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Show Irrigation of Colorado Farms. There is no doubt that nearly every one who visits this region for the first time, even if partially informed about it beforehand, is grievously disappointed at the arid aspect of the plains, and finds it hard to believe in the power of that great beneficent agent, water, which can make every inch of the table-lands and valleys, or the sagebrush wastes of the Humboldt region, of the Egyptian desert itself, literally "blossom like the rose." This is a comparatively rainless area, the "barren and dry land, where no water is," of the Psalmist; and yet a means has been found of not only supplying the place of the rains of heaven, but also of making such supply constant and regular. An intelligent and experienced writer says: "Irrigation is simply scientific farming. The tiller of the soil is not left at the mercy of fortuitous rains. Its capital and labor are not risked upon an adventure. He can plan with all the certainty and confidence of a mechanic. He is a chemist whose laboratory is a certain area of land; everything but the water is at hand - the bright sun, the potash, and other mineral ingredients (not washed out of the soil by centuries of rain). Its climate secures him always from an excess of moisture, and what nature fails to yield, greater or less, according to the season, the farmer supplies from his irrigating canal, and with it he introduces, without other labor, the most valuable fertilizing ingredients, with which the water, in its course through the mountains has become charged." Water is thus both for the farmer and the herder - and the ranchman, who is both farmer and herder - the sine qui non, the prime necessity; and just here did one see how well Uncle Pete had chosen his situation. He had nine miles of water footage on the St Charles Creek, and the same on the Muddy. Just where the farmer comes out of the Wet Mountain range, and where no one could take water above him, he had tapped it for his broad irrigating ditch, which, after a tortuous course through the estate, emptied again in the stream from which it came, not a drop of its precious contents being thus wasted. Along the upper side of the field lying on this gentle slope below described ran smaller ditches. Then daring the season dove the skillful Mexican laborer through these fields, and making little dams for the purpose, turn the water into them. The result is simple: Uncle Pete used? 10,000 bushels of wheat ??? 2000? corn ?? a market for the whole on the spot, it being one of the charms of Colorado farming that the "honest miner" is both hungry and liberal, and that the farm produce ?? ready buyers. Suppose, however, that for our present purpose we call farming a side issue, and come to the cattle which this ranch would support all the year round. It is said that when Kentucky cattle men, fresh from the "Blue-grass Region," see the plains, they are entirely incredulous as to their fitness for stock; but the experienced stockman smiles, well knowing that too nutritious qualities of the grass are simply unsurpassed, and the food for his cattle for the whole year is ready at a minimum of cost. For their water, again Uncle Pete's splendid creek frontage more than amply provided. - A. A. Hayes, Jr., in Harper's Magazine. |