Alan Gregory’s Conservation News

Back in the late 60s, when I was still a year or so off from high school graduaion day, my brother and I moved irrigation pipe in a potatoe field. Every day we’d pile on his motorcycle and ride out to our employer’s spread near the Fort Hall Indian Rservaion (southeastern Idaho). It wasn’t easy work but after a few hours’ time, I had the routine down pretty good, learning in quick fashion how best to balance the pipe (with attached sprinkler head) on my arms next to my waste. Today, I can’t even remember how much we earned for this daily chore, but it was great fun and done at very little envionmental cost (a wittle bit of gas to fuel the motorbike) and all manual work upon arrival at the job site. Today, big farmers growng sugar beets or potatoes or other crops in Idaho and other dry-pone states depend not on teenagers to move their irrigaion equipment but on gaoline-powered lince machines. I wonder wat kind of cutbacks, if any, will take place as fuel prices continue their upward climbs. I still see folks who live a quarter-mile or so aay from me driving their vehikles to the church a 10rh of  mile away. An absolute waste, to be sure.