Sorry about the interference from the idling pickup. We are trying to show the blowing soil in the background-15-20 mph wind today with gusts to 30. Pretty moderate for a late winter prairie wind. I scrape up wet soil from the top of the snowbank. The soil is about a half inch deep and I don't have to scrape far to get as much as I want in the hand. Also note the bank of soil covered snow piled up on the fence. It is four strand high tensile and in places the weight has pulled the bottom two wires down.
The fields in the background are full season crop of sugar on one side, and dry bean production on the other. This is what "clean tillage" does. I can also say with some certainty that if all the soil around was held in place by living roots as it was when we whites showed up here, there not only would be no soil on the fence, but much less snow as well. The snow would be held where it landed, benefiting that soil and the life it sponsors.
Notice that the field I am walking in is a hay field. No more than twenty percent of the hay plants, grasses and legumes, that I know to be there are showing through the drifted soil. This continues in places more than a hundred feet into the hay field.
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