8 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 



much hay the first season, hardly any in fact; the 

 second year was when it began to hump itself. By 

 the second year all furrows were pretty well leveled 

 down or washed away; then the land was irrigated 

 by flooding. Large ditches were placed across the 

 heads of the fields, with lesser ones transversely 

 lower down. The head ditches were provided with 

 dams hastily thrown up across them from the sand 

 of the ditch bottom. Then as big a head as could 

 be mustered was turned in and all of it turned out 

 in one place. The irrigator got out with his shovel, 

 often in bare feet, and helped it flow this way and 

 that, spreading it so that it covered that part of the 

 field with an even-flowing sheet of water a few inches 

 deep. When it had flowed a few hours the dam was 

 broken, 'the stream carried further along to another 

 turnout. By this simple plan of irrigation the writer 

 unaided one summer watered about 90 acres of land. 

 That was a happy summer. He had a big white 

 burro, "Old Nig," which he kept saddled most of 

 the time. Nig knew the work about as well as the 

 boy knew it, and he would gallop merrily up the 

 road to the top of the field in the morning, about 

 two miles from the cabin, stand patiently under a 

 cottonwood tree till the work was done there; then 

 with his master on deck gallop cheerily down to the 

 next field, and so 'on till all the water had been given 

 attention. There is a great fascination in working 

 with water and the writer yet thinks irrigation 

 farming one of the finest schemes in the world. 

 The making of 'the hay was hard work, but not 



