While looking around Lorain County in Ohio in this 1952 aerial photo, I can’t help but notice how many fields have the same odd pattern in them. Note the fields in the upper left with an “X”, or more typically, the one down the right edge with a “V” coming in from each corner and a line connecting them down the middle. There are dozens of such fields in the county, although this part of the county has a higher percentage.
Even stranger, when I select later years, 1959 or 1969 depending on what fly-overs are available, they are all gone.
Hmm. The one in the top center seems to show a faint pattern that might match the “X”, but the other fields all have straight furrows across the whole field. And no one did it it 1959 at all? I cannot find a single instance of this pattern in later years.
I should mention this area of the county was more truck farms, tomatoes, berries, etc, while the central parts away from the lake tend to be corn or wheat.
I’d venture a guess that they were a pattern of drainage ditches. The less sophisticated soil conservation measures of the 1950s might have led farmers to dig straight trenches across the field rather than more sophisticated contouring.
Just a WAG though. What did the area look like in 1959-1969?
Well, I have one clue. The photo I linked to has a date of April 27, 1952. The later photos are not dated, but the fields appear to be covered with crops as I cannot see any furrows. So whatever they are, they are probably still there under the plant cover. I thought of drainage but they don’t seem to collect to anything.
I agree that it is some artifact of the way they worked the field. The furrows are parallel to the nearest edge of the field. Notice that when the field isn’t square, the oblique lines are still at a 45 degree angle.
When seeding a crop with a disc you drive in diminishing squares around the field, and when you make a 90 degree corner you will always leave an unseeded gap. These gaps will run into the field diagonally from the corner. After you finish the field, you make one pass up each of these rows of gaps.
If you’re seeding with a drill, on the other hand, you will probably make lengthwise passes, leaving gaps at the ends of the field which you’ll make an extra pass along at the end. You don’t do this with a disc because of the horizontal displacement of the earth that a disc seeder causes - you have to always be traveling the same direction as your last pass, no back and forth allowed.
There might have been a tilling fashion at the time, that held that soil erosion can be minimized by having, wherever possible, furrows running parallel to the roadside ditch. The X pattern in a square section would be a result of plowing in such a way that every row is plowed parallel to the nearest edge. The square would be divided into four triangles, each one plowed parallel to the ditch at the hypotenuse.
Farmers often share these kinds of insights with each other, and for a brief few years, this logic may have become entrenched among neighbors. Or maybe even an idea spread by the county extension agent based on something he had learned or conceived.