Show r DRY mlAN FARM NG3 Dry farming a it Is understood In this State Is the raising of crops on land without Irrigation This Is the ordinary method of raising crops In the humid regions where i the rain is expected ex-pected to supply all the moisture required re-quired by the growing crops and at the time needed j As to when dry farming was first practiced In the State I have had no means of learning but it has been only within the past ten or fifteen years that much attention ha boon devoted to It while perhaps five years will cover the lime when this method of farming has been extensively prac prc leech 1 tis however yearly receiving more attention The average rainfall over the State Is from twelve to fourteen Inches that Is rain and snow that falls would make a depth of twelve Inches of water all over the country It is upon this ni fall hat the dryland farmer has to depend for his crop and thus for him great tht time Importance when this rain In the falls Is I of very great ma jority of seasons the rainfall at rlnfal comes the right season to help the crop to ward maturity and thus the problem for his land the farmer has been I to so handle as to conserve all the moisture al that falls upon it during the year and store It l Jn the surface soil for the use of the crop I has been a gradual pro cess by which the farmers of the State have learned now to handle and culti ate their dryland farms so as to accomplish ac-complish the above result but the knowledge Is extended and v Jth this extension and the more thorough application ap-plication of the principles involved we may expect to see thousands of acres of what Is now comnmitivelv W I land covered with growing i crops i I It I would be probably useless to attempt at-tempt to grow a crop without Irrigation I Irriga-tion on any upperbench land where the surface soil is thin and overlying a gravely subsoil but there is little I of our valley soil of such a nature Asa As-a rule the soil lsa deep alluvial loam with good retention J powers I have seen successful crops without irrigation irriga-tion on land ranglngjfrom a clay loam to almost a sand when the subsoil was not porous j When rain foils upon land which Is I hard and compact some of It may penetrate pene-trate the soil and some may run off I the proportion golngjin either direction depending upon the vloence of the j storm and the slope of the land If the I soil was ploughed toja good depth say I from eight to ten inches and left rough but not open enouSl for the air to cir enlaCe through i all the water that I falls would soak into the ground none l would run off I S I Observations andexperiments have proven that when the toil Is compact I and hard the moisture that Is contained con-tained In its evaporates very rapidly from the surface Into the air Moisture deep down into thersoll Is brought to the surface In he I same manner as the oil In the lamp is brought to the flame j I the supply of oiljgives out the uick I Itself Is pumped almost dor before the lame goes out So the evaporation from the surface of the soil tends to I draw the molslureup and If It is I not arrested it goes off Into the air as vapor drying the soil thoroughly I has been found in practice that surface tillage I breaks I the pOIes by means of Which the o moisture comes to the surface and thus 1 prevents the evaporation ot the water I in the boll This loosened surface soil acts as a mulch and In our dry atmosphere at-mosphere may with advantage be three indies deep I Given the t proper kind of land then two conditions are necessary to successful suc-cessful dry farming first deep cultivation cultiva-tion to prepare the land to receive and retain all the moisture that falls upon it and second frequent surface cultivation i cul-tivation kept l up persistently as soon I In the spring as there is danger of t evaporation from the surface unless I evaplton sol covered with 3 crop The measure of success in dryland farmIng farm-Ing that has been attained In this InS I State has to a large extent been due to the proper understanding ard appll cation of these principles of cultivation I I have visited some parts of the State where the practice is to crop some of practce the land every second year only because be-cause of the lack of water What observations ob-servations I have made would seem to Indicate that with proper cultivation I much of the land would produce crops without Irrigation if properly cult vated Even 1C the rainfall of two sea Lions had to be collected to get n crop It would add t the returns from the farm ns thC Inml that could be watered could produce a crop every year and the other land a crop every second year i and thus add nearly onethird to the I i returns from the farm I has been sometimes asked whether It would be best to Irrigate the dry land farms if water could be obtained i for one Irrigation only during the season sea-son of high water Perhaps most people peo-ple wouldsay by all means use the water wa-ter and yet there are some points that call for Inquiry r the land could be thoroughly soaked and then the surface soil again loosened there perhaps could I be no question about the advantage but a light watering may do more harm than good For a successful crop on I dry land the plants should have a deep root system and the land should bo 1 handled so a to enable the plants to pond their roots as deep into the soil as possible Deep sowing and subsurface sub-surface moisture tend to force the roots down 4 a S When the land Is lightly Irrigated there is a danger that the plant will develop Its root system near the surface sur-face and when the drought conies it will not be able to take advantage of the moisture deep in the soil There Is room here for a little experiment Time crop that has proven most successful suc-cessful In dryland farming is winter wheat though spring wheat has also been quite successfully grown An Important Im-portant consideration In either case Is a wheat that will mature early There is perhaps also some varieties of wheat l that wl 1 do bettor on dry land than I others though on this point I have no conclusive data In every case good plump seed should always be sown Perhaps the most successful dry land farming In the State Is now practiced in Cache Box Elder Davis and Tooelc counties and to 1 limited extent In others Financial success in dryland farming is in a measure dependent upon the economy piaclicnl In handling hand-ling the work rime greatest profits per acre given are reported by those who have the capital to handle a large farm 01 where the people combine to attain the same end One of the most successful dryland farmers I am acquainted ac-quainted with always uses 3 four horse loam and doubles the capacity of his machinery Thus one man can do as much as two as farms arc generally gen-erally handled U S a The rapid extension of dryland i farming In Cache county during the I past four years has really been sur i I prlslnsr but not more so than the success suc-cess that has attended the practice One year ago one of the most successful success-ful seasons for dry farmers I i was told of several yields as high as forty bushels I bush-els I per t acre and the average crop over thousands of acrcs In Cache valley could not have been very far from I thirty bushels per acre The past season sea-son has been a most unfavorable one I I for all kinds 1 of farm crops and yet I lave heard of several crops of from ten LO fifteen bushels per acre on dry land I have followed with Interest the growth of this line of the farming In lercsts both in this valley and over the Stale during the past threo or four years I have neon many places that seemed to me to be as well adapted to successful dryland farming as In Cache county and I have said so through the press 01 more than ono occasion During the past summer I I had an opportunity to confirm my 1 thought upon this point as I found dry farming successfully followed In Juab Iud I-ud Millard counties and a rapid extension I exten-sion of It In Tooele county At Lcvan In Juab county I met a farmer who said that he had farmed dry land l for sixteen years and In only one year of that time had he failed to get a crop and that year the Irrigated erop was almost a failure Outside of this his lowest yield was twelve bushels per acre and he had received thirtyfive to forty bushels HIs average would be over twenty bushels lie said I have i I been in Cache county and have looked over the dryland farms there and we can do Just as well with the dryland farming hero as they can there If wo cultivate our land right and then I l thought of the hundreds aye thousands thou-sands of acres of waste land which I noticed stretching away on cither aide of the road as I droe through the j Valley from Mono southward To i change the miles of sagebrush and nun flowers into a crop of wheat would mean thousands of dollars a xic < l to the 1 wealth of the State O 0 5 As I traveled over the State and na I 1 tlctnl the land and the climate in many counties In Millard in Beaver In Iron in Sanpete In Scvlcr and also In Wayne and Garfield I have been very much Impressed with the great natural I richness of the soil and yet how very small it proportion of It is cultivated or for which Irrigation water could be provded I have often questioned if It were not possible to make a success of dry farming on much of this now barren land I has seemed to me that there Is some work here for the State to do work that might proe very profitable I indeed I it can he demonstrated over a period of five years that dryland farming can be successfully practiced I in these various counties it would add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the 1 value of the public lands of the State I scorns to rue therefore that a few thousands of dollars Intelligently used in an experiment along this line would bo one of the best Investments the State could make This experiment might well supplement the search aCer artesian water The artesian well could provide water for the home the stock the garden and then the dry land farm could become a home F B LIN FIELD |