116 



THIRD ANNUAL SESSIONS 



season and we have the first part of the season to store up moisture 

 and develop plant food. Now, Mr. Chairman, I am not going to take up 

 any more time. If I had known I was going to speak, I would have pro- 

 vided something worthy of your attention, but I hope that during the 

 convention I will take part, and I hope when Mr Bell of Laramie, starts 

 on his subject, 'the dry farmer and the stock grower,' you will try to 

 bring out some points of particular interest to the dry farmers of the 

 West." 



NEW MEXICO. 



Prof, J. D. Tinsley, Director of Experiments at the State Agricultural 

 College of New Mexico, said: 



"In New Mexico we have no experimental stations at all, and our 

 main experimental station is in a district where we believe it is too dry 

 for dry farming. There have been years when the rainfall goes as low 

 as three and a half inches, and in 1904 it went to seventeen inches. Of 

 course, if we had known it Avas going to be seventeen inches, we might 

 have planted some crops and gotten some pretty good yields. The people 

 of New Mexico are very much intrested in dry farming. Those who have 

 been in the territory longest were, of course, hardest to convince. Every 

 week or two I see settlers stringing out into a new locality where I 

 v/ould be willing to bet they were going to fail, but at the same time a 

 fellow w^ould take a risk when he gambles on them, because they have 

 already done pretty well in localitis where it looked like they were beyond 

 possibility, so I have come to the point now where I do not give advice, 

 but let them go ahead and try it and see what they can do; that is the 

 only way they will find out. From this platform yesterday and this 

 morning, we have heard some beautiful ideals set before us and some- 

 thing to look forward to in the days to come, but at present the vision 

 is rather hazy. 



Farm Equipment. 



"My heart leaped when I heard of a farmer who had four fourteen 

 hundred pound horses and possibly two men to put on the plow. Now, 

 if we had to have four fourteen hundred pound horses in order to make 

 a crop in New Mexico, we would have to quit right now. We would have 

 about one farmer on each ten townships. Some of you who have been in 

 the West longest — I suppose there are men here familiar with the settle- 

 ment of Oklahoma and western Kansas — and when I tell you we have got 

 a lot of fellows down there that didn't succeed in Oklahoma and western 

 Kansas, and some that got restless over there, you know what that means. 

 You know the size of a pony they drive in New Mexico compares with a 

 fourteen hundred pound horse about like a cat compares with a rat. 

 What we are trying to do in New Mexico is to make a living on 160 acres. 

 We are trying to do it in the majority of cases with two rat-taiied ponies, 

 weighing five or six hundred pounds I know one man last year who 

 had two mules which averaged three hundred and fifty pounds apiece, 

 and I want to say he grew enough stuff with those mules to feed them. 



