Mountain Home maverick. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1906-1911, 1909-03-04


where five years ago there seemed
not the slightest hope of future, q
new process of farming is making its
invasions. ''Dry Farming it is
popularly styled. and. blythe scientists
interested in its development "Arid
Farming. Objection to the popular
designation comes from them on the
ground that the method seeks not to
farm without water, but to utilize
the winter SHOWS in the hot months of
the summer by so preparing the soil
that it will drink in the moisture like
a sponge. and then to so seal over the
soil that it will refuse to yield up it's
stores to the ordinary lure of evapora-
tion.
Five years of splendid crops, the
development of the process until its
yields of milling wheat have increased
from five and ten bushels per acre to
twenty and thirty bushels are what
carry the new process beyond the
stage of experimentation. For little
desert villages of the Western arid
belt the system has brought surround
ing fields of assessable wealth instead
of mere desert waste. In the trans
formation under its sudden impulse
you find, instead of whitewashed log
cabins with stone slab steps that
have stood for two generations, viii
, lagos of modern homes with sanitary
plumbing, paved streets. waterworks,
! sometimes even sewers.
!, / am speaking now more particular.
Ily Of the farm system in Utah val
leys, where l have seen it grow ir
popularity and scope. It's results ir
, other Western Safes, where it is OBJ.
tanning wide vogue, may be slightly
dierent on their civilization. Public
interest became so worked up in the
west in the matter two years age
that a conference of all people inter
ested in it was called to assemble il
+, Denver. 1t brought together people
from eighteen states, and a score O.
government experts and established
, the Trans Missouri Dry Farming Con
gress. A year ago the second Con
gress, in Salt Lake City. brough
many delegates.
( In the sixty years that crops hav
been steadily raised under irrigation
: in Utah, the total acreage brough
: into cultivation for wheat has been
OF quote the fastest report of tn
e State statistician, Ill, 213 acres, wit
= an average yield of % bushels. Re
Gently, the fifth crop, except in tn
f case of few long established expert
mental farms, was harvested from tn
q dry desert lands, and the acreage re
t turns showed 108, 644 acres cleared Q
t sage, with an average yield Of
# bushels per acre.
l. / first had a practical introductio
n into the secrets of dry farming i
r 1905, up to which time had heard G
Il the science as schoolman's theory
It's most enthusiastic advocate in on
d vicinity was DR.. John A. Widtsoe
graduate of Harvard University
who had filed on tract of land in
desolate waterless section known q
DOG Valley" 1t was a basi
surrounded by low hills in parche
e country five miles from the neares
water, and so hopeless in the eyes Q
}: an ordinary irrigation farmer tina
when Widtsoe's plows were put
l. work he became the laughing stock c
two whole valleys. | accepted an in
vitation to a blowing demonstrs
8. tior." on his farm and as we rode o
* horseback across the ten miles {
sagebrush separating it from tn
nearest town ! first sensed that som
At new force was at work within tn
If land. | saw black cloud of smok
in hanging on the horizon as we appros
le ched, and saw workmen busy, as W
in got nearer view, piling up desel
sage that, since the waters of som
At prehistoric lake had receded. had de
as fed and resisted all advances of civ
" lization. Then, when a great steal
n pillow bore down upon US. putting an
z snorting in the labor of dragging
* sagebrush cutter, improvised out {
sr railroad rails, came fully to kno
E, that at last a war of final extermin'
tion was on and that the desert WI
being routed from it's last vantaf