124 - DRY-FARMING 
ing is always to increase the soil-moisture content. 
In dry-farming, water is the critical factor, and any 
practice that helps to conserve water should be 
adopted. For that reason, fallowing, which gathers 
soil-moisture, should be strongly advocated. In 
Chapter IX another important value of the fallow 
will be discussed. 
In view of the discussion in this chapter it is easily 
understood why students of soil-moisture have not 
found a material increase in soil-moisture due to 
fallowing. Usually such investigations have been 
made to shallow depths which already were fairly 
well filled with moisture. Water falling upon such 
soils would sink beyond the depth reached by the 
soil augers, and it became impossible to judge 
accurately of the moisture-storing advantage of the 
fallow. A critical analysis of the literature on this 
subject will reveal the weakness of most experiments 
in this respect. 
It may be mentioned here that the only fallow 
that should be practiced by the dry-farmer is the 
clean fallow. Water storage is manifestly impos- 
sible when crops are growing upon a soil. A healthy 
crop of sagebrush, sunflowers, or other weeds con- 
sumes as much water as a first-class stand of corn, 
wheat, or potatoes. Weeds should be abhorred by 
the farmer. A weedy fallow is a sure forerunner of 
a crop failure. How to maintain a good fallow is 
discussed in Chapter VIII, under the head of Culti- 
