—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March 15, 1975 slowly it cannot carry soli
26
~ particles with it. Soil collect!
• • on the uphill aide of the
m m O t £>"§" terraces, and can be moved
ww%%w bock uphill if nccciaary as
the fields arc plowed. When
water runs from Groff's
waterways into the stream
that runs through his farm,
it's clear water.
Groff said his com crop
was off during the years he
was establishing terraces,
but figures it was worth the
price in reduced yields. “1
may have lost the equivalent
of an acre of crop a year for
about two years,” he pointed
out. "At first, there’s not
much topsoil at the bottom of
the terraces. The bulldozer
has to scrape clear down to
the subsoil at some spots.
The com there the first few
years looked pretty sick - it
was yellow and some of it
didn't get any ears. But now,
you can’t tell the difference
betweeen the com at the
bottom of the terraces and
the top. The com at the
bottom might even be a little
better.”
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ayatam
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MADISON
SIIOS NUTRI
MATIC
MADISON SILOS
Div Chromalloy American Corp
1070 Stemmetz Road
Ephrata. PA 17522
Phone 733-1206
LOCAL DEALERS
MESSICX FARM
EQUIPMENT INC.
Elizabethtown 367-1319
FRANK SNYDER
Akron 859-2688
CALEB WENGER
Quarryville 548 2116
LANDIS BROS. INC.
Lancaster 393-3906
CARL L. SHIRK
Lebanon 717-274-1436
SOLLENBERGERFARM
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Centerport 215-926-2722
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JOHN
*Ol, NEW HOUAND, PA PHONE 717-354-5848
(Continued from Pi|i l|
"But I sure don't regret
having them. Even with no
till, I think you could get
some washing and gullies. I
don't have any problem at
all."
The terraces on Groff’s
farm were laid out in 1968 by
employees of the Lancaster
County Soil Conservation
Service, and installed by
Frank Burkhart, a con
servation contractor from
The waterways
were installed in 1969. The
diversion terraces were put
in the following year, after
the waterways were covered
with sod.
The terraces are designed
to slow the flow of water
from the fields. They are
actually mounds of earth
which operate somewhat like
the spouting around a house
roof. When it’s raining,
water flows downhill until it
comes to the bottom of a
terrace. If enough water
collects at the bottom of a
terrace, it will flow slowly to
one of the grass waterways.
The terraces are designed so
that the water moves so
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The relatively minor loss
of corn was a small price to
pay for the added benefit of
the terraces, Groff feels. And
he figures that the dollars he
invested were well-spent,
too. “The whole project cost
about $5OOO, but I didn’t have
- Saranac
to pay the whole thing. ASCS
put up about 60 percent of the
money. I don't know if I'd
have had the work done if I'd
have had to pay the entire
cost."
ASCS is the Agricultural
Stabilization and Con
servation Service, a federal
agency which is part of the
U.S. Department of
Agriculture. ASCS personnel
administer the programs
which channel funds to
farmers, mainly for crop
subsidies and land im
provement.
On his corn ground, Groff
aims for a 24,000 plant
population, and figures he's
getting 25 tons of silage to the
acre. Just before planting,
he chops the rye crop, puts it
in upright concrete silo and
feeds it to his heifers and
young stock. He tries to keep
the mature cows on silage
the year around. He
produces most of his own
roughage, but buys his grain.
At planting time, the com
goes in with banded in
secticide and fertilizer. And
before it comes up, he goes
over the fields with her
bicides, nitrogen . and
Paraquat. After the com
comes off in the fall, he discs
the stubble several times
before planting the rye. “I
have somebody come in to
plant my com,” Groff said,
“because I don’t have a no
till planter. The first year he
was here, it was pretty rough
planting. But the soil seems
to be getting better and
better every year, and this
year we didn’t have any
trouble at all in planting.
And I haven’t plowed since I
went to no-till com.”
Not only does he not own a
no-till planter, Groff also
uses custom operators to fill
his silo and bale his hay.
T’ve always figured that
with my limited acreage, it
just doesn’t make sense to
put a lot of money into
machinery.”
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Richland, Pa
Phone; 866-2544
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One important factor in
the improvement of his toil,
Groff feels is the fact that he
drives over the ground very
few times with heavy
machinery. The exception
would be the heavy forage
wagons when the silo is being
filled in the fall. He doesn’t
even drive over the fields to
spread manure.
When‘Groff built his
present comfort stall barn in
1970, he installed a manure
pit big enough to hold the
output from both the cows
and the milk house for about
a month. He alreadv has
some 3500-feet of irrigation
pipe which he had used from
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North Groffdale Road
Leola, Pa 17540
- Phone: [7l?] 656-2321
lime to lime during dry
spells, and figured that he
could use that pipe to get the
manure from his pits out
onto the fields. In order to do
that, he needed a special
kind of pump, which he
bought from Oregon, and
which has been giving him
good service.
Was it expensive to set up
a system for irrigating with
manure? "I already had the
irrigation pipe, so all I really
needed was the pump,”
Groff said. “If I hadn’t
bought that pump, I’d have
had to buy a pump anyway to
get it out of the pit, plus a
I Continued on Page 271
Call soon to see
one in action.
312 Park Ave
Quarryville, Pa
Phone 786-3521
Y
i 1