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THE DIVERSIFIED FARM. 



In diversified farming by irrigation lies the salvation of agriculture. 



Short, practical articles, notes of experience and observation, are invited from the readers of THE IRRI- 

 GATION AGE who are interested in the promotion of the idea of the small diversified farm providing to the 

 fullest economical extent all of the various articles of food, clothing, etc., required by the family. 



THE FUTURE OF FARMING UNDER IRRI- 

 GATION. 



BY F. C. BARKER. 



1HAVE been much struck by the fact that nearly 

 all the California literature upon irrigated lands 

 gives especial prominence to fruit growing, and 

 the enormous profits to be realized thereby are the 

 main inducements which are held out to investors. 

 The promoters of irrigation in other parts have to a 

 great extent followed this example. Little mention 

 is ever made of stock and dairy farming, and yet, as 

 I cast my eye over the great irrigated West, I find 

 the most prosperous farmers are those who devote 

 their energies to the raising of stock and dairy produce 

 rather than to fruit. 



Now, doubtless, the prospective fortunes to be 

 made out of fruit are very dazzling to the uninitiated, 

 and by the real estate agents are more easily com- 

 piled on paper than are the profits from stock, which 

 latter are liable to be very sharply criticised by prac- 

 tical men, who know pretty well what a cow will 

 produce, whether it be in Kansas or California. Be- 

 sides, any idiot can see that a cow cannot be kept for 

 nothing, whereas he may be deluded into believing 

 that an orchard requires no such outlay for main- 

 tenance. All the estate agent has to do is to start 

 with an imaginary price of two cents a pound for the 

 fruit, then he figures out 86 trees to the acre, set out 

 at 24x21 feet, and 500 pounds of fruit to the tree, 

 and you have an income of $860 per acre before 

 you know where you are, and all reckoned out to a 

 mathematical certainity. Halve it, or even quarter 

 it, and you will have a profit that beats all the old- 

 fashioned ideas of farming. 



Now, I am by no means depreciating the fact that 

 fruit raising is the most profitable use to which irri- 

 gated lands may ultimately be put, but it has many 

 drawbacks for the farmers as compared with stock 

 raising. In the first place, the returns from an 

 orchard may be very small for the first five or six 

 years, and my experience is that the farmer who sets 

 out an orchard rarely takes this into full consider- 

 ation. He is apt to think that if he can only pay 

 down the first installment on the land and buy the 

 trees, he will be able to earn enough money to pro- 

 vide for the future by raising vegetables and poultry. 



Now, if there is one department of farming that 

 needs a long practical experience, it is the raising of 

 vegetables. One may learn out of a book, or by tak- 

 ing advantage of the experience of one's neighbors, 

 how to grow fruit trees, but the vegetable garden 

 requires the exercise of intelligent and constant care. 

 A tree will grow more or less if left to itself, but a 

 cabbage or a cauliflower is by no means so accom- 

 modating, and it is only after two or three years of 

 failure, or by an apprenticeship to a market gardener, 

 that one learns to master the many petty details of the 



vegetable garden. As regards poultry farming, every- 

 one who has tried it finds out sooner or later that, while 

 a small flock of twenty hens may pay a yearly profit 

 of $40, it by no means follows that 200 hens will 

 yield $400. Indeed, it is just possible that 200 hens 

 may not give as much net profit as twenty. 



Thus it frequently happens that* the fruit farmer 

 finds himself crippled for funds, and he is unable 

 to give to his orchard the care and attention which 

 it needs, and the whole enterprise becomes a failure. 



Faf better results are obtained where the farmer 

 devotes his land mainly to alfalfa, with a portion 

 sown to corn or sorghum, to feed with the alfalfa in 

 the shape of fodder or ensilage. Not only can hogs 

 and dairy cattle be fed in this manner at less ex- 

 pense on an irrigated farm than on the old-fashioned 

 farm, where irrigation is not practiced, but the pro- 

 ducts are invariably worth in the arid West from 40 

 to 50 per cent, more than in the Eastern States. The 

 mild climate is another great advantage in favor of 

 the Western farmer, as cattle and other stock do 

 better and need less outlay for shelter than in cold 

 climates. It is also an important point that the ex- 

 perience gained by the stock grower in the East will, 

 with slight variations, apply equally well to the West, 

 whereas the fruit grower or market gardener coming 

 out from the East will find the climatic and other 

 conditions so different here that he will practically 

 have to unlearn a great deal that he knows. But the 

 great advantage which the stock farmer has over 

 the fruit raiser is that he begins to make a profit 

 from the very start. 



It is a noteworthy fact that in the Santa Clara 

 valley, one of the finest districts of all California, 

 the most prosperous farmers are those who make 

 cheese, and not those who grow fruits. In Arizona, 

 Professor Gully, late director of the Arizona Experi- 

 ment Station, was telling me the other day the alfalfa 

 farmers are the best off, while here right at home I 

 notice that the men who have made the most progress 

 grow alfalfa and raise hogs. Raising hogs may not 

 be so romantic and attractive as peach orchards and 

 orange groves, but the profits are surer and quicker. 



The fact is that the great future for stock raising 

 on our irrigated lands is by no means fully appreci- 

 ated, but I am convinced that when practical farmers 

 take the matter in hand they will find they can raise 

 beef, mutton, butter, bacon, eggs and poultry at less 

 cost than in the Eastern States. 



Home grown cattle now supply the demand in 

 Washington and Oregon, and the farmers have gone 

 into the raising of hogs on a large scale during the 

 past year. Experts say that the next year they 

 will have beef and pork to ship to Montana and 

 Idaho. The significance of this lies in the fact that 

 Washington alone sent $3,500,000 East during 1894 for 

 pork products. 



