232 



THE IBBIGATION AGE. 



PROPER HANDLING OF WATER ESSENTIAL TO 

 SUCCESS. 



BY T. S. VAN DYKE. 



[Mr. Van Dyke has a deserved reputation as the highest authority 

 on the art of irrigation. The value of the vast fund of information 

 accumulated by keen observation during many years of practical experi- 

 ence as an irrigator is enhanced by the happy faculty of expression 

 Mr. Van Dyke possesses in making his articles both instructive and 

 entertaining. Below is the introduction to a series of som-; twenty- 

 seven articles Mr. Van Dyke will contribute to the IRRIGATION AGE.] 



It is now over fifteen years since irrigation was 

 carefully tried east of the Mississippi. The results 

 showed a doubling of many crops in years even of good 

 rainfall and explained why Italy, with about the same 

 rainfall in most places, builds such expensive irrigation 

 works. Years of short, or even medium, rainfall proved 

 that in no case can any tiller of the soil afford to rely 

 on it if he can apply water cheaply enough. The ques- 

 tion of cost is all there is. Many farms are too rough 

 to apply water economically to low-grade crops, and 

 on many smooth ones it is too hard to get in reliable 

 quantity even for high-grade products. But there are 

 few where some water cannot be had for some smooth 

 land, and if it is only five acres out of a hundred-acre 

 farm it may mean the difference between success and 

 failure. On thousands of farms west of the Mississippi 

 five irrigated acres enable one to live in comfort on one 

 hundred and sixty acres which one would otherwise 

 have to leave. The other hundred and fifty-five can 

 be managed with summer fallowing and cultivation al- 

 most to the point of a living. But the results are just 

 a little short and after years of struggle the farmer 

 gives up. Five acres properly handled with water turn 

 the scale. 



So great have been the results that irrigation is 

 now practiced, to some extent, in about every state in 

 the Union. No matter how great the rainfall even the 

 market gardener cannot afford to rely on it for full 

 crops of cucumbers, strawberries and many other things. 

 Xo matter what you can do by scientific work with high- 

 grade fertilizers and cultivation, the control of the 

 water is not only needful to keep your fertilizers from 

 burning the crop in dry weather, hut you positively 

 cannot take from any soil so many pounds of produce 

 without so many pounds of wateY. The more you in- 

 crease the one the more imperative the demand for the 

 other. 



The idea is quite universal that in order to ir- 

 rigate yoii have only to irrigate. There is the water, 

 the promoter, the lawyer, the financier and the engineer 

 have built you a perfect ditch with good title and all. 

 There is nothing left for them to do, and now comes 

 your turn, Mr. Bone-and-sinew-of-the-land. You will 

 therefore proceed to irrigate. 



Few not familiar with the early struggles of the 

 Mormons in Utah, and of the settlers of Southern 

 California can have any conception of what a puzzling 

 thing it is to apply water even to the smoothest looking 

 land. Water companies have failed and first-rate land 

 and water projects have been laid on the shelf for years 

 because hard working settlers were ignorant of the 

 modus operandi of handling the water on the ground, 

 and there was no one in the company to show them. 



Xo man ever worked out this problem alone. It is 

 solved only by the combined experience of many, com- 



paring notes, traveling about to see what others are 

 doing and experimenting at constant loss for a time, 

 or else it is learned by imitating those who have been 

 through the torment. - And even then one must be care- 

 ful or he will imitate the faults that remain as well 

 as the wisdom that has been learned. 



As almost any irrigation is better than none, ab- 

 solute failures are rare outside of the desert. I am 

 now farming under a ditch on which nearly half a 

 million was squandered, and on which the first nine 

 settlers assisted with money, teams and even provisions, 

 by the company, all failed and left, and the ditch lay 

 abandoned for several years with water running through 

 it, although alfalfa hay was worth twelve to sixteen 

 dollars a ton. Such failures are rare, but have the 

 advantage of being speedy and leaving the victim time, 

 if not money, to go where he can do something. The 

 more common failures are of two kinds. 



First making just enough to keep one staying and 

 going through all kinds of torment for years. 



Second making it pay ten to twenty-five dollars 

 an acre when it should be paying fifty or a hundred 

 or over. 



Third making the farm pay the hundred, but re- 

 quiring twice or thrice the water and work it should 

 require, yet be paying so well that you cannot afford 

 to tear it up and lay it out again as it should be. And 

 this is about the most maddening of all. 



These troubles come generally from trying to work 

 out your own experience alone just as if you were the 

 first man bright enough to think of artificial watering. 

 One should by all means travel in those irrigating 

 sections that have made the greatest success of it and 

 keep on traveling. He should also lay aside all notions 

 about book farming and read every book written on the 

 subject. For it is a vast one and cannot be embraced 

 in one volume of readable size. Next to that he should 

 learn to handle the shovel himself, and not depend on 

 sitting around and bossing cheap labor. 



When properly done irrigation is kid glove farm- 

 ing with this important difference, that the nearer it 

 comes to kid glove farming the better it pays. A 

 writer sent out by an eastern magazine to write up 

 the subject says you must learn to wear rubber boots. 

 On the contrary, von must lay out the ground and 

 manage the water so that you can irrigate in slippers. 

 The same difference runs through the whole subject so 

 that when it is well done it is the easiest and most 

 profitable work in the world of equal certainty in re- 

 sults. There is positively no chance in the game. That 

 is why you never find the alleged funny man in the 

 west cracking any jokes on the irrigating hayseed. He 

 has too much respect for him, because he keeps a robust 

 balance in bank and has plenty of time to play. That 

 is probably why farming was respectable among the 

 Romans and others of the olden days. And what can 

 relieve the congestion of our cities, which is now our 

 danger point, except something that will make farming 

 respectable by making it profitable and easy? The 

 cradle of civilization of philosophy, art, music and litera- 

 ture was not rocked in the rainy lands, but beside 

 the irrigating ditch. Irrigation has supported the 

 world's largest and richest populations. Our ancestors 

 came from the cold and murky woods of Europe and 

 knew nothing but to hew down forests, dig out stumps 



