C2-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, September 6,1986
Virginia Soil Conservation Practices Take Root
BY JULIE GOCHENOUR
Virginia Correspondent
SANGERSVILLE, Va. -
Virginia’s Governor Gerald Baliles
endorsed the conservation efforts
of local farmers during a visit to
rural Augusta County recently.
Excessive amounts of nutrients
and sediments are among the main
causes of pollution in the
Chesapeake Bay, Baliles noted,
adding that, nationally, Virginia
ranks third in pasture erosion,
sixth in cropland erosion and
twelfth in total farmland erosion.
Only innovative farming
methods, such as the Best
Management Practices partially
funded by the Chesapeake Bay
Program, can reverse the process,
Baliles maintained. Currently,
1,359 farmers have participated in
the agricultural BMPs program
which has been limited to head
waters in the Shenandoah Valley.
This part of the Chesapeake Bay
Program will soon be expanded to
include other areas of the state,
Baliles announced.
The governor’s speech
highlighted a tour of farms in the
Moffat Creek watershed area of
Augusta County where BMPs have
been installed. Moffat Creek is a
tributary of the James River with
1,000 of 1,252 acres of cropland and
7,300 acres of the 10,435 acres of
pastureland in the watershed
having erosion problems. Only
2,231 acres are involved in con
servation programs, a figure local
officials would like to see increase.
Bill Braunworth, an Augusta
County tree farmer, received the
1986 Forestry Best Management
30 YEARS AGO
-Harvesting of the main crop of
late varieties of Pennsylvania
peaches is approaching its peak,
and supplies should be plentiful on
local markets over the next two
weeks, the State Department of
Agriculture announced today.
-Loss was estimated at $75,000
when fire caused by lightning
Saturday night destroyed the stone
and frame bank-barn and
machinery shed, a frame
machinery shed and com crib on
the Arthur and Chester Tout farm,
Rl, Lancaster, a mile north of
Oyster Point Saturday afternoon.
-Crop development m the nor
thern reaches of the Com
monwealth is slow, a trip through
sections of Potter County mto New
York State last weekend showed.
Rainfall is more than adequate,
especially with the 1956 crop of
potatoes about ready for harvest
around the Potato capital of the
world Potato City, Pa.
-There was no Labor Day holiday
Monday in the tobacco fields of
Lancaster County, where the
heavy 1956 crop is at its peak of
movement into drying sheds.
-Pushing through a bamboo
thicket to find an acre of Sacred
Lotus grown by the ancient
Egyptians 4000 years ago sounds
like an expedition into the lands
along the Nile, or a journey into the
deep jungles of the Orient. But it’s
a case of Lancaster farming. Taro
from the Philipine Islands thrives
in waters shared by Chinese Lotus,
Egyptian Lotus, papyrus - the
Egyptian paper plant, exotic
bloom we once thought could only
grace magazine cover illustrations
or in encyclopedias. But the Sacred
Lotus is growing on the 112-acre
farm of Lloyd W. Nolt, Rl Lan
caster, near Silver Springs-Nolt’s
Ponds, a fabulous form of fanning
that seems as out of place as a
statue of Buddha in Lancaster’s
Penn Square!
-Placed end to end there was two
miles of chicken served to the
Practice Award from the Head
waters Soil and Conservation
District and is sold on the benefits
of conservation.
From 1985 to 1986 Braunworth
planted 45 acres of white pine
seedlings on marginal, credible
farmland with financial and
technical assistance up to $75 an
acre from the Chesapeake Bay
Program. He also received cost
sharing funds from the Virginia
Division of Forestry’s
Reforestation of Timberland
program amounting to 50 percent
of expenses up to $6O an acre.
Braunworth told the tour that
trees are a renewable resource
that must be utilized and there is a
need to show people the benefits of
a well managed forest. He
manages woodlands to improve
the land and stressed the con
nection between sound forest
management and water quality as
well.
More people are needed to
practice forestry wisdom, he
concluded, which results in greater
profits, better habitat for wildlife,
improved conservation and in
creased opportunties for
recreation.
The tour also visited Neodak, the
largest of three dairy farms in the
watershed. Bill Hughes and his
family own and operate the 96-cow
dairy and farm 225 acres of corn
and sorghum, 65 acres of alfalfa
along with 125 acres of
pastureland. In addition to strip
cropping, the Hughes family also
recently installed a concrete
structure to store liquid manure
with $7,500 in cost sharing funds
THIS WEEK
100.000 people that attended the
Poultry Festival and the Dutch
Days celebration at Hershey, PA
on Aug. 23,24,25 and 26, sponsored
by the Pennsylvania State Poultry
Federation and the Dutch Days
Committee. For those hungry
people who did not eat chicken
there was available: one ton of
ground cooked ' i key made into
delicious turkey burgers and
Turkey (white meat) sandwiches;
200 gallons of chicken corn soup;
10.000 servings of egg nog and 3,000
pickled eggs.
Prospects that Lancaster
County this year may produce one
of the finest corn crops in years
become more evident day by day,
after adequate rains pushed corn
to the point where it may give one
of the best yields in five years.
Proof that Lancaster County
has scored a bulls-eye on soil
conservation and strip farming is
most conspicuous and colorful
from the air. Without any advance
notice, it’s certain an outsider
would recognize the Garden Spot
with no trouble.
Mrs. Pauline (Melvin) Stoltzfus,
R 1 Ronks, and her daughter, eight
year-old Nancy, Tuesday topped
the ladies’ and juniors’ judging
division of the Lancaster County
Guernsey Breeders Association
Field Day at the Frank Hershey
farm northwest of Witmer. Little
Nancy scored 292 points out of a
possible 300, her mother 285.
Nancy received a salt and pepper
shaker.
(From For Farm Women)
Imperial Crab- one pound backfin
crab; good-sized tablespoon
capers, plus some juice; salt and
pepper to taste; three or four
dashes red pepper; one-half cup
mayonnaise...; another, item)
along the seafood line, there’s a
Louisiana seafood soup that takes
days and days to make, and fish of
several varieties, bouillabaisse it
is.
from the Chesapeake Bay
Program.
Fred Givens, an agricultural
engineer working with the
Chesapeake Bay Program, ex
plained the importance of liquid
manure storage structures as Best
Management Practices. Nitrogen
rich runoff from animal wastes is a
major source of nutrient pollution
reaching the Chesapeake Bay, he
reported, especially when manure
is applied to frozen fields in the
winter. With a storage facility,
however farmers can stockpile the
manure and use it to partially
replace commercial fertilizers.
The secret, Givens continued, is
for the farmer to apply the manure
during the proper times
throughout the growing season.
Crops will quickly take in the
nutrients, slow any runoff that
might occur and significantly
reduce the chance of nutrient
pollution. Manure from the
Neodak’s Holsteins will be applied
three times a year to fertilize the
small grains and com crop as well
as improve the fertility of the
pastureland, he said.
Much of Augusta County’s
rolling farmland is actually steep
pasture and erosion from the
grazed hillsides is a major
PP&L
In recognition of their efforts to
save a drowning boy last June,
three Pennsylvania Power & Light
employees have received the
company’s highest honor, the
Lifesaving Award.
Power Production Department
employee Bob Stanley of
Christiana, and Jeff Dietz and Ken
Holdren of Danville, two Con
struction Department workers on
temporary assignment at PP&L’s
Holtwood plant at the time, teamed
up to save Daniel Stoltzfus, 15, of
Green Tree in southern Lancaster
County.
“This action showed what it
means to be a human being,” said
DeForrest S. Bast, PP&L’s
director - Safety & Health, who
made the presentations, “to come
to the aid of your fellow man in an
emergency.”
“Ken and I had just finished
dinner at the Green Tree Inn when
someone burst in and shouted that
a young boy was drowning in a
nearby pond,” Dietz remembered.
"I just jumped up and sprinted out
the door, jumped over a fence,
stripped down to my shorts and
dived into the pond.”
Holdren and Stanley, who
happened to be in the same
restaurant followed closely
behind and stayed on shore,
directing Dietz in his search.
“I finally found him in about 12
feet of water,” Dietz said. “He was
stuck in the mud and unconscious.
I got hold of him and tried to bring
him up, but I swallowed a good bit
of water.
“I had to let go of him. I had been
down too long and had to come up
for air.”
When onlookers saw Dietz come
up without the boy, the pond’s
owner, Elam Zook, jumped into the
water to help.
“We both went back down to the
boy,” said Dietz. “I managed to
wrap my legs around his torso and
we pulled him up and out of the
mud. Ken and Bob threw a rope out
to us when we got to the surface
and pulled us all in to shore. It was
a good thing too. 1 was in no shape
to swim I needed that rope.”
By that time, local rescue units
had arrived and took the victim to
Lancaster General Hospital. They
also took Dietz, who had become
sick from swallowing the pond
water during his rescue effort, to
the hospital
Stoltzfus was listed in critical
condition immediately after the
problem ui the area. One solution,
local conservationists believe, is
fencing for rotational grazing and
woodland protection. At the
Roland Roudabush farm, farmers
and conservationists on the tour
saw a fencing demonstration
hosted by Rockingham
Cooperative Farm Bureau.
According to Phil Liskey with
the Cooperative, new technology in
fencing materials, such as high
tensile wire and fiberglass posts
with urethene coatings, give
farmers the flexability to increase
the number of fences they can put
up by holding down their costs.
Other innovations, such as solar
panels to electrify these fences,
also allow them to be built in more
inaccessible areas of the farm.
Fencing is essential to voison
rotational grazing, a form of
pasture rotation Foy Hendricks, an
agronomist with the USDA-Soil
Conservation Service in Chester,
Pa., was on hand to promote.
Voison means rational, Hendricks
told the tour, and the system calls
for dividing a pasture into at least
10 separate paddocks.
That may not sound rational at
first, the agronomist continued,
but the logic is clear. In early
spring cattle are moved off each
Employees Team Up
To Save Drowning Victim
Bob Stanley of Christiana, an employee in Pennsylvania
Power & Light Co.'s Power Production Department, displays
the company's Lifesaving Award presented to him in
recognition of his assistance in saving the life of a Lancaster
County youth recently.
rescue, but unproved steadily.
Before Dietz helped bring him to
the surface, the boy had been
submerged for more than 10
minutes.
T saw him in the hospital in late
July, and the doctors said once he’s
recuperated and had some
physical therapy, he’s got a good
chance of a full recovery,” Dietz
said
If not for Dietz, though, the youth
wouldn't have made it at all.
“There was no delay. There was
a quick response to the emergency
and that’s what saved the boy,”
paddock when the grass has been
eaten and onto the next. When the
first paddock’s grass has regrown,
cattle are moved back often
leaving several of the 10 paddocks
untouched. These can be hayed,
Hendricks explained, increasing
the amount of forage harvested
from the pasture area.
As the season progresses, the
growth of the grass slows and each
grazed paddock takes longer to
recuperate. By moving cattle
through all 10 paddocks, the grass
and sod is less stressed, the
agronomist noted. During heavy
thunderstorms this system
prevents sediment from running
into the streams and also reduces
year-round soil erosion. When
growth begins again in September,
the old pattern of rotation can
resume.
Erosion control, nutrient
management and reforestation are
essential to the clean-up of the
Chesapeake Bay, and funds are
available to help Virginia farmers
do their part, tour members
learned. According to Baliles, the
state is determined to avert the
decline of the Chesapeake Bay and
while there are no easy or quick
answers, he told farmers, Virginia
is committed to the long haul.
said Donald Mowrer, Bart
Township police chief. Mowrer
also explained that the boy had
been in the pond with other
youngsters, and that one jumped in
and accidentally landed on
Stoltzfus, knocking him un
conscious and causing him to sink.
"PP&L encourages its em
ployees to help out whenever they
can,’’ said Bast. “We’re a public
utility and we’re here to serve the
public in any way possible. It’s
always a thrill and a pleasure for
us to recognize people like we have
here today.”