[AT] massey combines at portland

charlie hill charliehill at embarqmail.com
Sat Sep 4 04:39:03 PDT 2010


Our place is light sandy loam except for a couple of bottoms.  When I was a 
boy the place was more or less sand dunes and bottoms and the highway ditch 
banks were high enough in places that you could back a 2 ton truck up to 
them and back a tractor off of the truck and into the field.  You had to 
pick you spot because in some places the banks were higher than the truck 
bed.
It's not that way now.  The highest bank along the road now is not much 
higher than a pickup truck bed.   I've wondered many times how much of that 
is from farm equipment leveling the place and how much was from erosion.  In 
our case mostly wind erosion.   The more sandy parts of the farm actually 
consist of some soil types that are highly prized by contractors for road 
fill.
That sand is worth at least $1.00 per cubic yard and that works out to $1600 
per acre per foot of depth.  I wonder how many thousands of dollars have 
blown away over 50 years.  Since the place has been leased for the last 30 
years it's been out of my control.  I try to get the tenants to leave it in 
stubble over the winter and early spring or put it in cover crops but I 
can't really control what they do and the worst wind erosion season is in 
March when the place is generally plowed up to prepare for seeding. 
Looking at it strictly as farm land the place is better because of farming 
with big equipment.  It's a much more productive farm now than it was 50 
years ago.  Back then we basically farmed about half of the place and let 
the rest lay out and were very glad (right or wrong) that there was a soil 
bank program to pay us for letting it lay out.

--------------------------------------------------
From: "john hall" <jtchall at nc.rr.com>
Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 9:57 PM
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Subject: Re: [AT] massey combines at portland

> 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
>
>
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