DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



223 



FARMING IN ARID EASTERN COLORADO. 



(W. S. Pershing, Limon, Colorado.) 



Air. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Convention: This time 

 I am quite sure there is no professor to talk to you. If you were to go 

 into the United States Land Office in Colorado and inquire who had 

 spent the most money and most time experimenting in dry farming in 

 eastern Colorado they would perhaps give you my name, but if you were 

 to inquire if they ever heard me make a speech or read a paper in public 

 they would say no. 



My experience commenced as a dry farmer in Pennsylvania during 

 the war, when we had a very severe drouth in 1864, and the oats was so 

 short I had to carry rye straw to bind the short oats with. My next ex- 

 perience commenced in Nebraska forty years ago last June and we had 

 both drouth and grasshoppers to contend witji. I was hired to plant the 

 first trees in Blair, Nebraska, 39 years ago, and tree-planting was fol- 

 lowed up until at the present time it looks like a forest, not only in the 

 town but for miles out on the plains, and cottonwood switches that I once 

 carried under my arms have been sawed up and converted int') the frames 

 of large houses, barns' and corn cribs and ash trees into flooring and fin- 

 ishing lumber, and it is high time that the people of the present time 

 figure more largely on the planting of trees. It was repeated over and 

 over by people who were honest in what they said, that crops could never 

 be raised except in the counties bordering on the Missouri River, and land 

 that was over 25 to 40 miles from the Missouri River was not worth 

 homesteading. If anyone had ventured the assertion that land near Hast- 

 ings or Columbus, Nebraska, that is worth $50 to $100 per acre would be 

 worth $10 per acre I am afraid the poor fellow would have been rushed 

 to the asylum or pronounced a harmless liar because he exaggerated so 

 largely no one would believe him. 



In 1869 a Swedish man named Mons Johnson, who had formerly driven 

 over the plains to Salt Lake with oxen, but returned with some workmen 

 over the Union Pacific to Omaha to work, took up an 80-acre homestead 

 beside my father and because he was known as a whole-souled Mormon 

 we at first watched him with suspicion, but. he proved to be the best 

 neighbor we ever had. (Applause.) His first team was a little mule and 

 a very large cow (Laughter) and I had the pleasure of riding with him 

 to Omaha. He was very poor and used to walk eighteen miles to get his 

 plow lay sharpened ten cents cheaper, and get five cents a dozen more for 

 eggs. (Laughter.) I went with him one trip to the blacksmith shop, and 

 the blacksmith held up the plow share and said, "Which side do you want 

 sharpened, mister? Both edges are the same thickness." (Laughter.) IMr. 

 Johnson died about eighteen years afterwards, worth $50,000 (applause) and 

 his son has been president of the Kennard Nebraska Bank over ten years. 



In later years we had great confidence in deep fall plowing, although 

 one year this same Swedish neighbor plowed extra deep and did not get 



