The Twin Falls times. [volume] (Twin Falls, Idaho) 1905-1916, 1916-02-11

of this valley is now valued at ST.
600. 900
1t is utterly impossible to say wheth-
er a man will succeed at anything or
not, with or without money, therefore
we always refrain from giving this
kind of advice If a man gets no
ton in his head he is bound to try II
out if he is game Are we a nation
of mollycoddles that we should be
afraid to take a chance? AS far as
the agents are concerned who lie
about the annual rainfall to prospec-
tive settlers, we would say that it is
up to the buyers to investigate his
option and the conditions surrounding
it, as the law says, "caveat emptor."
The greatest danger of the new set
tier is running against shallow plow-
ing literature, or as Mr.. Wallace says,
applying old fashioned methods from
the wet states, for there are still some
city people and agriculturists from the
east who persist in showing their ig
norance by declaring that dry farming
is nothing but good farming.
There is nothing mysterious and
nothing difficult about dry farming,
it is simply a different branch of ag
riculture to humid farming and the
old ideas must be abandoned and re-
placed by methods that Will suit the
environment.
Some of the best dry farmers we
know of were professional men who
took it up for various reasons. DR.
Bishop. late of Billings, Mont, wish
ing for an outdoor life, took it up
few years ago, studied out the deep
tillage methods, went to the dry part
of Oregon and made a big success of
it, raising twice as much per acre as
had ever been raised there before.
Half of the world has been dry
farmed for thousands of years, only
we have only just found it out. Rus
STA has supplied half of Europe with
wheat from an area on which the pre-
cipitatiOn is less than eighteen inches.
Jerusalem and its environs have farm
ed for thousands of years on a four
teen inch precipitation, and according
to the book of jeremiah, the Jews al
ways fallowed their land. In the dry
parts of Italy and Greece the ancients
dry farmed and raised grapes, etc. on
fifteen to sixteen inches of rainfall.
Adjoining the great deserts of At
RIGA dates and olives have been raj ,ed
on nine inches and in South Africa
everything under the sun is raised on
eighteen to twenty inches. In China
half the country is semi-arid but they
raise plenty of produce, and particu-
larry garden stuff, by sloping their
land to the rows, planting in the dead
burrows, as it were, fertilizing heav-
| lily and shading with sticks.
In the upland of Mexico there are
any quantity of beans, peanuts and
corn raised on a precipitation of II
inches and the writer has seen l'fty
bushels of wheat per acre raised by
German farmers there blowing Line
inches.
Our difficulties in dry farming arise
from the fact that as a nation we have
never learned to pillow. There is a
good and sufficient reason for this
When the first colonists arrived from
the old country and began to farm the
rich virgin soil of America with rain
every few days they soon found that
cultivation to keep down the weeds
was more necessary than deep plow-
ing. The blowing naturally became
shallow, the implement makers cater
ed to the market, and for years it has
been very difficult to obtain plows
suitable for the deep work necessary
for good crops in the dry farming
areas.
If we consider the average dry farm
crop of our deep tilling farmers, we
find they are above the crops OF the
average Iowa farmer, and as we have
remarked before. we can raise with
our own methods as much per acre or
ten dollar land as they can on hun
bred dollar land. 1t is no wonder the
younger generation want to come