94 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



by following the same method that enabled them to get the main canal on 

 comparatively high ground, they can flow water to all parts of their 

 land, although in places it may be quite undulating, providing no point is 

 higher than the main canal. In passing over this country one often finds 

 streams that appear to be flowing up hill, or in places where it seems as 

 though they must have flowed up hill to get there. 



From the main canals are taken laterals, and these again are divided and 

 subdivided until each farm receives its portion, which is carefully measured 

 out by methods that are both simple and effectual. These canals and 

 ditches and the apportionment of water are all under the control of a 

 superintendent, who is paid, as also are the expenses of keeping the 

 ditches in repair, by a tax in proportion to the amount of water received 

 by each, which tax generally amounts to but little where the farmers own 

 and operate their water rights; but, where large ditch companies control 

 them, the cost of water is usually much higher. In those irrigated 

 regions a water-right is as valuable and inseparable from a good farm as 

 the buildings, or even more so. In fact, the comparative value of land and 

 water seems the reverse of what it is in Michigan. Here, if anyone con- 

 templates engaging in agriculture or horticulture, he first secures a piece 

 of land and then thinks about water afterward, or takes what falls without 

 thinking about it at all; while there they first look for a good water sup- 

 ply and then find some land to put it on. We were told at Greeley that an 

 eighty -acre water-right was what water would flow through an opening ten 

 inches wide and five inches deep. This amount is spread over a portion 

 of the land at a time. If, for instance, the farmer is irrigating potatoes, 

 he turns the water to as many rows as will absorb it all, and when they are 

 sufficiently wet it is turned off from that part of the field and to another. 



In irrigating alfalfa or similar crops not grown in rows, furrows are 

 plowed across the field every few rods in the direction the ground slopes, 

 and water is turned into these furrows and allowed to fill them, and in this 

 way the entire piece is flooded. After the water is turned off and the 

 ground has become sufficiently dry, the furrows are turned back, harrowed 

 or cultivated down, until smooth enough for passage of the mower and 

 other machinery used in harvesting the crops. 



The methods above described for distributing water over crops, whether 

 in rows or not, is practically the same, either in irrigating potatoes or 

 alfalfa, or orchards and fruit or other crops, and is also much the same by 

 whatever system or source the water may be obtained, except, however, 

 that where only a samll amount of water is pumped a reservoir should be 

 used to collect sufficient to fill the furrows more rapidly, as it would not 

 be practicable to flood l&nd or even to irrigate between rows with too 

 small a flow of water because the ground, if capable of absorbing it at all, 

 would absorb too great a portion near the source of supply, while the more 

 distant ground would receive but little or none. 



After leaving Greeley our company stopped next at Fort Collins, where 

 the Colorado Agricultural college is located, but our stay there was brief, 

 and much more time could have been spent with interest and profit; but, 

 having two other stops to make, at all of which carriages were waiting for 

 any who wished to ride around, our time in each place was necessarily 

 limited. The last stop was at Boulder, and our train returned to Denver 

 in the evening. 



The next day was given to convention work, and the following evening 

 another special train took the congress and visitors to Rocky Ford in the 



