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About The frontier. (O'Neill City, Holt County, Neb.) 1880-1965 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 21, 1963)
SWCD Annual Report Gives Account of Year's Activities ANNUAL. REPORT This is the rejiort of the Holt Soil & Water Conservation Dis trict's activities and accomplish ments during the year 1962. The following table gives an outline of the accomplishments for tiie past year on some of the major conservation practices carried out by District coopera tors. Now On Practice Unit IWKi IIiumI New cooper ators No. 35 815 Basic Plans No. 19 459 Cons. Crop Rotations Ac. 1,914 113,613 Proper Use Ac. 14,135 204,135 Permanent Seeding Ac. 1,566 33,467 Tree Planting 159 8,215 Terraces & Diversions L ft. 19,610 406,997 Waterway De velopment Ac. 30 358 Pond Con struction No. 71 445 Land Level ing Ac. 85 402 Although there were probably no records broken on any one practice, all practices show a good amount of accomplishment, which indicate a well balanced program for the District. Eleven different contractors did conservation work in the county during the year. Seven of them were engaged in dam build ing; four in waterways, diver sions, terraces, etc. Contractor and farmer help in layout and checking accounted for consid erable saving in time. There were three irrigation dams constructed during the year, two of them setting new records. One empounded over 10 surface acres of water and con tained over 16,(MX) cu. yds. An ofher emixmnded over 75 acre feet of water. In all cases it will enable a rather small family siz ed operation to expand and in crease their productivity through irrigation coupled with their live stock operations. The interest in the Great Plains Program is still high with a number of requests on hand for new contracts. Blight contracts were terminated by expiration. All of these producers have been well satisfied with the fulfillment of their complete conservation plans. COOPERATION WITH OTHER AGENCIES The District Board of Super visors appreciates the effort ex pended by the technical staff of the Soil Conservation Service in assisting in our work. It is through their efforts and cooper ation and the fine work of our cooperators that conservation continues to expand in Holt County. The need for additional techni cal assistance remains critical. The over all application of lay out type practice was as great or greater than last years all time record. Dean Hallock. the conservation aid, was responsible for the lay out using what WAE time was available; farmer and contractor help and requesting help from the W. U. C. when necessary’ to keep ahead of con struction. The follow up and planning program has lapsed somewhat because of the amount of lay out and conservation prac tice application. In order to car ry’ out a well balanced program of planning and application ad ditional full time help is essen tial. The technical staff includes: Orville Indra, Soil Scientist who serves several districts; C. R. Hill, Unit Conservationist; Wes ton D. Whitwer, Range Conser vationist and Dean Hallock, Con servation Aid. Darel Bright, Ro bert Gallagher and Gene Schnei der together worked 147 Vs man days as WAE aids during the year. Mrs. Carole Reed continues to serve as the District clerk. The county increased the funds for clerkical help to $1500 per year. Robert Gallagher was fatally injured in a tractor accident on his ranch on July 3. His untimely death was indeed a great loss not only to his family but to the District and Soil Conservation Service whom he had served so faithfully. Holt is a large county and con tains much school and Universi ty land. A new’ work load is pre senting itself in the demand for basic plans on school lands. Dur ing 1963 a total of 173 school land leases comprising 50,148 acres will Ik- sold. Although some of these places have basic plans at the present time with the pre sent staff it will lx- impossible to meet this increased demand for plans on these lands. During the past year the staff has writ ten plans on school land only where the lessee has shown the desire for a complete plan com parable to that shown by other farmers and ranchers in the District. It lias lieen policy to contact the cooperators every 4 years. Most of the cooperators in rang es 13, 14, 15 and 16 have lieen contacted. As a part of lay out and planning operations addi tional contacts were made. Now a concentrated effort is being made to contact the remainder of the cooperators in ranges 10 and 11. These contacts bring in a numlier of new requests for var ious practices and further in crease the work load. Cooperation with the State Game Commission has continued on a high level. They have check ed all ponds for stocking with State or Federal fish with the exception of newly constructed dams which they approve from the information submitted with the application. In most cases the Game Commission insists that the pond lie fenced to be eligible for stocking with fish. The new '“G” practices in the ACP docket brought about a numlier of requests that were served jointly by a member of the Game Commission staff, the area engineer and a local tech nician from the Soil Conservation staff. Four fish ponds were ap proved and surveyed, two of them constructed. A total of 12 requests were received, 7 of them being pits to fish ponds. Six of these were approved but none constructed largely because of the high cost to the farmer or rancher where dragline work would be involved. Dick Gavit, Extension Fores ter from Pierce, has worked closely with the Soil Conserva tion Service technicians in con nection with the Forestry Im provement Program. Several cooperators did some forestry improvement by removing broad leaf trees where there was good reproduction of cedar in old belts. A number of tests were made with the use of artrizine and si mizane. The results were very encouraging for the use of her bacides on trees to prevent the growth of annual weeds. The 1962 Holt County Agricul tural Conservation Program (ACP) shared with farmers in the Holt Soil Conservation Dis trict the cost of establishing se lected conservation practices needed to improve and protect their soil, water, and woodland resources. The ACP was ad ministered by the locally elected Agricultural Stablization and Conservation (ASC) County Committee. In addition to sharing the cost of conservation practices, the County ACP also helped provide technical services necessary to the summess of the practices by transferring $4300.00 to the Soil Conservation Service. The County ACP Development Group, composed of the ASC County Committee including the County Agent, and designated re presentative of the Soil Conser vation Service and Forest Ser vice. developed the County ACP. In doing this, the Group consult ed with the Governing Body of the Soil Conservation District and got recommendations from the ASC Community Committeemen and other agricultural agencies and groups with agricultural in terests. The program was designed so that — along with conservation education, technical services, and other conservation efforts — it would be most useful in meet ing local conservation problems. Most of the practices carried out on farms with ACP cost-shar ing were needed land treatment measures in the program of the Holt Soil Conservation District. During the 1962 program year about $96,610.51 of ACP cost sharing was used on 396 farms in the Holt Soil Conservation District to help solve particular problems by establishing needed conservation practices. This re presented about 16% of the farms included: Conservation Practice Farms Extent Permanent cover for soil protec tion or land-use adjustment 52 1264 acres Vegetative cover for crop rota tion 200 4690 acres Lime on farm land to permit use of conser ving crojjs 38 960 acres Stripcropping for erosion control 1 28 acres Planting trees or shrubs 60 140.5 acres 92721 trees Deferred grazing on rangeland to improve vege tative cover 12 3206 acres Controlling com petitive shrubs on range or pasture lands 2 158 acres Wells for live stock water 64 71 structures Developing springs or seeps 1 852 cu. ft. Livestock water dams 22 24 struct. Improvement of a stand of for est trees 5 11 acres Establishing per manent sod wa terways 17 16,977 lin, ft 3,731 cu. yds. 218 1000 sq. ft. Permanent vege tation on field borders, dams, dikes and ditchbanks 4 14 acres Gradient and le vel terraces 3 10.1 1000 lin. ft. Erosion control dams 12 15 struct. Open drains 4 4567 cu. yds. Leveling irrigable cropland 3 55 acres Winter Cover crops 2 65 acres Summer cover crops 2 50 acres Control of nox ious weeds on farmland 4 113 acres Treating blow-outs on damaged ar one nf runern. land 11 51 acres Ponds for wildlife 1 2 struct. Payments on above practices were made by direct payment to the farmer, ACP cost-share pay ment paid directly to the vendor at the farmers request or by an assignment also at the farmers request. The Holt Soil Conserva tion District received payments by 20 assignments and 46 direct payments were made to other various vendors. Approximately 450 farms were in the 1962 Feed Grain Program. There are approximately 230 farms on which the Conserva tion Reserve Program contracts are still in effect. PUBLICITY There were 20 news releases made during the year. These are printed in from one to four of the newspapers in the county: The Holt County Independent, The Frontier, the Atkinson Gra phic and the Stuart Advocate. Each Thursday Radio Station KBRX in O'Neill carries a 15 minute program covering some phase of conservation. Respon sibility for these programs is shared by the County Extension Agent, Weston Whitwer and Bob Hill of the Soil Conservation Ser vice. Occasionally a District Sup ervisor assists with the program. It seems that in the past year we have had better response from this program than previ ously. SUPERVISORS ACTIVITIES AW ARDS PROGRAM The election of the Soil & Wa ter Conservation District was held July 20. Three new sup ervisors were elected; they are Milton McKathnie, Merrill Smith and Robert Summerer. The past supervisors. Walter Fick, Mer wyn French, sr.. and Rnhert Witherwax, were asked to serve as assistants and help with the work load and also to help the three new members of this busy board. This has given an oppor tunity to continue all past prac tices and also to start several new ones such as tree spraying and replanting. Four board members and their wives attended the National As sociation of Soil & Water Con servation Districts in February. The trip started by plan from Omaha to New York non-stop. A very' busy week was taken up by tours, meetings and banquets. We traveled by boat, bus and taxi to cover nearly every his toric and scenic location along the Eastern sea board. Starting at the Statue of Liberty we tra veled the length and width of New York City. Then by train to Philadelphia to attend the largest association gathering ev er. The final climax was the touring of our nation’s capital city and meeting with many of the men and women who run our country. This trip and convention add ed vision and understanding to this supervisor, also to the other supervisors from this District State and nation. All board members and as sistant supervisors attended all or part of the annual convention of the State Association of Soil and Water Conservation Dis tricts at Valentine. At this meeting Elmer Juracek. secre tary-treasurer of our board and State President for the past year was re-elected as president of the State Association. Mr. Juracek attended the area meeting in Bismark. N. D. re presenting the State Association as well as our District. On December 6 Milton Mc Kathnie. Bob Summerer. super visors, Carole Reed, District Clerk, and Bob Hill. W. U. C. attended the area meeting at Broken Bow. Sand bluestem In rows for seed production grown by Stanley Lambert of Ewing. Sand bluestem is one of the highest priced native grasses and demand for the seed is expected to remain high. Walter Fick served during the year as President of the Nebras ka section of the American So ciety of Range Management. Wes ton Whitwer, Range Conservation ist served as secretary-treasurer Walt worked especially hard on newsletter subscribers obtaining nearly 100 for the Nebraska sec tion. H e inaugurated the practice of having business in terests sponsor the letter. He re ceived such S[>on.sorship from O’ Neill Livestock Market, First National Bank. O’Neill, the O’ Neill National Bank, Arrow Seed Co., Miller Seed Co., and Sharp Bros. Seed Co., Healey, Kan. Walt has become quite pop ular in presenting his ranch con servation and operation story using a very impressive set of slides he has taken. He gave this at the State meeting at Broken Bow and at the Custer County Soil & Water Conservation Dis trict annual meeting at Broken Bow. On April 4 board mem tiers and wives, the office staff and their wives and friends met at the Town House for a dinner to hon or Dean Hollock. Dean was pre sented an Outstanding Award by C. Wallace Buck, Area Conserva tionist. Dean made outstanding contributions to the Conservation work in the District and richly deserved this award. We, as board members, are very ap preciative of this type of tech nicians being assigned to our Dis trict. Clarence Ernst’s ranch was se lected for the Photo Award. The Production Credit Association co sponsored this award. Clarence has not only done an outstanding job in applying a complete con servation program on his place but has served as Soil & Water Conservation District supervisor for more than 10 years. He is at present chairman of the County Board of Supervisors. Mr. and Mrs Ernst attended the State Convention at Valentine as guests of the local District. Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Dex ter. Mr and Mrs Everett Jar man and Mr. and Mrs Walter Pick represented the District with their ranch operations in the Sioux City Permanent Agri culture Contest. The District won the Area award and $100 00 which was used to purchase a set of walkie talkies. These award wan ning ranches represent some of the most outstanding conserva tion ranch management in the county. Merwyn French. Jr . was se lected in the Goodyear Awards program Merwyn. an irrigation farmer near Page, has some very gtxxi grass seeding and tree plantings as a part of his con servation program His latest planting was six single row shel terbelts on a quarter of non-ir rigated cropland. Merwyn French, sr was again in charge of the Soil Stewardship Program for the county. Laymen were asked to invite their pas tor and attend a meeting about a month prior to Soil Steward ship Sunday. The morning in cluded discussions on District Activities followed by a noon luncheon. The afternoon was spent touring conservation prac tices in the Northern part of Holt County. Bob Summerer and Bob Wit herwax took charge of the con servation students selected for County Government Day. Several teachers received scholarships to Conservation workshops. They were Mrs. Rin nie Cans and Mrs. Bennett San ders attending at Wayne and Miss Twila Hicks attending at Jeffery Ixxlge. Holt County was chosen as a pilot project for up-dating the program of work for the Dis trict. All board moml>ers joined with State and local representatives of the Extension Service, Agri culture and Stablization and Con servation Service, Farmers Home Administration and local representatives of Federal Land Bank, Production Credit Associ ation Rural Electrical Associa tion Reclamation District re ation. Reclamation District re presentative and Chamber of Commerce. This was done because the Sec retary of Agriculture desired that these programs of work be made current to better reflect working conditions and relations on which a new memoranda of understand ing will be based. Subsequent meetings of the board. State Commission repre sentative and Soil Ctanservation .Serv ice representative to review material and condense to usable form. At the series of Area meet ings held throughout the State in Decern! er the work done in Holt County was discussed with all other District tioards in the State. The annual meeting was held with the O'Neill Chamber of Commerce Tins served to edu cate the Chamber memliers to the work of our District. Also we as District supervisors learn ed something of city taisiness The Photo Award the Goodyear Award and the three Sioux City Awards were presented to the respective winners. Klmer Jur acek was presented with an award for serving as District Supervisor for ten years. ll Tl Itt: OUTIXMHi We lielieve that the Great Plains Program is an excellent opportunity for cooperators to complete their conservation job with the assistance of cost shares and technical help of a com plete conservation plan. This pro gram is being received enthus iastically by all who have con tracts developed for their farms and ranches. Three memliers of the Board of Sujiervisors have Great Plains contracts and as a board we feel that we need to take the lead in encouraging this program in every way possible. The 48 Great Plains contracts in effect cover 59,391 acres. Cost share of all contracts amounts to $184,361 65 This is an average of $3 10 per acre of Fed eral cost shares to apply a com plete conservation plan. Our smallest plan comprises 24 acres and the largest is 7,400 acres. The smallest contract is $445.56 and the largest is $17,393 .73. These contracts run from three to seven years to comple tion. The demand for new contracts is stronger than ever tiefore. The board feels that only by having an active part in the local self governing organization (The Soil & Water Conservation District) and a large voice through the State and National Associations, that proper emphasis will con tinue to he placed on agriculture. Few realize how dependent we all are on agriculture or the need to conserve our soil and water. Few realize that our soil is our manufacturing plant for food. We have a moral obligation to de velop this soil to its highest cap ability and to preserve it for future generations. One of the dam* hull! this year on Henry Walter* place. t«enr» Hchnc'lder, part time conservation aid looking over installation of new type- of tul>e. Small tuts* inlet take* water from lower |«vrt of |M>nd. Water will Is* maintained ut level of tsrnrd where Mils tube empties into larger overflow. This design Is especially recommended for |muds to be storked with fish. Installation of primary spillway (tube) and drain pl|H- on Robert Witherwax Irrigation. Six irrigation dams tui\e Iteen constructed in the county under (treat Plains (Contract*. A TRUCKLOAD OF THURSDAY FROZEN FISH AND SEA ancj I R|£)AY FOOD WILL BE sold (Feb. 21 & 22) FROM OUR LOT AT M I V DISCOUNT PRICES ONLY ^ _ fillet of NORTHERN FILLETS Single Frozen Per Lb. 59ci OCEAN CATFISH STEAKS Lb 55c 10lb $450 DR. HERRING Lake Superior. Per Pound 29e DR. MINN. BULLHEADS 5Lbs for *219 t _ U. S. Grade 'A' I Pre-Cooked » FISH I STICKS I 4-lb. box S ;rs I FANCY LARGE I BREADED SHRIMP I Lb. Box $^gg I FANCY Shrimp in the Shell 2y2-|b- box *319 _ Vita Brand Boneless in wine sauce HERRING 4-lb. box SILVERY SMELTS ... 00c HAG p*r Jb. NORTHERN PIKE ... Dressed per lb. CHANNEL CATFISH . 00c Breaded Ready To-Fry FISH PORTIONS . 10-lb. box $3.69 21/2-lb. jor $229 ALSO: Salmon — Halibut — Walleyes Oysters — Lobster Tails — Scallops Froglegs — Many other Delicious Items