When I was a small boy I was fortunate enough to be raised on a farm in Butler County, Iowa, that was well protected by a good Norway spruce, white pine and Scotch pine windbreak. The Norway spruce and white pine are still there and if anything better than they were thirty years ago. At that time my father fed from one to five carloads of stock every winter back of this grove, and I honestly believe that he fed his steers at a cost of from $5 to $15 per steer less than a neighboring feeder who fed out on the open prairie with a few sheds to furnish the only winter protection. I shall never forget the remark a German made who was hauling corn to us one cold winter day. As he drove onto the scales back of this grove, he straightened up and said: "Well, the evergreen grove feels like putting on a fur coat," and I never heard the difference in temperature described any better. Our evergreen grove moved our feeding pens at least 300 miles further south every winter, as far as the cold was concerned.
Thrifty windbreak of Norway spruce at Mr. Earl Ferris' place, in Hampton, Ia.
Near Hampton, Iowa, we have three or four of the best stock raisers in the United States. Every one of them is feeding cattle back of a large evergreen grove. In recent years they have divided up some of their large farms into smaller places and made new feeding sheds, and the first improvement that they made on each and every one of these places was an evergreen grove. They buy the best trees that can be obtained that have been transplanted and root pruned, and most of them prefer the Norway spruce in the two to three foot size. After planting, they take as good care of them as they do of any crop on the farm, for they fully realize that cultivation is an all important thing in getting a good evergreen grove started.
Several days ago, I talked with one of these feeders who has time and again topped the Chicago market. He made the remark that the buildings on his farm cost thousands of dollars while his evergreen grove had only cost from $100 to $200, but that he would rather have every building on the place destroyed than to lose that windbreak.
As the price of land and feed increases, the farmers of the Northwest are waking up to the fact that an evergreen grove is an absolute necessity, and that they cannot afford to plant any other. The maple, willow, box elder and other similar trees take so much land that they cannot afford them. They are a windbreak in the summer, but a joke in the winter.
The time is not far distant when every up-to-date farmer in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and other Northwest states will have a good evergreen grove which will be considered as much of a necessity as his barn, house or other outbuildings.
Evergreens adorn old home of Otto Kankel, at Fertile, Minn., in Red River Valley.
Late this fall, my wife and I left Hampton for an automobile trip through Minnesota, North Dakota and into Canada. It seemed to me on this trip that the most beautiful thing we saw about the farm buildings were the evergreen groves that many of the farmers now have all through Minnesota and Dakota. I was certainly very much surprised at some of these windbreaks and at some of the varieties of evergreens that were being grown successfully as far north as Fargo. Near Fargo we found some extra good specimens of Norway spruce, which I consider the best of all windbreak makers. We also found the Scotch pine doing well 100 miles northwest of Fargo, and other varieties which were naturally to be expected being planted to a considerable extent.