57 It’s Farming. And It’s Better. Better Farming | September 2024 How it Works KEEPING TOPSOIL WHERE IT SHOULD BE Preventative practices minimize soil erosion. By Ralph Winfield In a much earlier article, I wrote about Edmund Zavitz. His life was highlighted in the book Two Billion Trees and Counting: The Legacy of Edmund Zavitz, by John Bacher. Bacher was a guest speaker at an annual meeting many years ago when I was on the Kettle Creek Conservation Authority board. Bacher was very emphatic about the need to plant trees to keep topsoil in place and prevent soil erosion. Serious soil erosion had become prevalent in the early part of the 20th century when tree cover was removed in the 1800s and early 1900s to facilitate cropping, especially of the lighter sandy soils in areas like Norfolk County. Zavitz became the first provincial forester and worked with the farming community to promote better stewardship of the land, which many embraced. Working together, they helped replant trees on areas of land that were not conducive to farming operations and would be better suited to reforestation. Tree planting was later encouraged by provincial nurseries, the Ontario ministries of Natural Resources, Northern Development, and Mines, and the conservation authorities, which provided tree seedlings and often did the planting. Times and tillage practices have changed significantly in recent years. Most of you older folk will remember when fall plowing was a common practice. When I was a lad, we had a one-furrow moldboard plow on the farm, but I was too young and small to use it. You had to have the stature and leverage to control the plow behind the team of horses. If you didn’t and the plow hit a large rock or even hard ground, it would flip up or flip over and could take you over with it. We later purchased a two-furrow plow that we mounted on the new Ford 8N tractor we got in about 1950. Harry Ferguson teamed up with Henry Ford in about 1939 where they put the new Ferguson three-point hitch system on the new Ford 9N tractor. This was known as the “handshake agreement.” Fall plowing beCorn planted directly (not tilled) into wheat stubble. Randy Dykstra photo
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