The Rural Voice, 1983-05, Page 13of terracing by borrowing a slogan from
well-known Londesboro conservationist
Norm Alexander: "Make water walk not
run."
In other words, the volume of soil
eroded is directly proportional to the
speed of the water. The slower, the less.
If one were to install a series of ridges
between the lip of a saucer and its centre,
water wouldn't race as fast to the middle
carrying the crumbs. And this in essence
is what the Maaskants are doing to their
field.
Water will 'walk not run' to a terrace
and carry less topsoil with it. The water
will pond at a terrace and drain within 24
hours, before crops can be damaged,
through a terrace intake into the field's
tile drainage system. It's common prac-
tice in Iowa, where the Maaskants are
getting most of their inspiration and the
practical know-how for their terracing
project.
The brothers installed a grassed water-
way, reduced the amount of tillage and
tried crop rotation before they began
entertaining a notion to terrace. None of
these methods seemed to put much of a
dent in their erosion problem. Last spring
the gully erosion was particularly bad
says Hugo. There was much heavy rain.
The field was down to the hard pan in
some gullies with lots of silt buildup at
the bottom of the field. The Maaskants
figured they lost from six to eight inches
of topsoil in some places. Some of the
gullies were from twenty to thirty feet
wide.
They approached the Ontario Ministry
of Agriculture and Food about their
erosion problems, and Huron County's
OMAF assistant engineer Sam Bradshaw
set up the Iowa connection with John
Hickenbottom of Fairfield, Iowa who has
been involved in soil conservation work
for 40 years. He and nephew Mark, who
designed and patented a modern surface
inlet pipe ideal for terraces which the
Maaskants also now sell, came to
Colborne Township last spring.
They changed the way the Maaskants
approached their erosion predicament.
They started to think more about sheet
erosion, which doesn't leave the visible
scars that gully erosion does but can be
far more dangerous by carrying away
much more soil.
"With sheet erosion you lose more soil
than you're aware," says John. "You'd
have to paint your soil particles to be
sure just how much you're losing. But it's
probably much worse than we think. even
now."
In Iowa, where erosion is particularly
acute, they figure for every bushel of corn
produced two bushels of topsoil are lost.
"We were trying to correct the gullies,"
Hugo says, "but the Iowa people got us
thinking this was futile. We have to solve
the problem at its source."
The Maaskants, with help from the
Hickenbottoms, installed 1,000 feet of
experimental terrace for one tiny lip of
their field last June. It took about two
days. First the drain inlets were installed,
then topsoil was stripped off; a terrace or
ridge was constructed from the subsoil,
and the topsoil was redressed. Bull-
dozers did the dirty work.
There had been no heavy rains by the
beginning of this April, so Hugo says the
experimental terrace hasn't really had a
good workout yet. Ponding and the drain
inlets seem to be working as they should.
Tests done by Glen Pierce seem to
indicate the sediment collected in experi-
mental bottles in the inlets is far less
than the quantity of sediment which
previously had been running through
rows of corn. So the terrace looks like it's
doing its job. But one wee terrace isn't
going to put much of a damper on
massive sheet erosion in any case.
The real workout begins in late August
when the Maaskants and Hickenbottoms
plan to do the entire field with some
10,000 feet of terrace. The work is
expected to take several weeks. Right
now the Maaskants are thinking of three
parallel terraces, off each of the two lips
of their quarter -saucer shaped field. This
field could be described as gently
sloped, with a slope of from two to four
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THE RURAL VOICE, MAY 1983 PG. 11