Considerations For The Novice 

 In Irrigation 



WILLARD P. CALKINS, PublUhar Orchard and Farm. 



HE Eastern man, farmer or not, who 

 has a notion of linking his life with 

 the soil in California, reads at 

 home, or sees during a trip, more 

 or less of the attractions and the 

 changed conditions he will encoun- 

 ter here, and very likely the idea 

 of irrigation is what strikes him 

 as most strange. Perhaps he has 

 an initial prejudice in favor of districts of the 

 State where "irrigation is not needed," but if he 

 decides in favor of some of the irrigated colony 

 tracts or districts, he probably feels somehow 

 that he will be able to succeed through getting 

 around the laws of nature. It is so different 

 from the old way with which he and his people 

 have always been familiar. His point of view is 

 different from that of a man raised in an irrigated 

 country, and his point of view is a wrong one. To 

 him it is the proper and natural way of agriculture 

 that crops shall be watered by the rains that 

 Providence sends in their season, and from his 

 point of view irrigation is a reversal of the 

 natural process and a convenient and successful 

 remedy for a bad natural disadvantage. His ideal 

 agricultural region would be attended by abun- 

 dant rains in proper season. 



He should shift his point of view and find the 

 ideal, the "natural," if you please, in an irrigated 

 country. It is water at the roots of growing 

 things, and not in itself rain from above, that 

 gives life to what springs from the soil, and it 

 was no more ordained by nature that man should 

 depend only on the clouds for his crops than that 

 he should depend on the natural condition of the 

 soil without tillage. The ideal conditions under 

 which a man may till the ground are those of 

 rich soil, abundantly watered at the right time, 

 much sunshine to promote growth and little rain- 

 fall to produce uncertainties and interfere with 

 work and plans. As William E. Smythe has said, 

 "Irrigation is not a substitute for rain, but rain is 

 a poor substitute for irrigation." With this con- 

 ception the colonist will not come to succeed in 

 spite of a light rainfall, but to find a chance to be 

 an ideal farmer under ideal conditions. 



The absolute certainty of the water needed for 

 crops is something that, in itself, the Eastern 

 farmer can readily appreciate, for from boyhood 

 he has seen lean and fat years, according to rain- 

 fall, and frequent partial failures of this and 

 that crop. He can recall many times of Intense 

 general anxiety and the prayers that went up- 



