DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



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out of the ground until there is not moisture enough to support it, and 

 it fails to fill out — doesn't mature. 



Now I will relate another experience. I sowed, one year, 100 acres of 

 rye — fall rye or winter rye. A man by the name of Sorensen who lived 

 neighbor to me wanted to buy some rye for seed — fifteen bushels, and he 

 came to me to know if I could spare him that. I said, "Yes." He said, 

 "Will you take work for it?" I said, "Yes, I would rather have work than 

 money. Can you sow rye?" "Yes," he said, "I have sowed a thousand 

 acres in Denmark." I said,. "I want you to sow this hundred acres. How 

 much can you sow in a day?" "Twenty acres." "All right, sir; if you will 

 come to work for me five days I will board you and pay you three bushels 

 a day, and that will be fifteen bushels." "All right, sir," he said. So he 

 came. I told my boys to haul out a half a bushel to the acre. That was 

 fifty bushels to the hundred acres. He came along and he says, "How 

 much do you expect to sow to the acre?" I said, "Just half a bushel." 

 He says: "You don't know anything about raising rye." I said, "No, I 

 don't profess to know a great deal." He said, "We sow three bushels to 

 the acre in Denmark." I said: "Look here, you are not in Denmark now." 

 (Laughter.) "You are in Utah — Cache Valley — the richest valley in the 

 country and one of the richest valleys in the state or in any country that 

 I ever lived in, but I don't want you to sow but half a bushel. Can you 

 do that?" "Oh, yes; I can sow a peck, if you want me to." I said, "I 

 want a half bushel sowed, no more, no less." He went to 

 work and sowed it and I paid him the fifteen bushels, and he went home 

 and sowed fifteen bushels on the five acres — three bushels to the acre. 

 After a while the rye came up. I was riding along past his place and his 

 rye was up. He said, "What do you think of that for a crop? Don't that 

 look nice?" His rye was up about six inches high. I said, "Yes." Mine 

 was up, a little spear here and another five inches off, but in the spring 

 mine began to stool out nice, and it grew up to my breast, with heads on it 

 nearly seven inches long, so heavy that they bowed over, and his grew 

 up about this high, with little heads on, about an inch and a quarter long. 

 When I threshed mine it made 27 bushels to the acre. When he threshed 

 his he just got 20 bushels from the five acres — ^just five bushels more than 

 he seeded. (Laughter.) One grain of mine would have made a dozen of 

 his. He learned something. He learned he was living in Utah and not 

 in Denmark. (Laughter.) 



Now all these things I tell you because I want the people to under- 

 stand the best way of raising grain without water. Three years ago I de- 

 livered a lecture in the Agricultural College on dry farming, raising grain, 

 lucerne, etc. Pretty soon I got a letter from one of the professors, the 

 Hon. Charles J. Bran, from Washington, from the Department of Plant 

 Life, stating that he had read my lecture copied in one of their papers. 

 He said, "I would like you to write me as much in detail as possible, how 

 to raise alfalfa, how to prepare the land, how much seed you sow per acre, 

 what time of the year you sow it, and what time you prepare the land — 

 tell me everything you can think of." I wrote him some ten or twelve 



