28 



THIRD ANNUAL SESSIONS 



farmers in eastern Colorado have money. I can point you to hundreds 

 who came in the early eighties and late nineties, who starved through 

 the years of 1893, 1894 and 1895, who today are worth twenty, thirty, 

 forty and even fifty thousand dollars. 



Seed Selection. 



"We are. learning things down there, we are learning how to do 

 things. We are not growing fa.st, but we are growing. We have learned 

 that we must use good seeds, that we must use acclimated seeds, seeds 

 capable of growth under local conditions. We have learned that we 

 must practice rotation of crops; we are cultivating our soil mulch. We 

 have learned that we must handle the land, not according to set, iron- 

 clad rules applicable to every area, but according to a set of basic 

 principles which must be applied individually to every locality. 



Keeping Farm Records. 



"The average farmer takes no account of his time, nor the time of 

 his sons. He takes no account of the food for his family or of the hire 

 for teams, or of the feed for the teams, and you ask him at the end of 

 the year what he made and he tells you eight hundred, ten hundred, 

 twelve hundred, two thousand or three thousand dollars, but when you 

 come to find out, you find that is his gross income, not his net profit. 

 We wanted to know whether or not dry farming was a commercial prop- 

 osition; whether it could be handled by men of business in a business 

 way. 



"My records on the farm include a labor record of every man work- 

 ing on the place. It shows every day and it shows the amount received 

 per day; the hours he works; the amount and kind of work which he 

 does, and those records are classified by months, fields and crops. 

 Those monthly records are later classified by years, showing the total 

 amount expended on any field, any crop and any acre of crop. Taking 

 that as a basis, we divide the total cost for labor, the food for the 

 men, the cost of plowing, which is done by steam mostly, the cost for 

 teams, the feed for the teams, the ge^ieral expenses for maintenance 

 and repairs, and everything which possibly enters into the organization 

 of a farm the size of ours, and I charge that against the individual crops 

 pro rata to the amount of labor involved in the production of that crop. 



"I want to give you just a few illustrations gleaned in a very few 

 minutes today noon from the records on file in the office of the secre- 

 tary of this Congre&s: 



Results from Methodical Work. 



"Here is a man from Galatea, Colorado, altitude 4,000 feet, who 

 writes: 'The year 1908 was almost a crop failure because of limited 

 rainfall in the growing season and a dry winter and spring preceding. 

 In spite of this I had a dry farm exhibit at the Lamar, Colorado, fair, 

 which included five counties, that took first premiums on display and 

 nine other premiums when shown against irrigated products.' 



