Bisbee daily review., 1908-10-16

My Hrst experience as a dry farmer was obtained as boy more years ago than care 10 tell. on a farm in north western Iowa. We did not have pat ented name for 1t at that time. We simply called 1t drouth and as we had sot learned how to farm for dry years we wore compelled to live on what we had left over from the year before and our hopes for the year to come. A few years later we had the hisseric visitation of grasshoppers and that was the driest farming l have ever known. I refer to that experience for the reason that during the five years that the "hoppers'' were with us more or less, learned some thinga about crops which were quick matur- ing and the early seeding and fore az of crops that was of considerable val, ue to my later experience in Wyom- ing.
 Twenty-one years ago next month took up my permanent residence in Wyoming, in Weston county. about five miles from where the town or Newcastle now stands. The need ol grain and vegetables which could not be secured nearer thar fifty miles and then in uncertain quantities suggest ed the advisability Of growing them. and the absence of water for irriga- tion compelled the experiment of growing what we needed with the natural rainfall and so I became a Wyoming dry farmer twenty years ago
 Dry farming at that time con, tinued for a number of years. during which time 1 gradually increased Cne acreage until I farmed over a thou sand bushels of grain and over twenty five hundred bushels of potatoes. SIX teen years ago this season
 Of course we did not call it dry farming, neither had we heard of the Campbell system or the biennial system of the Columbia River Up lands, still we did very well on a thin soil and with about fourteen inches of rainfall by simply doing very good farming and al the right time. We would do even better now under the same circumstances. for we have learned many things from those who have been the pioneers and pathfino- CTS in the science of dry farming
 We have now up there in Crook and Weston counties ar extensive terri tory in which farming is carried on and in which reasonably good crops have been grown by the majority or the farmers for the past ten or twelve years, while those who have farmeu the best have been rewarded with pne- nomenal crops most of the time ana good crops all the tsme
 The country up there differs consid- erabIy from your country. It is more hilly and broken and there is a great. CT variety of soil Also in the sections most extensively farmed heayer snowfall Recently, however, the set clement is extending in to region of open prairie more like yours.
 All of our dry farmers are not good dry farmers by any means. Tn fact, some of them are very poor dry farm CTS, yet they have in the main been quite successful and those who farm the best have been very successful
 During all my service in congress 1 have been on the irrigation committee and for a number Of years was chair man, so have taken lively interest in all that pertains to irrigation but at the same time have realized that, as not toasxceed tell per cent of the area O. the aria s5s>ss could be irri- gated, any considerable development dSiliui1us-1t iihto lDhSL uSpGl4u quite largely upois-the possibility oI the growing of crops with scant raIn- fall. Therefore, l have studied the possibilities of such development as religiously as I have studied irriga- ton in all parts of tA,e western states I have visited
 The result of my investigation oi the subject has been a surprise at the extent to which the growing of crops with scant rainfall has been carried on throughout the arid and semi-ariC region and the limited knowledge thar one such region has had of what was being done in others. Tn Califor- mia it has been necessary to discour- age rather than encourage dry farm ing in some regions because irTiga. ton was possible and therefore ought to be practiced.
 In eastern Oregon and Washington the system of cropping the ground only once in two years has been praC ticed on an extensive scale and with great success, while in every state oI the west farming is carried on more