Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1874-01-07
California Farming.
From the San Francisco Alta, DE-

Q.
The year 1873 has been a prosperous
one for the farmers of California as a
class, though the profits have been
very 1rregularly distributed. The grain
fields had most promising appearance
in January and February, but the
Spring rims were very scanty, and the
consequence was light yield, in pro-
portion to the area soWn, and a COM
plete failure in some Of the drier dis
tricts, including portions of the San
joaquin Valley. The number of acres
in wheat and barley was 1000, 900, and
the total yield-about 22,00O,OOO
bushels, as nearly as can be ascertain
ed at presents less than eight bush
els to the acre on the average. In
accordance with the custom of the
State, many thousands of acres were
cut, while green, for hay. SO that the
average yield Of the fields harvested for
for grain was probably not less than
fifteen bushels. The area sown was -
or Is per cent. greater than the pre-
vious year, the increase being mainly
in the middle-as the San Joaquin and
Salinas Valleys, and the northern end
of the Sacramento Valley-districts
lately made accessible by railroads,
the yield was far from satisfactory,
but the prices proved to be exception
ally good. The harvest OF the year in
the leading grain districts of Europe
was very poor, and especially in Rus
STA, which has Of late been the chief
source of supply, and which, by the
rapid. increase of its production,
threatened to drive our grain from the
markets of England and France. The
misfortune of Europe was the good
fortune of California, and wheat rose
early in the season from ST. SO per CEN
tai to 1920 and $3.50. The rise in
price has given at least $4,000, 900
more to our farmers than they would
have obtained in ordinary seasons for
for the same amount of grain. The
opinion is entertained by many that
California should seek to change her
agricultural industry so that wheat and
barley shall not occupy three-fourths
of the cultivated land every year. At
present much of our land cannot be
made to yield any kind of a profitable
annual crop save grain, which requires
less moisture than trees, timothy, al
falfa, red clover. Hungarian grass,
beets, tnrnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes,
and kitchen vegetables generally.
Forest, ornamental, and fruit trees
would live in dry lands generally if
they wore supplied with water through
the Summer for the first three or four
years. In England and New York the
farmer has a rotation of crops by
growing wheat one year, turnips the
next, oats the third, and timothy the
fourth, or by some similar course. AS
we cannot grow the turnips nor the
timothy and have no sufficient market
for much oats-many of our horses liv-
ing entirely on wild grass-we make a
rotation in treatment and not in crop.
Thus one year we SOW wheat, the next
we let the field volunteer, and cut the
wheat for hay if it does not promise
much grain, and in the third year let it
lie fallow, and then commence again,
occasionally changing from wheat to
barley. But as our climate and the
high cost of labor have not been favor
able to the use of manure, we have
been gradually impoverishing our soil,
aud crops of forty bushels per acre are
now rarer than those of fifty bushels
were twenty years ago.