Crops: The Lynch File: What to do with the stones on your farm

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Should you put them on the roadside with a 'For Sale' sign on them, or avoid them

by PAT LYNCH

Over the years, I have been told many stories about stones. When I was a kid at home, my father use to tell the story of how we had one field which you could walk across by stepping from stone to stone and never touching the soil. And then he would add, "And you could do it with your eyes closed."

We had names for all the various fields. We had the Big Field, The Sand Field and the Corner Field. That particular field we called "The Stone Field."

I know a farmer who believes that the stones have all been placed on his land for agronomic reasons. Most were placed to give his fields more heat units. The rest were placed to slow down erosion.

I worked with one grower who would call me every year and say, "Well Pat, are your ears burning?" I would say, "No, why?" He would reply, "Well I have been picking stones in such and such a field that you convinced me to plow­ last fall. I have been at it for parts of four days this week. All the time I have been cussing you."

A fellow agronomist, Leanne Freitag, tells me that she can remember the day her dad told her, "Well, Leanne you won't have to pick stones any more." Leanne said, "Yahoo. How come?"

Her dad replied, "I am switching to no-till," to which Leanne said "What's no-till?"  (Leanne was very young at the time.) Indeed, many growers have switched to no-till to get away from picking stones.

As I drive around the country, I see many people who have incorporated stones into their landscaping. In most cases they go for the big ones, but some are using small fieldstones to build retaining walls or back drops. They use the small round ones that glaciers rolled around and smoothed off about 7,500 years ago as they retreated.

I have even seen farms where there are nice-looking stones at the roadside with a "For Sale" sign on them. I can imagine some day coming across a sign with a pile of good-sized stones in a container at the road. The sign will say, "Picked stones, $45 a tonne. Pick your own, $4 a tonne. Then below will be a hand-written note that states: "We will accept your estimate as to the weight of the stones that you take." Maybe it will also say, "No Sunday Sales."

And then once this venture gets going, I will run an article about some lucky city person who got stones from a farm. The article will relate how one or two of these stones turned out to be very valuable in the lot that they picked at a "pick your own stones" farm.

This article was not meant to have you take a different look at stones, but rather to take a different look at your farm operation. There may be things that you have taken for granted, especially in the area of producing things to meet what the market wants. BF

Pat Lynch, CCA (ON), is head agronomist for Cargill in Ontario.