128 



DRY-FARMING CONGRESS, WICHITA, 1914 



perhaps, for the strawberry bed. Cornstalks have made a good windbreak 

 around the garden plot. 



The red cedar minds its own business and stays at home a good deal 

 better than a cottonwood. The red cedar will not interfere with the 

 asparagus planted close to it, and it goes on down into the ground instead 

 of sending out its roots 40, or 50, or 60 feet around in every direction. 



This matter of permanence is the thing to remember in this thing of 

 the dry-land farming. The next point is, you will agree, a good many trees 

 if you will plant the seed where the tree is to grow. Thus you have done 

 away with the necessity for transplanting. In some locations, we find it is 

 not uncommon for a walnut tree eight inches high to have 24 inches under 

 the soil. We have not modeled our civilization like Paris, and our civili- 

 zation has adapted itself to conditions. The little red cedar does well if it 

 is longer than my finger when it is one year old. You may not get a tree 

 every time you try. You might have hailstorms to contend with, or a dry 

 time or something else, but that is the kind of a civilization this country 

 needs — somebody to do those things, and to plant those trees that make 

 for the permanent home. It costs more to grow an oak from an acorn than 

 from a cutting, because it takes more hours of work, and it costs you more 

 to grow that tree, but that is what we need in these orchards — that your 

 own work and your own time and your own thought have been spent there. 

 In the years to come if you meet a man who says, "I planted that row of 

 cedars in '14 or '15," and then, when you go further along, "Father planted 

 those and Mother tended those," then you have a civilization that means 

 somthing to the country. 



When you get your heartstrings twined around a tree, you have a 

 civilization that means something to the nation. 



CHAIRMAN ATKINSON: 



I believe Deputy Minister Mantle described some agricultural conditions 

 which exist in Canada, and I believe he relieved us of delusions some of 

 us had. 



We now have an address by Professor John Bracken, of the University 

 of Saskatchewan, Canada. He is Professor of Field Husbandry there, and 

 will take up something along that line. 



Address of Prtofessor Bracken 

 SOME OBSERVATIONS FROM SASKATCHEWAN'S DRIEST YEAR, 



Crops cannot grow without moisture. The rainfall in southwestern 

 and central-western Saskatchewan is, on the average, relatively light. In 

 1914 it was less in most parts than in any year since graingrowing com- 

 menced. At Saskatoon the precipitation for May, June and July was 4.38 

 inches. The average for the province for 10 years is 8.29 for these three 

 months. 



Many crops "failed," either partially or completely — a few even on 

 fallowed land. Some failed on land broken last year. But most failures 

 were found on "old" land — land in second, third or fourth crop after fallow 



