Show the old settler written from salt lake city my dear san Jua ners it is not only because of dear linein memories ories reaching back to my infancy that I 1 am interested in san juan but because of its unusual values which I 1 have been discovering there in all the fifty odd years since that time these values are stores which in the main have not been recognized at least they have not been utilized I 1 have a great desire to see the country come into its own and that is the principal reason for this correspondence when professors Wic stoe and merril thirty odd years ago declared the arid grain crop at the old experiment station north of verdure the best not only in utah but in the whole west it set me to thinking along lines I 1 had not followed before the conclusions clu I 1 reached were confirmed later on when the county took the cup for its phenomenal crop of dry oats and other unusual yields without irrigation san juan has this remarkable advantage as a dry farm ng country an upper soil particularly adapted to methods which will let the rain in and permit of it being sealed in and a bedrock at the right depth below which which will hold it from being lost as an fn in so many otherwise good soils the red colloidal loam without gravel was made especially for plowing and to yield to the mulching process and this is one of the reasons why it can be so easily made to lead in arid crops it is generally considered by agronomists that of the water that falls op on the ground 83 per cent finds its way back into the atmosphere and 17 per cent goes down and ana is lost in the earth coming out perhaps at some d stant spring the hope of the arid farmer is to get his sub soils stored with moisture yet if there are porous layers deep beneath him his water stored in the ground is continually getting too far down to be of further value to him sanjuan san juan is provided with about 15 feet of good soil which can be converted into a valuable reservoir with a good bott tom the only way for the water to escape is by following the bedrock and coming out as seeps or springs where the rock crops out in the breaks below my first acquaintance with plowed ground in the arid and belt of san juan was a delightful revelation it had been plowed the Y year ear before about nine furrows wide and when I 1 tried it with a shovel reach of the plow it was so moist reach of the plow it was so moist it would adhere in lumps as I 1 squeezed it in my hand in the same kind of unplowed soil a few yards away the ground was dry and hard the rain that had found its way through the crust had come back the same way that proved that if the top crust a kind of water resisting shell is properly opened the water will not only get into the soil beneath but that the subsequent cultivation will seal it over ond md keep the greater part of it from coming bac back k up of c course 0 urse i it t can still go down more than 17 per continued from page nine the old settler continued from first page cent of it and each succeeding year will add to the store of wa wai i ter sent down there into the ground I 1 got the vision right there of the real reservoirs that can be made in san juan a reservoir on every farm not a reservoir with a dam that can break and lose its water to do damage below but a store of water in the soil right there thera ready to draw upon and more safe than money deposited in a bank eventually of course these farms with their carefully filled reservoirs will result in springs somewhere below and the country that lacked watering places will be better supplied before there was any cultivation of white mesa I 1 dug dilg a well and reaching bedrock at 14 feet found it dry as a bone I 1 cut down 14 feet more into the solid rock and found it still dry two years later when there had been some irrigating on the land above me water appeared at the bottom of the soil in the well and filled up the hole I 1 had cut in the rock while this was f from rom water applied by irrigation the layers of soil from which that water found its way to the bedrock were not as damp from year to year as if they had been made to receive and retain the rainfall and the same thing would have happened in the well eventually if nothing but the rain had been let into the acres above me believe it or not the creator in his just system of compensating to men and to countries f for or their disadvantages has endow endowed ed them with virtues which are often overlooked altogether men are often so much engrossed with the drawbacks of a country that they can see nothing else its a good thing to bear in mind athars gold in them hills and it was put there for men to find by their faith and perseverance think of it go into one of our deep washes and consider the magnificent depth of soil its top layers of choice red loam and its bottom container of solid rock and read in it a revelation of unfailing f love and thoughtful provision for the good of men who engage in the commendable work of bringing san juan county into its own yours for the good of the country ALBERT R LYMAN |