A26*lancaster Fanning, Saturday, March 30, 1996
Streambank
(Continued from Pago At)
As Shade indicated, with a
chuckle, “Mother Nature is clean
ing house."
But Shade’s efforts over the
years may have controlled the
damage, to a certain extent. The
Dauphin County Conservation
Farmer of the Year noted that his
extensive work installing stream
bank protection devices includ
ing fencing, grass, and trees
helped to save the soil from wash
ing out
Jason Is busy with the shelled com grinder.
ha was “really surprised" by receiving the Conservation Fanner of the
Year honor. "I didn’t think I did any better than the neighbors. I didn’t go out after R,
let’s put R that way.” With him is his dog Red.
Extensive . jrk installing .eami >% jg fencing,
grate, and trees helped to save the soil from washing out. Here, Todd checks out
the trees.
Work Controls Damage
The protective plants act as a
barrier to hold the soil in place.
Malted down grass simply catches
a lot of the silt
“You’d be surpised at all the silt
that (the grass) sifts out of the
water,” he said.
On Tuesday evening. Shade was
honored for Ids work in conserva
tion by the Dauphin County Con
servation District at a banquet at
the Natural Resources Center in
Dauphin.
The Shade family farms about
235 acres (200 tillable) in the hol
low below Tannery Hill in the
Lykens Valley. With wife Lily and
sons Todd, 27. who works full
time and Jason, 18, a senior at
Upper Dauphin High School who
works part-time, Larry manages
about 75 Holsteins. Daughter
Crystal, 29, who works for a local
catering service, helps milk on the
weekends.
The igilking herd numbers 66 of
all grade Holstein. Milking is from
tiestall to pipeline. The latest
DHIA test indicated a herd average
of 17,500 pounds.
The Shades also rent an addi
tional 75 acres. The farm operation
includes three farms altogether
within about a mile radius. The
Shades grow about 100 acres of
com. 60 acres of alfalfa, and about
50 acres of wheat, the test coveted
with clover/timothy. Larry Shade
uses 80 percent minimal till and 20
percent moldboard plowing on the
farm.
Larry said the use of cover crops
such as rye rotated onto the com
silage helps “keep the soil covered
pretty well.” The droughty Clym
er very stony loam is easily subject
to drought stress.
Indeed, because of the droughts,
the past several years have been
especially challenging. Last sum
mer, the drought which began in
July and lasted through August
gave the dairy family only about
2,000 bushels of shelled com for
\ ,> <
Fortunately, as Indicated here by Larry, grase that lined
the creek worfted to contain the soil.
about 60 bushels per acre.
“It didn’t rain here until Sep
tember,” said Lily. “A Saturday
in July it got so hot I don’t think it
rained much after that”
Larry grew up on die main Cum
in Elizabethville. After he married
Lily, the Shades purchased a near
by farm. Larry joined the district in
1969 and laid the farm out in con
tour strips according to district
plans.
The hilly region demanded that
some type of contours be laid out
“It just stands to reason that water
follows the com rows, if you got
them going around a hill, every
thing’s always level.”
Grass strips next to the hilly
com rows catch any soil that
moves from the com.
Allen and Beatrice Shade, Lar
ry’s parents, had begun contouring
the fields on the main farm long
Todd
before Lily and he moved there
with their family in 1978. Addi
tional contours were installed in
the late 1980 s, and other practices
were put in pbce, including grass
waterways and 150 feet of tile
drainage.
In 1990, a glass-fused-to-steel
circular manure storage tank with a
capacity of 330,000 gallons was
installed with cost-share money
from the Chesapeake Bay Frog
ranit Th® manure is stored and
spread twice a year, once in the
spring and again in the fall.
While the Shade Farm did all it
could to ensure soil erosion was
controlled, it was the events of last
January that proved deeply chal
lenging and troubling.
After the severe snowstorms
early in January, in mid-month, the
40-plus inches of snow and ice that
(Turn to Pago A 27)
f
J
/
/
• salf-propallad foraga box
f *