Hagen Brothers farms,Goodrich ND | In our dry (15-17 inch rain yearly average) central ND area, blowing soil was a big problem until the 70,s.
It was common practice to do fall tillage (black) before winter freeze up, black snow in winter was normal with our constant strong winds.
Spring planting always involved 2-5 tillage passes, with drying out the seedbed, crusting and worry about blowing soil cutting off young seedlings was a constant worry.
we would have so much dirt in the air that every flat surface in outbuildings had a layer of dirt after a windy day. On those windy spring days, we often had to disconnect the TV antenna lead in and ground it as you would hear sparks snapping inside the TV set , the dirt friction on the aluminum antenna created so much static electricity that you could pull a blue 2 inch spark as you got the TV antenna alligator clip near the ground.
We lost so much moisture through tillage and lack of cover that it was normal to fallow 1/3- 1/2 of our land every year to try to produce a crop.
The big push to stop this came when the minimum residue coverage requirements were put in place to be eligible for the farm program.
Now the norm is one pass direct seeding with an air seeder with a few like me doing low disturbance no till with single disc drills.
Water soil erosion is way down, and far less potholes in the fields as water infiltration is much better than when we did so much tillage.
We now can do continuous cropping which is standard practice for 95% of the farmers, Yields are way up, and we only see black snow with a few specialty crops like pinto beans which leave the field looking like an old fall tilled summer fallow field. Crusting and blowing dirt cutting off young seedlings are almost unheard of. Seeing blowing dirt is really an unusual sight now.
Edited by Jon Hagen 2/27/2009 14:48
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Watched Black Blizzard (dust storms of the 30's) last night
