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Show fRID FARMING I I MONDELL ON DRY FARMING. Wyoming Congressman States Some Personal Experiences and Ob- scrvations of Dry Farming at the Pine Bluffs Festival. My first experience as a dry farmer was obtained as a boy more years ago than I care to tell on a farm in Northwestern North-western Iowa. Wc did not have a patented' name for it at that "time. Wc simply called it a drouth and as wc had not learned how to farm for dry years wc were compelled to live on what wc nad left over from the year before and our hopes for the year to coinc. A few years later wc had the historic visitation of grasshoppers and that was the driest farming I have ever known. I refer to that experience experi-ence for the reason that during the five, years that the "hoppers" were with us more or less, I learned some things about crops which were quick maturing and the early seeding and forcing of crops that was of considerable consider-able value to my later experience, in Wyoming. Twenty-one years ago next month I took up my permanent residence in Wyoming, in Weston county, about five miles from whicrc the town of Newcastle now stands. The need of grain and vegetables which could not be secured nearer than fifty miles and then in uncertain quantities suggested the advisability of growing them, and the absence of water for irrigation compelled the experiment of growing what we needed with the natural rainfall rain-fall and so I became a Wyoming dry farmer I enty years ago. Miy dry farming at that time continued con-tinued foT a numter of years, during which time I gradually increased the acreage until I farmed over a thousand thou-sand acres and raised over i twenty thousand bushels of grain and over twenty-five hundred bushels of potatoes, pota-toes, sixteen years ago this season. Of course we did not call it dry farming, neither had wc heard of the "Campbell system" or the biennial system of the Columbia River Uplands, Up-lands, still wc did very well on a thin soil and with about fourteen inches of -rainfall .by simply doing very good farming and at the right time.. We would do even better now under the same circumstances, for wc have f learnedmany things from those who V have been the pioneers and pathfind- crs in. the sciiencc of dry farming. j Wc have now up there in Crook and Weston counties an extensive territory terri-tory in which farming is carried on and in which reasonably goo(f crops have been grown by the majority of thlo farmers for the past ten or twelve" years, while those who have farmed the best have been rewarded with phenomenal phe-nomenal crops most of the time and good crops all the time. The country up there differs considerably con-siderably from your country here. It is more hilly and broken and there is a greater variety of soil. Also in the sections most extensively farmed a heavier snowfall. Rjcccntly, however, the settlement is extending into a re- fi gion of open prairie more like yours. L All of our dry farmers arc not good jj dry farmers by an means. In fact fij some of t hie in arc very poor dry farm- IJ crs, yet they have in the main (been IJ quite successful and! those who farm p the best have been very successful. H .During all my siervicc in Congress K I have been on the irrigation commit- w tec and for a number of years was I? chairman, so I have taken a lively in- If tcrcst in all that pertains to irrigation, I" but at the same time I have realized that, as not to exceed ten per cent of U the area of the arid states could be ir- 1 rigatcd, any considerable development g along agricultural lines must depend Jj quite largely upon the possibility of In the growing of crops with scant rain- IP fall. Therefore I have studied the i possibilities of such development as religiously as I have studied irrigation irriga-tion in all parts of the western states 1 have visited. The result of my investigation of the subject has been a surprise at the extent to which the growing of crops with scant rainfall has been carried on throughout the arid and-' semi-arid region and the limited knowledge that one such region has had of what was being done in all others. In California Califor-nia it has been necessary to discourage discour-age rather than encourage dry farming farm-ing in some regions because irrigation irriga-tion was possible and therefore ought to be practiced. . . In Eastern Oregon and Washington the system of crapping the ground only once in two years has been practiced prac-ticed on an extensive scale and with ij gneat success,, while in every state of the west fanning is carried on more J or less here aaul there without irriga tion and with a scant rainfall. I would not presume to give prac-.1 prac-.1 tical people such as you arc, many j of yon vcrsccB in the science and prac- I ticc of dry farming much better than I I, a lecture or extended advice on the A subject, but there arc some general & propositions which have come under I my observation that may possibly be useful to you. The first of these is E that the successful growing of ccr- j tain classes of crops on lands which J do not contain too great a percentage uj of clay is with a limited rainfall and J without artificial irrigation has long I since ceased to be an experiment. f Second, that so-caillcd dry farming under reasonably favorable conditions ! and by the use of proper methods is I but a little less certain and satisfac- I tory in its results than ordinary farm- J ing in the average country of heavy rainfall, and much more satisfactory than in many regions of heavy rainfall rain-fall with poor soil. My personal opinion is based on quite exten ve observation that the most satisfactory results will.be. obtained in most regions re-gions having less than eighteen or twenty inches of annual precipitation by biennial cropping and summer tillage. til-lage. I 'believe that in the running of thq years the farmer will get more dollars per acre per annum from his farm by this method than by annual I cropping and with less labor and ex pense. The only exception -I should make to this rule is in cases where a cultivated crop like corn or particularly particu-larly potatoes or other roots is followed fol-lowed by a grain crop. No one who has had any experience in dry farming needs to be advised that in every dry farming rcgiori adapted to the growth of winter grain such crops arc the most certain and satisfactory, neither docs any experienced ex-perienced dry farmer need to be told that ground should be plowed in the fall to produce the best results and that it must be plowed deep is so fundamental fun-damental a proposition that the veriest veri-est npvicc understands it. Above all, in season and out of season, and between be-tween seasons, the drying and baking surface must be broken. The success of dry farming under proper conditions is the hope of the semi-arid west, for it makes possible the settlement of vast areas that otherwise oth-erwise would produce only the scant forage which unaided nature provides. pro-vides. In its development it will double, possibly treble, the cultivated area of the so-called arid states. It is the hand maiden and supplement of irrigation, for as time passes and population pop-ulation increases in density, the high priced irrigated lands must be used exclusively for the growth of crops of large value per acre, thus rendering the entire western country dependent for its cereals and certain classes of forage upon the unirrigated lands. Dry farming will also prove a helpful help-ful ally to aid to the live stock industry, indus-try, for after the last .word has been said and the last aqre . that cam be profitably : irrigated .and .-can;- be suc-c4rfnUy suc-c4rfnUy tfry farmed' in'Oijr wester?! country, has been brought under cultivation, cul-tivation, the major portion -of our inter-mountain territory will still remain re-main as a permanent grazing region interspersed with the irrigated valleys and the dry farm uplands affording within icasy access the feed and forage for-age which relieves the stock industry of the dangerous clement of chance and makes possible the improvement of our live stock -and its finishing at home, so that wte shall become the producers of a finished article rather than of a raw material, thereby securing se-curing the profits which now goes to others. As the representative of the people of "Wyoming I made every earnest effort last winter to secure what I conceived to be a more nearly adequate ade-quate dry farming homestead than the present homestead of 160 acres. An energetic dry farmer who has a sufficient amount of stock can care for morie than 160 acres of land. If he crops only half of his land each year he needs more than 160 acres. In any event he ought to have a little lit-tle pasture and under the average conditions he must have a greater acreage than 160 acres to be assured of success. While the legislation we sought passed both the House and the Senate, it failed of enactmjent into law by reason of the insistancc of Senator Smoot upon his non-resident provision pro-vision and the refusal of the House to agree to the same. The legislation, legisla-tion, however, still remains upon the Speaker's table and may Ibc called up ajt any time during the coming session ses-sion of Congress. whem..thte opportunity opportuni-ty offers. |