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Show HOW ONE COLORADO RANCHMAN M'ADE GOOD AT DRY FARMING which represents the work of one more horse per plow. The family orchard I planted in 188G and '87 did so well and gained so much in moisture that in 1895 1 planted a commercial orchard of 2,- 000 apples, plums and chorrios. I am still ui!'"nr to the original orchard. 8uccest With Orchard. The fifth year from planting tbe ' cherries and plums had paid all the expenses of trees and cultivation to date. Since then I have cleared from $3,-500 $3,-500 to $4,000, including two bad years. From a six or soven year old cherry tree I have repeatedly picked over a crate of cherries, worth about $3 In the Denver market. The climate of Colorado is perfect for cherries, especially es-pecially the Montmorency, but irrigation, irri-gation, or too much flood water will kill them. The cherries should be planted on top of the slope, the plums next and the apples near the bottom, whero they can absorb the run off from the trees above. When an orchard is well cultivated the question of moisture needs no further consideration whatever, even in the driest years. If the trees are planted far enough apart, forty feet for apples, twenty for plums and eher- rtes and ten for small fruits, the moisture increases year by year, which soon renders it absolutely drouth-proof. drouth-proof. Tho land my orchard was planted in was originally perfectly dry, down to one hundred feot. After fallowing . for one year previous to planting, I j had gained four feet of moisture, af-I af-I ter twelvo years' cultivation there ox-j ox-j ists moisture in the subsoil as deep : as fifteen to twenty feet. Most of the 1 moisture, also the" roots of the trees, , are In tho top three feet, getting all 1 the time less moist with depth : By a simple trick of plowing tho : dead furrows should be made ldentl ; ca) with tho rows and the holes dug in the fall to fill up with snow during 1 the winter. By turning up high back furrowH between the rows, when the trees are small, immense snowdrifts may be caught in every blizzard equal to soveral good Irrigations. After tho , trees attain their growth, the amount of snow that banks upon an orchard will often more than equal the whole . precipitation for the summer months. I Any fruit that Is raised with irrl-j irrl-j gatlou can bo raised equally well in J the dry orchard. ! The Montmorency and Merella cher-j cher-j lies, the 1 atgo plum, the Yellow Transparent Trans-parent apple, the Duches6. Red June, I Rome Beauty, Jonathan. Stark's Dell- clou3, McMahon White and Wealthy, ! are my favorites. The orchard should tx cultivated whenever a heavy crust or cracks form in the soil after rain, but not neces-carlly neces-carlly after light showarr.. Alfalfa Best Dry Farm Crop. I farmed 1C0 acres for three years since then have added some 1100 acres to the original ranch and usually winter win-ter one hundred head of stock on dry raised alfalfa. This crop is ono of the bet for the dry farmer and supplies a large amount "of feed for Uttlo more , than the cutting. This season has been the driest In ' twenty-eight yar6 and this winter ' finds us with but a foot of snow all over the pastures, but with plenty of hay and grain to curry all our stock through In good condition. I thoroughly thorough-ly believe in combination farming, a farmer may Just as well feed his own produce and secure the protits .is allow al-low some other man to do it. But it is more sensible In every way to get your feed first they buy the stock. Alfalfa will grow almost anywhere, ! the failures comes from shallow plowing, plow-ing, and planting other crops with it, which of course, use up the moisture and kill it out. Ten pounds to the acre is sufficient. April is the beet month. Harrow after outting; disk whon thoroughly etabliahed. Alfalfa, j fall rye, winter wheat and corn are the best crops for the beginner. For spring grain the land should always be plowed deep and fallowed at least i from the fall until spring or longer. I Where the precipitation falls below ; ten inches, I believe in fallowing a whole year, a proceeding which has been adopted by the foremost dry farmers of Utah. In the matter of plowing, it is more practical to do a I god job at the start, than to try and I supplement poor plowing by harrow-I harrow-I lng and cultivating crops all summer. People are apt to think that dry farm work la too laborious and intricate intri-cate to pay well, but tho fact Is, I it Is about half tho work of irrigating; ; we can do farm work nearly every month in the year. Western prices are , the highest in the United States, and i the cost of dry farm land a mere noth- lag. In years, wot or dry, the moisture moist-ure always comes sooner or later. Wo have to do our part by conserving It. and the requisite knowledge is any body's for the asking. In thirty : years I have never lost a crop or a j tree from drouth or had a buy a pound of hay for, my stock. Cheyenne, Wyo. The following paper pa-per on successful dry farming Is from the pen of K. R. Parsons of Parker, Colo., who will deliver, an address before be-fore , the Third Trana-Misaourt Dry jFarmlng Congress at Cheyenne, Wyo., .February 23, 24, and 25;. .... , t I When I first landed In Colorado in 1880, I was already equipped with a fair knowledge of forestry and the Intensive agriculture which Is practiced prac-ticed In England. France and Germany the basic principles of which are deep plowing, ten to fifteen inches, following follow-ing between every crop, reciprocal fertilizing, fer-tilizing, which means putting back In i the soil what you take out, harrow-1 harrow-1 lng and rolling of grain crops and rotation. ro-tation. Rotation and fertilizing are not at present Indispensable in tho west, but the other above mentioned principles are also the chief factors in dry farm-lnS- . Before coming to this country I also dry farmed on the east coast of South Africa, raising corn and alfalfa, principally prin-cipally for the ostrich farms. I rented rent-ed a ranch near Denver for two years to acquire an understanding of what Colorado could do for agriculture without with-out irrigation. I commenced by plowing plow-ing deep with throe horses and a hand plow as Boon as the frost was out of the ground, slabbing and harrowing into shape every three hours, then fallowed fal-lowed until June, disking out all the weeds and planting corn one in a hill two feet apart, and navy bean6. The results were surprising to tho neighbors, the com fetching three cents a pound for seed corn, and tho beans about six. The next year I repeated with the same crops, getting even better results. re-sults. In the late fall I made a trip to California to investigate conditions there. I returned, however, to Colorado Colo-rado and finally settled on my present ranch in 1886. I commenced - operations opera-tions in 160 acres with two 1.300 horses, twenty good cows, some pigs, chickens and bees I plowed the sod clean under eight inches Jeep, although it took sometimes some-times two days to plow an acre; disked disk-ed and harrowed it until it was 03 fine as old ground and seeded it to fall rye and winter wheat, twenty and thirty pounds to the acre, respectively. The neighbors Bbook their heads and said I was crazy to plow sod that deep, that it would never rot, but it rotted beautifully, beau-tifully, nevor bothered me again, and people came from miles around to see the crops, which grew from five to seven feet high, . In the spring I planted corn, one in a hill; also a garden and small orchard for family use, plowing as deep as possible pos-sible and fallowing from February to planting time. I also put in five acres of alfalfa, ten pounds to the acre, which made a fine stand. How to Raf6 a Garden. In gardening, plow or spade as deep as possible, then plant everything In trenches, six or eight Inches wide and three inches deep; fill up the trenches gradually, as the plants grow up. By doing this their roots are established at a good depth, out of the way of heat and drouth. Allow plenty of room; more room means more moisture. mois-ture. Tender lettuces can be raised all summer by shading with a board. Rhubarb, asparagus and onions are good drouth resistors, and will come from roots every season. Gooseberries Gooseber-ries and currents grow wild all over the wost and can be raised by anybody. Anyone can have a wild plum orchard by planting tho seeds In the fall. It will como into bearing in three or four years. Watermelons, musk melons, summer and winter squashes also belong be-long In the dry farm gardens. At tho end of the first season I had all the rye. bay. winter wheat, fodder and corn I could possibly use; also a cellar full of garden stuff. I kept tho cows in miut as soon as the gross be-gaa be-gaa to go dry by feeding green suckers suck-ers from the cow patch. . The butter from the twenty cow6 averaged up to about 2 50 per month for each animal, giving a profit per annum of $600. Also fifteen calves at $0 eaca. $135. Chickens raised and fed on our own produce and the eggs therefrom. $150. Pigs fed on skim milk, corn, corn suckers and allowed to run to the ripe rye stack. $76. Bees, $25. Navy beans, $50. Value of vegetables, with butter, eggs, honey, chickens, pork, beans, etc., consumed by the family, about $100. Total expenses were $10 for bran and $5 for help with the hay, leaving a total profit for the year of $1,120, and no rent to pay, or gas, or water. Deep Plowing Essential. The following season, after breaking break-ing the sod, I managed to get the plow down about a foot and tho moist-. ur immediately began to gain in the eub-soll, and in a few years I had a permanently moist substratum ot three to four feet, and when the dry years of '93 and '94 appeared, with a precipitation of only 8 and 9 inches, rospeotlYely, tho shrinkage in some of the crops did not amount to a bushel an acre below the average. Right here we touch on the philosophy philoso-phy of dry farming. We all know that the roots of a crop will never by any chance penetrate the subsoil unless It is moist. In moist subsoils, which can be secured only by deep plowing and fallowing. I have found the roots or cereals three to four feet underground. This Is a most significant fact in dry farm operations, and its value can hardly be overestimated In the production of crops, when we come to compare the amount or plant food supplied by three feet of soil, to that supplied by seven inches. I say seven sev-en inches because that is the usual depth that tho every day farmer scratches tho ground in Western America. Am-erica. This depth is easily soaked up when our moisture comes all at once, which it usually does, and then the surplus runs off and Is lost, very little being absorbed by tbe subsoil. I have read of farmers being afraid to plow under stubbles or other roots for fear of stopping the action of capillarity ca-pillarity between the subsoil and the loose plowed ground above It. This is absurd, for it Is not once in urty years that the subsoil bocomes sufficiently suffi-ciently wet for capillarity to act. But this subsoil moisture does rise to Borne extent In hot, dry seasons by distillation; the ground becomes warm, the vapor rises. It Is caught underneath the mulch and there condenses con-denses during tho night In the form of underground dew. The above points will explain to any Intelligent farmer why thft difference between seven and ten-Inch plowing will about double his crops at an extra expense of only ono dollar an aero. |