Los Angeles herald., 1906-04-15
INCLE SAM is the greatest hay

TNCLE SAM is the greatest hay
maker in the world, and last
- year it is estimated that he har-
vested GA, 100000 tons, a crop worth
over half a billion dollars.
The average city man who thinks OF
the word "crops" vaguely as referring
to wheat and corn will doubtless be
astonished at these figures on some
thing that he usually considers Gf he
considers it at alD as mere break
fast food for animals. And though all
hay loks alike to the uninitiated, there
are many lifferent kinds of grasses
which are grouped under that generic
term. The principal ones, of course,
are timothy and clover in the east,
and alfalfa in the west.
Hay is, moreover, the most demo-
cratic of all of our crop productions.
Every farmer has hand in swelling
the vast total of the crop. There are
no vast areas of land devoted exclus-
lively to hay raising, such as the mon
ster wheat fields of South Dakota, or
the huge coFnfields of Nebraska and
Kansas. Instead every farmer has his
own small field, where Jhe grows usu-
ally a very little more than will carry
his own stock through the winter.
However, when all of these small fields
pressive. The average area of land
used for the production of hay during
the years from 1900 to 1904 was 1868,
1877 acres. Had the nations hay fields
been included in one gigantic farm it
would have been as big as the states
OF New York and Massachusetts, with
half of Connecticut thrown in. The
average yield from the $4,000, 900 acres
of hay land has been 56,512, ,265 tons a
year, considerably less than this year 5
great crop.
Alfalfa Growing
Nearly everyone knows how the tim
othy and clover of the east Is grown.
cut and marketed, but the raising of
alfalfa in the far west is to the aver
age easterner an unknown process.
What alfalfa has done and is doing for
the west can hardly be estimated.
Without it the stock-raising industry,
which is the chief occupation of the
west, would be fearfuly handicapped
In the early days when all the range
was free and the rich, nOurishing buf-
falo grass grew llnee-high, there was
no need to have a supply of hay on
hand to winter the stock, as the ami
mails could rustic" enough off the
range to get through the winter
months in good shape. But as the set
tiers poured in, and took up home
steads of 100 acres, the range became
more and more restricted, the supply
of Buffalo grass became scantier and
scantier and soon the stock growers
found that to winter their stock, es-
pecially sheep. they must have on
hand a large amount of hay. Various
grasses were tried, but alfalfa, a grass
introduced from Asia into California,
was found to be the best for all pur-
poses and now is the mainstay of the
sheep and cattle in all of the Rocky
Mountain states.
To produce alfalfa you must irri-
gate. Now and then a small crop can
be raised without the help of the ir-
rigatlon ditch, but the crop is so un-
certain and so unsatisfactory that
practically no one in the west today
attempts to raise alfalfa without first
irrigating. Given water though, and
the rest is easy The farmer taps n
stream with his main ditch, which is
laid out along the side of a more or
less precipitous hill From the main
ditch run what are called "laterals," Z"
little bitches about a foot deep and a
foot and a half wide. When the
ground is p1owed and the seed safely
tucked away in the basin of Mother
Earth the "laterals" are filed to over