P. A. Yeomans
Keyline — deriving a whole farm plan, furrow by furrow, from the geometry of its valleys.
The record
- Standing
- foundational work
- Based
- North Richmond, New South Wales, Australia
- Home ground
- Yobarnie and Nevallan, two parts of one property at North Richmond, west of Sydney, where the system was developed.
- The pattern
- Cultivation furrows loop higher through the valleys and sweep lower across the adjacent ridges. The result moves moisture off the wet ground and onto the dry, increasing what the ridges absorb and reducing what concentrates in the valley floor.
- The plough
- Credited by the Yeomans Plow company with the first chisel plough built tough enough for Australian conditions. The later Bunyip Slipper Imp with Shakaerator, a vibrating narrow-tyned subsoil loosener, won the Prince Philip Prize for Australian Design in 1974.
Standing is this studio’s placement of the work, not a ranking of the person, and it is the one line here that is a judgement rather than a cited fact.
The work
Keyline is the rare design system that starts from a single geometric fact. Find the point in a primary valley where the slope changes from steep to gentle, and the contour through it — the keyline — determines the direction every cultivation pass, dam, and tree line should take.
What follows from it is counter-intuitive and is the whole point. Ploughing parallel to that line, rather than on the contour, produces a furrow pattern that drifts water outward from the wet valley onto the dry ridges. The land irrigates its own high ground with its own runoff.
Yeomans set it out in The Keyline Plan in 1954 and expanded it in later books, and built the tillage equipment the method needed when nothing on the market would do the job. Keyline earthworks are still the standard vocabulary for water on sloping farmland.
Where to read them
- The Keyline Plan (1954) — full text Scanned in full by the Soil and Health Library.
- Water for Every Farm — Keyline Designs The later book, and the family’s continuing design practice.
Sources for this record
Corrections
This record was assembled from the sources above, and nothing in it was inferred to fill a gap. If it is about you and it is wrong, or you would rather not be listed, write and it changes.