it was part of a
grain field I would always make sure I combined it with an empty grain
tank. It still made me very nervous and even yet I am very cautious
when mowing it.
This farm used to be a lot rougher... It is absolutely amazing to me
how much 60 years of constant tillage, especially using implements
that dragged a lot of dirt along, have leveled it from what it was.
When we first moved here every field was divided by at least one
uncrossable gully. One then 20 acre field we had to farm in 3
sections. My father and I worked very hard for many years dozing those
in and having dirt that we could acquire for free hauled in to fill
them. Each year we would plow dirt in toward them by plowing those
areas on the contour. The county was beginning to pave all of the
roads back then and they would cut out the ditches first to make the
road a little wider. We got hundreds and hundreds of loads of that
dirt.
A few years ago I mentioned to a neighbor about how much the land had
flattened here and he had also been thinking about it. He recalled
that as a young boy there was a little hill / mound behind their barn
and he liked riding their old horse up that mound. Kind of a "King of
the hill" thing. :-) Now he cannot even find where that little hill
was.
This farm has kind of stabilized some now since I have a good bit of
it in horse pastures and the guy that farms the grain fields mostly
no-tills...


-- 


Be tolerant of almost everything but intolerance...

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com