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By LISA G. CURRIE
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
As tiny buds turning to bloom foretell the arrival of spring in Rappahannock, farmers prepare for spring crops.
For many county farmers, it’s as simple as dropping a few seeds in neat rows, or planting a few tomato plants between the flowers in plots around the yard.
But for other county farmers, spring planting is an engineering feat.
Stripcropping, the method of planting alternate strips of small grains, hay and corn across the general slope of the land, requires more from the farmer than just dropping seeds.
It requires “a little bit of planning” on the part of the farmer, said Cliff Latham, Rappahannock County farmer and manager of Homer Hill. With a smile, he explained that the method does not really require more time, but does require careful thought and planning about the crops, their planting and harvest times.
Since the different crops alternate strips of rows in the same field, Mr. Latham said, the farmer must be careful that fertilizer, pesticides or harvest activities with one crop don’t adversely affect the others.
Mr. Latham and several other county farmers, with the assistance of the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) and the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS), have strip planted their land to minimize erosion, the everpresent problem of farmers.
As many Rappahannock farms do, Mr. Latham’s land, located on Route 729 just south of Route 211 at Ben Venue, rolls as it dips into hollows and swells against the hills. Continuous cultivation of this sloping land, as is common on most farms, tends to increase soil erosion and causes unprotected soil to wTash, filling streams and larger rivers with silt until it finally reaches the Chesapeake Bay.
According to SCS officials, this erosion and siltation threatens both the condition of the farmer’s soil and the purity of water supplies. Stripcropping is one way to protect the farm’s fragile topsoil and the fragile ecology of the waterways and the Bay, which is the final destination of much of the water draining off county fields.
Planning a stripcropped field is important, Mr. Latham said, because crops must be rotated more frequently. Each of his farm’s strips contains three crops, and must be rotated every five years.
“You’ve got to make sure you don’t have two fields of the same crops, and that you have enough room for the strips,” Mr. Latham said, pointing to a topographical map of the area. The map, provided by the SCS, lays out the strips for Mr. Latham to plant.
The -stripcropping method used by Mr. Latham divides each of his fields into smaller areas, plowed and planted in rows running north and south or east and west. Thus each small square plot is plowed and planted perpendicular to its neighbor, preventing water runoff from flowing continuously across the field and
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