The Monte Vista journal., 1913-01-25
DIVIDE THE FARMS;
INCREASE VALUES
We Can Profit By What Has
Been Accomplished By The
Greeley District

cultural district and find the farms
containing more than an average of
eighty or one hundred and sixty
acres, you will also find low valua-
tions. The larger the farms the
cheaper the land is rule without
an exception. This condition is true
because in farming the larger acre
age the maximum productiveness of
the soil cannot be attained; but
with the smaller farms where scien-
tific methods are adopted, much
larger crops are produced, and these
enormous yields pay the farmers
splendid profits on their land even
at high valuation.
Thirty years ago the best de-
veloped farming section in the
Greeley (Colorado) irrigated agri-
cultural district was known as Pow
erty Flats, because the farmers in
that district could not make a liv-
ing raising crops. A weed would
grow so prolific in every field OF
grain that profitable crops could not
he raised, and many settlers were
obliged to abandon their farms. To
day this same Poverty Flats" is
known as Pleasant valley, and is the
best developed, best improved, best
farmed and highest priced irrigated
agricultural land in the entire
Rocky Mountain region
This wonderful transformation of
these thousands of acres of good
farming land is due to the modern
scientific methods of soil culture;
the knowledge of intensive farming;
the proper system of crop rotation;
the raising of such crops as alfalfa,
potatoes, grain and sugar .beets, and
the dividing of the farms into 80
acre tracts.
Twenty years ago the Greeley
farmer did not know that he could
produce profitable crops of alfalfa,
potatoes or sugar beets, and all
were trying to farm such large
acreage that none of the crops re-
ceived proper attention. They
thought small grain was the only
profitable crop that could be pro-
duced in northern Colorado; and is
only another instance which shows
that many times crops can be grown
in locality when the people think
certain conditions exist that make
their production Improbable.
After spending a year in the
Greeley district studying all the
conditions that have brought about
this wonderful change and de-
velopment, 1t is my opinion that the
good land in the San Luis valley can
be built up to the same high stand
ard of fertility, and that the same
profitable crops that are produced in
the Greeley district can be raised
here, and that our land prices will
eventually be as high as the Greeley
farmer receives.
Many eighty acre farms in that
locality have sold at 100000 an
acre, and II any land owner in
Pleasant valley prices his land for
less than 100000 an acre, you know
at once that something about the
place is not first class. He either
has waste land in the tract or not
sufficient water for irrigation.
Knowing that the Greeley farming
district has advanced and improved
because the farms have been divided
into an average of 80 acre tracts,
and that the raising of alfalfa, po-
tatoes and beets have so greatly in
creased the productiveness of the
soil, the residents OF this valley
should profit by their experience
and with smaller farms: better cul-
tivation; and continually fertilizing,
make the farms Just as productive
and Just as high priced as they are
Mt Greeley.
The man In search OF farm
home. either as purchaser or
renter. never had better or greater
opportunity offered him, than can
be found In the Monte Vista district
today. For the reason that the farms
are large; that intensive farming
has not become the usual method .
that sugar beet raising has not been