Excerpt
Mike Sienkiewicz—“Sink-a-wits,” he offers, for the reader's sake—and Patrick Bowen lean on the covered top of the pickup bed, flipping through the soil survey for Jefferson County. Now and then they turn to the cleantilled, rolling field behind them to trace a road or a tree line with a finger in the air, then turn back and trace the same landmark on the photomap. This is done for the visitor's sake, for they have been here before.
“DgC”, says Sienkiewicz, identifying the soil mapping unit. A Duffield silt loam, 6 to 12 percent slopes, capability unit IIIe-1. According to the survey, “Deep, well-drained, strongly sloping, medium textured and moderately fine textured soils on uplands underlain by limestone.” It is planting time, a glorious late-April day in the premier agricultural county of West Virginia.
Bowen, who, like Sienkiewicz, is about 30 years old, is third-generation conservationist, working out of the Soil Conservation Service office in Ranson. The two men shot the slope (8 percent) and estimated its length (200 feet) on their previous visit, so now Bowen is sifting through a …
Footnotes
Ken Cook, P.O. Box 605, Shepherdstown, West Virginia 25443, writes on agricultural and conservation issues.
- Copyright 1982 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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