HOW LARGE SHOULD THE IRRIGATED FARM BE I 



163 



average yield is about 1,700 pounds to 

 the acre, but with good cultivation this 

 can be increased. The suitable soil, favor- 

 able climate and reasonable price for 

 material, labor and transportation will 

 enable growers to do business at a profit. 

 The average yield per tree of apples 

 and pears is from three to five hundred 

 pounds, and sell at from one to two cents 

 per pound. And this is sometimes great- 

 ly exceeded. 



Wheat yields from twenty to forty 

 bushels per acre; oats from forty to sixty 

 bushels; potatoes from one hundred and 

 fifty to three hundred bushels. The aver- 

 age retail price of the grain crops is 

 about $1.25 per hundred. 



Messrs. Kiesel, Shilling and Danilson 

 deserve credit for their enterprise in build- 

 ing up new industries in the Eastern 

 Oregon country. 



HOW LARGE SHOULD THE IRRIGATED 



FARM BE? 



THE number of acres which the average 

 irrigated farm should comprise must, 

 of course, depend upon a variety of condi- 

 tions. While there is no doubt that farm- 

 ing operations may be carried on profitably 

 on large areas of irrigated land by single 

 owners, yet it is with the small holding 

 that most men are specially concerned. In 

 fact, the small farm is the key to highest 

 success in a broad sense, when considered 

 as affecting communities, large districts or 

 even States. Local conditions must largely 

 determine the acreage in the irrigated farm. 

 In many cases individual caprice will alone 

 rule in this connection, but in well regu- 

 lated colonial settlements the matter may 

 be largely controlled by the management 

 of the original subdivisions of the land. 

 Perhaps wisdom would suggest only the 

 outside limit of the amount to be sold to 

 any one purchaser. Subdivision into five- 

 acre lots is often convenient, and the limit 

 of -original purchase may be fixed at some 

 multiple of that amount not exceeding, say, 

 forty acres. 



The object generally to be attained by 

 compact colonial settlements should be 

 kept steadily in view, and the land so peo- 

 pled as to render it most valuable, not only 

 to the purchaser but to the colony. For 

 it must be remembered that the entire 

 community gains or loses by every acces- 

 sion to its ranks. Every industrious, hon- 

 est, thrifty and progressive colonist who is 

 content to make a comfortable home on a 

 ten-acre lot is worth far more to a settle- 

 ment than the man who indifferently man- 

 ages the poor cultivation of eighty acres 

 and will not be satisfied with a small hold- 

 ing. If the settleme'nt be mainly devoted 



to fruit culture the acreage in the farms 

 may generally be smaller, perhaps, than if 

 the land be devoted to dairying or some 

 other pursuit. 



The best possible results to flow from 

 colonial settlements upon irrigated lands 

 within the arid belt will be found to come 

 from the cultivation of the land by the 

 owner and his family, or by them with the 

 aid at harvest time of a little outside help. 

 The limit of the holding, therefore, should 

 generally be fixed by a full consideration 

 of this fact in connection with local con- 

 ditions of climate, products and mar- 

 kets. In districts where orcharding is a 

 recognized specialty it has often been 

 found that ten acres, intensively cultivated 

 and intelligently managed, have proved 

 entirely adequate to the support of a fam- 

 ily, and also to give a tidy surplus at the 

 end of the year. But good crops and good 

 prices are not always certainties, even in 

 the irrigated regions, and perhaps a great- 

 er diversity of production should be un- 

 dertaken in most places within the new 

 regions developing upon the arid domain. 



A ten-acre orange or lemon grove, in 

 good bearing, should ordinarily give satis- 

 factory results to almost any modest fam- 

 ily, but insect pests, frosts and other ca- 

 lamities sometimes cut short the profits, 

 and thus bring discomfort if not great in- 

 convenience to the orchardist. Ordinarily, 

 an^ in most settlements, it will be found 

 better to undertake a somewhat diversified 

 husbandry, even on the small holdings 

 appropriate to such localities. The more 

 self-supporting a family can be the better. 

 To be brief, everything should be produced 

 that can be produced with less cost or 



