Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1911-02-24
FARMING IN NEW MEXICO.
Account Of a Visit to the Pecos Valley
by a Well Known Granqer.

Account of a Visit to the Pecos Valley
by Well Known Granger.
Mr.. George T. Powell of Orchard
farm. Client, n. Y, agricultural spe-
cialist and a member of Chatham
grange, No. 900, has recently returned
from trip through New Mexico,
where he has been selecting farms for
several young men from New York
state - college graduates who, while
their own land is being broken for
planting, have hired out to farmers
to learn their methods. Some of these
have paid $500 an acre for fruit or
chards, and they will get $1,000 per
acre from the fruit trees the second
year after buying their land.
Mr.. Powell tells about one farmer
who has just stored his wool crop of
100000 pounds, for which he has
standing offer Of $54 900. But fruit
growing is the most profitable branch
to farmers in the section where Mr..
Powell visited. AS Roswell, n. NJ,
has an elevation Of 5000 feet the quail
ity of the fruit raised on these high
altitude orchards is excellent.
Some of these orchards contain as
many as 800 acres, but smaller ones
not exceeding fifty acres are the more
profitable on account of the better care
that can be given them. Mr.. Powell
says that every orchardist has to spray
his trees, and if he fails to do so
they are sprayed by the association
and the cost is added to his taxes. Ir
rigation is practiced four times year
Some times the frost hits the trees
pretty hard while in bloom, but most
of the large growers have smudge
pots and when the signal service bu
reau notifies them of a coming frost
they fill these pots with crude oil, set
ting from 100 to $50 pots to the acre
and burning them all night long. Each
of these pots holds gallon Of crude
oil, costing cents. The cost of Smudg
ing is SIS to $27 per acre for the pots
and 500 for the oil and labor for three
nights.
Mr.. Powell gives an interesting de-
scription of the process of irrigation
there Roswell is in the Pecos valley,
and the ever melting snow on the
mountain tops gives great flow of
water, which, sinking under ground.
sometimes forms vast lakes In the val
ley, the water table of which lies
sometimes as low as 1900 feet below
the surface. From an occasional large
stream or even small lake that is sit
uated near the surface bitches conduct
the water over 1000 acres Of land
sometimes, but in most cases eight
inch pipe is sunk down to the subter-
ranean supply and flow of l 900 to
$4,000 gallons per minute is obtained.
Mr. Powell says that he has seen
yield Of 40 bushels of oats and 40
bushels of corn to the acre on irrigated
land
Alfalfa is grown there with great
success, and at the time Mr.. Powell
visited Roswell three crops had been
cut, and three more will be taken
from the same fields. Many farms
yield ton and half per acre and
the good farms from two and half to
three tons per acre. At that time over
200, 900 tons were in storehouses, while
over the adjoining fields streams OF
water We're flowing, and these fields in
less than thirty days would grow an
other crop. Alfalfa brings $40 ton in
the stOrehouseS. As soon as the alfalfa
is cut fifty to a hundred horses and
mules are turned in from distant pas
lures to clean the field, and sometimes
as many cattle are run in. After they
have been in the pasture for week or
so the water is turned on for several
days Roswell is town of 10000 pop
ulation, and the farmers of that vicin-
ity have $3,OO0,000 in the banks and
they loan to Wall street.