Basin former

An implement that ran along a Lister furrow and was usually pulled behind the lister. It had a rotating paddle that made little dirt dams every few feet to catch and hold any water runoff from rain or melting snow until it could seep into the ground. This method, a joint development of The Bureau of Agricultural Engineering and the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station (R. B. Gray, “Tillage Machinery,” pp. 329–346, Yearbook of Agriculture, 1938) was used in dry-land farming, where any technique for conserving the available rainfall was of importance.