Rural Heritage June/July 2025

— it’s too easy to allow soil to erode and wash away. The situation is better than in the 1930s and 1940s when the USDA Soil Conservation Service began, but many tons of Midwestern agricultural soil are still washed into the Mississippi each year. In many areas, water seems plentiful—if a tank overflows, or we ditch irrigate rather than using pipes—well, it seems like the water will be replenished. Similarly, for much of the 1800s and 1900s, timber seemed like an endless resource—although many forests now struggle to regenerate, and we’ll never regrow old-growth. . When Dad was growing up in the 1930s and 1940s, the pervasive attitude was that natural resources were for the taking. Yet he somehow developed a sense of conservation—of limits. He was sensitive to water use, even for things like showering, as water down the drain seemed like a waste. (To this day, he’s suspicious of indoor plumbing.) He combated soil erosion whenever and wherever he could: he gathered branches or cut down small red-cedar

encounter broken glass. Bring a trowel to bury what you’re not going to pick up. Twelve. Conserve resources—protect the planet! On a farm, it’s easy to assume the land will provide what we need and get careless in our resource use. Plowing and cultivating hilly fields, letting animals overgraze and cattle paths to deepen into gullies with rain and run-off

Left: National Archives photo 114 SC Mo3.450, 1935–34. The land was first farmed in 1853.

Right: National Archives photo 114 SC MO 80.300, cartoon of soil losses in Missouri, 1935–36.

June/July 2025

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