Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1910 — A MIRACLE OF THE SOIL. [ARTICLE]

A MIRACLE OF THE SOIL.

Where Productive Farm* Are Harveafed Every Second Year. The Palouse country in the far Northwest is a panorama of rolling hills, checkered with sagebrush and great wheat fields. Close to those wastes of curious grayish tint are rich fields covered with thick stands of wheat. The soil seems to have performed a miracle in producing this lavish wealth, but those standing crops are an indisputable proof of the triumph of dry farmlng. The fields are harvested only every second year and always plowed very deeply, the soil being thoroughly pulverized in the odd years. A thick blanket of dust covers the earth—good fairy in disguise, for that dust blanket protects the ground and preserves the moisture of the winter snows. Although very little rain falls during the growing season, this stored up moisture is sufficient nourishment for the production of a magnificent crop. The soil appears to have a vol-

canic ash that needs only seed and moisture to bear abundantly. In raising wheat here loss is occasioned from the action of windstorms, which blow off the dust blanket and expose the seed, so every effort is made to keep the blanket on. Instead of sowing two bushels of seed to the acre, as in the East, one bushel is here sufficient. The grain Is cut by headers and combination harvesters and thrashers, which also sack it right in the field. There may be some waste from overripe grain, but this method saves the cost of sacking and shocking, and in some cases reseeds the ground, resulting in a crop of young wheat very valuable for forage. This wheat grass has the same effect as clover in fertilizing, and the green fields add to the attractiveness of the landscape, standing side by side with fields of yellow wheat and black dust of summer fallowed tracts, with a touch of sagebrush now and then for cqntfliStWhen the sturdy German farmers from California first experimented, in this country they incurred a great ideal of ridicule. Now those very methods are producing thirty to forty bushqls an acre, white the maximum coat of cultivation an acre is >5. Such facts indicate why the western farmers are able to winter In California or other favorite American pleasure resorts, run automobiles or even tour Europe and winter on the Riviera.