| Show WARD WAD MERKLEY BEGINS WORK ON FIVE YEAR FARM PLAN soil conservation agency furnishes specialists services ward merkley is he says finding that it will take severah several years to develop his 70 acre farm in maeser to full production this with the building ot of a new home Is a full time ume job jor or both him and mrs merkley mr merkley asked grant parrish local soil conservation service representative resent a t ive in the represent full of 19 1947 rel 7 for a assistance s s alstn ce in working out a soil improve ment program he ile told mr parrish that he had a weed control problem of five acres of land which were so uneven that it was almost impossible to irrigate in another field there was an irl iri gation gatlon ditch which meandered through some of his best grain and alfalfa land other fields were steep and uneven and on one of them which h haa had slick spots dotting through the grain and alfalfa the soil seemed to dissolve like flour no matter how I 1 worked these spots pots 8 declared mr merkley nothing would grow mr Merk leys application was turned arned over to hugh W colton member of the uintah basin soil con conservation se rv a tion district board of supervisors for approval mr colton the application and requested that a conservation plan be prepared first step in the compilation 0 of f the conservation plan was the r making of a soil survey and land classification of the farm by john L swenson S C S soil scientist not only were the slick spots studied and sampled but a soil auger was used to determine the de depth I 1 th ot of the soil on each of the fields field s mr swenson mapped the slope the type of soil the presence of alkali and the depth of the water table in each field this information was used in classifying the land and deciding the type of land leveling that could be done the type of crops that would best adapt themselves to a particular field the types of fertilizer needed and other conservation measures which make up a complete farm plan the planning services of mr parrish engineering services of francis todd and alton J vernou were furnished without charge cher to mr merkley by py the district in the preparation of his farm arm plan one of the first jobs undertaken was the relocation of the meandering ditch along a fence une line and the filling in of the old ditch channel mr vemon vernon set stakes for fill and when the job was completed two additional acres of 0 cropland had been prepared for irrigation following the laboratory analysis of the soil it was decided to try out some gypsum on a few of the me slick spots this gypsum was obtained from the gyp pit on the taylor mountain road and applied to two of the spots this big I 1 is S lust just the beginning of mr Merk leys ti five v e year program w with ith the soil conservation district di s tri ct in the solving of his conservation problems many other things remain to be done as part of this soil conservation plan su such eh as shortening irrigation runs land leveling installing head gates building up the soil fertility with barnyard manure green manure crop rotations and commercial fertilizers ali all I 1 of these practices will be intro deuced after analyzing each field on the farm and fitting the ac tice to the needs of the field mr merkley said that by winter he had applied several of the urgent improvements and that he is confident that by the next growing season many of hla his past headaches will be solved in commenting on the work accomplished on mr Mer Merk kleya leys farm mr parrish called attention to the cooperative agreement which is entered into between the farmer and the district and by means of which the farmer can call for assistance at any time |
