Webblog

In Lecture 7, The Farmer is the Man, we talked about the agriculture and ecology of the plains and the evolution of farming. Towards the beginning of the lecture we talked about how the stereotype of the Great American Desert was no more and was now the Garden of the World. I thought it was interesting that it went from a desert to a garden. We also talked about how new technology and ideas helped the farmers. One method we talked about was dry farming. Hardy Webster Campbell thought dry farming would help to conserve moisture in the soil. His idea was to plow deep and have a layer of dust as mulch. It turns out that this didn’t really help hold moisture in at all and most likely even contributed to the Dust Bowl. One technology that did help the farmers was irrigation. This helped them get water to their crops however, it depleted the ground water supply and dried up stream flows. Irrigation also led to the development of feedlots, packinghouses and eventually immigration.
My favorite part of this lecture was talking about the legends of the dust bowl. A few that Professor Isern told us were that you could not see your hand in front of your face, people taped up the windows to keep dust out, and that some people thought it was a sign that Judgment Day was coming. My family has a farming history so it was interesting to listen to what they may have gone through to get their farm going.