360 DRY-FARMING 



Washington learned dry-farming from their Cali- 

 fornia or Utah neighbors, for until 1880 communica- 

 tion between Washington and the colonies in Cali- 

 fornia and Utah was very difficult, though, of course, 

 there was always the possibilitj' of accounts of 

 agricultural methods being carried from place to 

 I^lace l^y the moving emigrants. It is fairh' certain 

 that the Great Plains area did not draw upon the 

 far West for dry-farm methods. The climatic 

 conditions are considerably different and the Great 

 Plains people always considered themselves as 

 living in a very humid coimtry as compared with 

 the states of the far West. It may be concluded, 

 therefore, that there were four independent pioneers 

 in dry-farming in United States. ^loreover, hun- 

 dreds, iirobal:)ly thousands, of individual farmers 

 over the semiarid region have jDracticed dry-farming 

 thirty to fifty years with methods developed by 

 themselves. 



Although these different dry-farm sections were 

 developed independently, }'et the methods which 

 they have finally adopted are practically identical 

 and include deep plowing, unless the subsoil is very 

 lifeless; fall plowing; the planting of fall grain 

 wherever fall plowing is possible ; and clean summer 

 fallowing. About 1895 the word began to pass 

 from mouth to mouth that prol^al^ly nearly all the 

 lands in the great arid and semiarid sections of the 

 United States could be made to produce profitable 



