Problems of farming on the Plains
- Created by: cassiarh01
- Created on: 18-04-18 13:43
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- Problems of farming the Plains
- Problems
- Grasshopper plagues and other insect pests
- Climate - hot summers and cold winters
- Lack of water - very little surface water and very low rainfall
- Prairie fires - dry grass burned easily
- Thick sod - the soil was a tangled mass or grass roots
- Lack of trees - very little timber for fencing/building
- Weather - thunderstorms and violent winds
- Dealing with lack of timber
- The thick walls and roof were good insulation in winter
- The earth walls and roof were fireproof giving protection from prairie fires
- Sod houses were impossible to keep clean
- Lack of wood for fencing - settlers had to pay a large amount of money to import timber to fence their claims
- Made homesteading expensive until 1874 when barber wire was introduced as a cheap alternative to wooden fences
- A tough environment
- Crops that did well in the east shrivelled up and died from lack of water/eaten by insect swarms
- Ploughs that worked in the east broke when farmers tried to use them to plough through the thick sod of the Plains
- At first settle had to dig up the sod with spades, which was back breaking work
- Problems
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