14 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



DRY FARMING BY ONE OF THE FARMERS. 



J. L. DONAHUE, 

 PRESIDENT THE COLONIAL SECURITIES & TRUST CO., DENVER, COLO. 



Your editorial on "Dry Farming" in your Sep- 

 tember issue sets out to discuss the subject in an appar- 

 ently fair-minded manner. But before the writer was 

 well into his theme he proceeded to make some state- 

 ments that on a basis of fact pure and simple are not 

 only open to criticism- but are not true. When you 

 declare "In the first place there can be no such com- 



Peach Orchard on tne Dry Farm of E. R. Parsons, at Parker, Colorado, 

 Twenty-miles from Denver. This Orchard Has Never Been Irri- 

 gated. Note How Clean the Ground Is. 



forts as can be obtained by irrigated agriculture, such 

 as fruit trees and vegetables, and there is no assur- 

 ance that even a drouth-resisting crop will mature," 

 you lay yourself open to the charge of total ignorance 

 of the facts. 



The writer is the president of a corporation that 

 is conducting the most extensive dry farming opera- 

 tions of any single corporation or individual on the 

 Eastern Colorado plains. His duties require that he 

 travel over the vast area, still largely undeveloped, for 

 the purpose of observing what others are doing and 

 how they are doing it. He can and will supply you 

 the names and addresses of men who have today some 

 of the finest orchards in all America upon the semi- 

 arid plains of Eastern Colorado. There is Mr. E. E. 

 Parsons, t>f Parker, who grows the finest of cherries, 

 peaches and apples every year*. A view of one of his 

 orchards accompanies this article. Mr. George Lam- 

 bert, of Sedalia, Douglas county, Colorado, is another. 

 The Stark Brothers' orchard at Littleton, in Arapahoe 

 county, is another. Mr. Cope's orchard and beautiful 

 extensive grove of deciduous trees out on the plains at 

 Cope, twenty miles from a railroad, is another. Mr. 

 J. B. Robertson's orchard at Cheyenne Wells, where 

 the limbs hang laden to the ground with apples of the 

 most choice varieties at this very hour, is still an- 

 other. "And if you want to give me the space I will fur- 

 nish the names and addresses of one hundred more who 

 have fine producing orchards that never had a drop of 

 water applied by artificial irrigation. Every one of 

 these men and scores of dozens of others produce all 

 varieties of garden truck grown anywhere in the north 

 temperate zone. Mr. P. B. Goodale, of Peoria (a 

 way station on the Kansas Pacific fifty miles from 

 Denver) , is producing the finest cauliflowers ever grown 

 on earth without irrigation, and is shipping them to 

 Kansas Citv and .Omaha markets bv the carload at 



two dollars per dozen f. o. b. Peoria. This man 

 raised cauliflower for the past fifteen vears on the 

 fertile garden lands of Long Island, and after very 

 searching investigation and study of conditions, chose 

 the semi-arid plains of Colorado as the ideal place to 

 produce high class cauliflower, and that without irri- 

 gation. 



The local fairs just over at Hugo, Limon, Castle 

 Rock, Bennett, Elbert and Akron would convince the 

 most skeptical whether or no fruits and vegetables not 

 only /aw be but are grown abundantly without irriga- 

 tion all over the plains of Eastern Colorado. 



You are quite correct when you assert that "Dry 

 farming means one endless round of work for the agri- 

 culturalist." The only type of farmer that we of 

 the West advise to leave their farms in the humid 

 regions of the East or the Middle West to take up dry 

 farming on the great plains of the West, are such 

 men as those who are willing to earn their bread by 

 the sweat of their brow; who have been trained in the 

 school of skillful farming and who long ago learned 

 the lesson that good crops and certain harvests are 

 always the result of "endless work" and tireless vigi- 

 lance. Let no man leave his home in the Middle 

 West to enter upon the pleasant but serious task of 

 dry farming in the West unless he has already learned 

 the art of agriculture and has means sufficient to pur- 

 chase the equipment essential for successful farming 

 anywhere in America. 



One word on drouth-resisting crops and seasons 

 of drouth. The writer regrets that lack of space in 

 your valued paper which can only be at his disposal 

 with your courteous consent, will not permit exhaustive 

 discussion of so vital a question as Dry Farming. How- 

 ever, our word will have to be accepted in this instance 

 for the fact that proso, emmer, Kherson oats, bald 

 barley, peas, Kaffir corn, millets of several varieties, 

 durum (macaroni) wheat, dwarf milo, maize, brome 

 grass and native blue stem can be depended upon to 

 produce high average yields in the driest years that 





J>- ' : - 3 " *: 



Apple Orchard Developed Under "Dry-Farming." This Is Also On 

 the Parsons Ranch. This Orchard Is On High Ground and Lacks 

 the Advantage of "Run Off" Water from Higher Levels. 



have ever been recorded in the West since the estab- 

 lishment of the government climatological service. 



The season just closed has been one of the driest 

 in Eastern Colorado in nearly a quarter of a century. 

 Almost every month since January first at every sta- 

 tion, where government gauges are located on the 

 Eastern Colorado prairies the record is considerably 

 below the normal (normal is only about an average 

 of fifteen inches). The government report in this 

 morning's press in Denver (October 8th) for the Den- 



