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Show UTAH FARMING PRODUCTIVE, The outlook for water supply for irrigation purposes in Utah this year is exceptionally good. While there has not been as large a snowfall in this valley this year as last, yet the late rains meant snow in the mountains, and the reports are that the snow is fully as deep as last year. It is the snow in the mountains which counts for irrigation purposes. pur-poses. The mountains are the storehouse from which the supply is drawn during the hot summer months, long after the snow in the valleys has melted. During the spring months there is plenty of water, as the snow in the valleys and lower foothills foot-hills is melting, and the w'atcr goes to waste. The warm weather which we have had during February, followed by frosts, has put a coat of ice over the snow in the mountains, which will serve to keep it still longer from melting, thus making it available later in the summer when most needed to ripen crops. The system of irrigation for'raising crops, first put in practice by the early pioneers of Utah, has been developed into a great science, with wonderful results. The ground in the valleys, covered with sagebrush, apparently a desert waste, was found to be the most fertile in the world when supplied with water. The soil is practically an alluvial deposit, de-posit, which has been accumulating for countless ages, and if given a drink of water during the hot summer months, it shows it appreciation by yielding yield-ing crops so phenomenally large as to be almost be yond belief. The eastern farmer, depending upon casual rainfall, and harvesting crops which there arc considered good, but here would be considered meager, would shake his head in disbelief, when told that Utah lands yield sugar beets to the value of $150 per acre, small fruits $500 to $800 per acre, wheat $50 lo $70 per acre, potatoes 000 bushels per acre, onions, 1,100 bushels, and other crops in like proportion! Ho would not be able to understand I how a man with twenty acres of Jand in Utah could, after supporting his family and paying all expenses,, put $2,000 a year in the bank. Yet this very thing is done in Utah, year after year. It is not only the fertility of the soil which makes it possible, pos-sible, but the further fact that in Utah the fanner can practically make it rain whenever he wants to. In other words, he can turn on the water in the irrigation irri-gation ditch, and the crops get the benefit of a copious rain, just at the right lime. AVhen they, have had enough, the water is turned off. Thus by a little ingenuity, what was apparently a drawback is turned into an advantage. The fact that it does not rain at all to speak, of during the summer months, was at first considered an insurmountable obstacle. to the successful raising of crops. This feature, however, is a great advantage once irrigation irriga-tion is established, because there is no danger of floods, or of crops getting too much water. For instance, in the raising of sugar beets; if the beets get water too soon, the result is a large beet without with-out enough saccharine matter; and if they do not get it soon enough, the result is a- dried up beet, -which is alike valueless for sugar making. This does not occur in a region where there is no rain fall during the summer, and where there is water available for irrigatiofl.'pnrposes, and it accounts for the successful result of beet sugar raising in Utah, as against failures in other states. While the farmers of Utah have accomplished wonders by the use of irrigation, yet the system is only in its infancy. Fully three-fourths of the precious water, each drop of which is worth money, goes to waste every spring, because there is no way of storing it up for use when needed during the summer months. To build reservoirs to store it, is such an immense , undertaking that private individuals indi-viduals have not the means to do it, and private corporations which have undertaken it have not proved successful aai'rulc. The Utah pioneers now have the satisfaction of seeing their work taken up and supplemented by the United States government, gov-ernment, under the Reclamation Act, whereby the moneys derived from the sale of public lands will be used for the construction of storage reservoirs, the expense to be gradually paid back by the lands to be benefitted. This work is now under way,-and necessarily takes considerable time to complete it. But Uncle Sam does not do things half-way, and within the next few years this entire intermountain country will be transformed. By storing up tho water, instead of .700,0000 acres under irrigation, as at present, there will be over 3,000,000; and, yielding crops in the same abundance as the present pres-ent cultivated area yields, Utah will be the foremost fore-most state in the Union in agriculture and horticulture. horti-culture. The crops raised in the valleys will more than make up for the room taken up by the mountains, moun-tains, which will still go on yielding their many millions in metals, and furnishing a profitable mar ket for all the crops that can be raised. The population popula-tion of the state will necessarily be quadrupled, because, be-cause, with twenty acre farms each supporting . a family and leaving a handsome balance, the rural districts will be thickly populated, which in turn will create such a demand for manufactured articles, arti-cles, of all kinds, that factories can be profitably conducted in the cities, employing thousands of workmen. The new interurban electric lines being built will facilitate the moving of crops and carrying carry-ing of merchandise. These different factors, working work-ing slowly but surely to the same end, make the outlook out-look for Utah very bright indeed. |