Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1911-08-12
DRY FARMING.

| CVef siucc hudtu WAS yeariinR, II
has been held that Necessity was the
Mother of Invention, but in dry farm
ing we have an examplSof how an in.
vention may be produced and stimulated
by the lack of necessity for it. During
the late period of wet years there sprung
into existence system of farming that
promised to revolutionize agriculture
and remove from it all the uncertainty
of crops through droutb, that has been
the dread Of farmers in the so-called
semi-arid regions of the West. That it
should have come into being during a
series of years favorable for crops SEEM
ed to indicate that at least some inven.
tions flourish best when there is no need
for them.
The thing in itself was simple enough,
and the promulgators of the creed ofdry
farming claimed for it that it needed
only superior understanding and appli-
cation on the part of those practicing it,
and they could put it all over the poor
unintelligent farmers who had been
plodding along the old beaten tracks of
agriculture. The dry farmers were pro.
gressiyes in the fullest sense ofthe word,
and the rest of the farmers could watch
them, and if they profitted by their ex-
ample, might hope in time to do as we'll
as them. In the meantime, they regard
ed the unenlightened with pity for their
old fashioned ignorance of the great
principle they had discovered.
In dry farming, the one essential
thing in order to be independent of rain
fall, was the production Off Dry Mulch
on the land. Now, dry mulch when
they came down to a concrete explana-
ton of the thing, consisted in keeping
the land covered with good deep layer
of dry dust. The principle hindrance to
the attainment of this desirable condi-
ton, was the Objectionable showers of
rain that would persist in falling during
the years when the dry farming system
was the subject of institute lectures and
articles in the farming journals. AS
soon as a shower came, it destroyed the
precious dry mulch, and as soon as the
ground got dry enough to admit of it,
the farmer was instructed to get busy
with his special harrows and cultivators
and restore the dry mulch that had
been spoilt by the rain. But if they
could only get season when the dry
mulch could be kept up all the time, the
farmer could get ont his automobile
catalogues and study out the type of next
seasons car, that he would get after the
harvest.
At last, the dry farmers got the kind
of year they wanted to demonstrate the
surprising advantages of the dry farm
ing system. There were no annoying
rains to destroy the precious dry mulch,
and if the wind did tend to remove the
dry farmers real estate to his leeward
there was plenty more dry
ground ready to be worked up into
mulch. The results were surprising; all
around the country could be seen the
farms of the back number farmers who
had not been enlightened enough to
adopt the dry farming methods, and on
their farms where the dry mulch was
not, except what had blown there from
their progressive neighbors, the crops
were total failures, most of them raised
but on the adjoining farms of
the dry farmers, with similar soil and
separated from them only by wire
fence, the dry farmer was raising three
and four times as much.
All around the Hills the dry farming
talk helped to make real estate deals,
and it was assiduously talked up by men
who were interested in selling land.
You might hear the horny handed real
estate men telling how the last element
of uncertainty IN farming had been re-
moved, and agriculture rendered an ex-
act science, yielding results in cash re-
turns, as certain as the clipping of cou-
pons on Government bonds. And it
went. Farmers who had thoroughly
studied up the principles of the dry
mulch system, would show their neigh
bors, how, where their chickens had
scratched the ground and made mulch,
the soil beneath remained moist. The
water in the land was conserved, and
nowadays is great and
blessed thing. Clearly it was only nee
essary to extend the chicken scratching
system to the fields, and the water con-
served would surely raise crops for them,
if only the rains would hold off and not
destroy the mulch they had taken so
much pains to secure.
The crop season for 19l1 is past. 1t
did not rain enough for anyone to no.
tice it, except in some small favored
spots, and it is about due for the farm
ers to take up the subject of rain max
ing, in place of the dry farming system5
-1ocoasad