OCR Text |
Show CLEARING SAGE BRUSH Cheapest and Best Way Is to Use Gang Plow. Leveling Land for Irrigation Is Next Important Step Preliminary Survey Sur-vey Should Be Made to Determine Deter-mine the Slope. Land covered with scattering sage brush can be cleared in several ways. If the soil Is soft and not too stony, the cheapest and best way Is to plow the sagebrush out. Take a 16-lnch riding plow a gang plow is better remove the mold boards and use only the share and landside of the plow. Keep the share sharp and in sharpening sharpen-ing it draw the point down a little so that it will hold well in the soil. This plow will cut off most of the brush without turning it under, because the mold boards have been removed. After the soil has been plowed, the next step is to rake up the sagebrush. In this case the rake need not be so substantially sub-stantially made as for use on land which has been railed or dragged. Often Oft-en a strong sulky horse rake will suffice. suf-fice. If the land is level and a hay crop is to be seeded, no further plowing is necessary, although it generally pays In the long run to plow after clearing, clear-ing, if economies of time or money do not. mienere. m any eveui we wuuiu give a disking and a cross-dragging to fine the surface. Land covered with short, scrubby sagebrush is cleared most cheaply by grubbing out with a mattock or grub hoe. A mattock drawn out thin and wide on its hoe side is preferable. Sagebrush has only one main or tap root and the blow should be so directed as to strike it about an inch under the surface where It will 'cut off easily. It is a simple matter to rake up the brush cleared by hand and an ordinary hay rake will do the work satisfactorily. Land cleared by hand will be difficult to plow because all the roots have been left in the ground. The plow will have to cut them off and the roots will later inconvenience the rancher by clogging up the harrow. There are other methods of clearing clear-ing sagebrush and many machines have been invented for the purpose. A number of these are successful, but the ordinary man who has a limited acreage to clear finds it inexpedient to tie up too much of his capital In machinery of this kind. It costs $6 or $8 an acre to clear and plow sagebrush land. Leveling new land after the sagebrush Is cleared off is a hard process to reduce to adequate description, de-scription, as the leveling depends upon up-on the nature of the tract and to give the general rules about the work would be only touching the high places. However, there are a few salient sal-ient features that can be laid down as general axioms. The first of these is that water will not run up hill and the second Is that it will run down hill. This seems simple but is not as simple as it seems. Water turned into a ditch that has too much fall will cut the soil away and will pass through so rapidly that It will not scrape out well on the 3ldes. The whole proposition in leveling level-ing Is to strike the happy medium between be-tween these two extremes. Small lumps should be taken off with a drag Dr float. This instrument is generally made of two 2x6's or 2x8's, thirty feet long for side pieces, placed on edge ten or twelve feet apart, to which is attached three cross boards, one near each end of the side pieces, and the third near the middle. The boards near the ends should not extend below the eflges of the side pieces, while the middle board should extend an inch or sd below the side pieces. The position po-sition of these cross boards will depend de-pend upon the soil as they must be arranged ar-ranged so as not to clog nor dig in so deep as to make it impossible to pull. Four to six horses will be required to haul Ihis drag. The small knolls and bumps having been smoothed down, the next step Is to decide which way across the land the water is to be run. It is not possible to determine this with the naked eye, and a preliminary survey should be made to determine the general gen-eral slope. In leveling with the drag there will not be excessive hauling of dirt if tl;e tract is to be leveled to the draw, which means that the. natural contour of the land will be adhered to as closely as possible. The laterals will not ran straight with the compass, but the water will be taken out of the head ditches along the crest of the ridge and turned Into the small ditches which, running at the proper fall, will take the water over the land and discharge it Into the waste ditches after the soil has been watered. |