DRY LAND FARMING IN EASTERN COLORADO 
5 
no money, and after years of pinching and hard work have secured 
a comfortable home and good living. They have been men of dogged 
perseverance and good judgment, and usually their families have 
suffered hardships which no man has a right to ask of his wife and 
children. Thousands of other men have come with little money; their 
first years were during drought, and after losing their little, moved 
eastward, often with the help of friends. 
After selecting land and erecting a temporary stable, the new 
settler should either rent a house or live in a tent until he has secured 
a good well. In many cases comfortable houses and stables have 
teen built and a good acreage broken, all to be finally abandoned and 
the investment lost because no water could be secured on the farm. 
In some places on the Plains the underground water seems to 
exist in narrow strips with wide areas on each side without water 
In other places, the underground water can be secured wherever wells 
are dug deep enough to tap the sheet water. There is little infor¬ 
mation that will enable the new settler to form any idea as to what the 
difficulties in most localities will be in finding water, and as the 
Plains of eastern Colorado coyer an area as great as the State of 
Ohio, there is a wide variety in conditions. Two neighbors took 
adjoining claims, and after erecting buildings, breaking ground and 
putting in crops, hauling all water three miles, started to dig wells. 
One man put down twelve holes without finding water. The other 
man found water in his eleventh well, and it was half a mile from 
his buildings. 
After a good well has been secured, permanent buildings may 
be constructed and land broken and crops planted. The living should 
be made from dairy cattle and poultry and the methods suggested 
in this bulletin followed. 
The new settler had better break up and seed not over forty 
acres until he has learned how to farm under dry land conditions, 
and he should till this thoroughly. Ordinarily, three hundred and 
twenty acres of dry land will be needed to comfortably support a 
family. A good arrangement for this is eighty acres in growing- 
crops, eighty acres in summer fallow, or part in summer fallow, and 
part in crops intensely cultivated, and one hundred and sixty acres in 
grass. With this amount of land it will often be profitable to rent a 
winter pasture. 
In most dry land counties there are farmers who have lived on 
their farms for many years, studied local conditions carefully and 
have comfortable homes with fruit, garden and shade. The new 
settler should get acquainted with such men at once and should watch 
and study their operations month by month. The average old settler 
has not succeeded in making much of a home and usually what he 
does and says discourages the new neighbor. 
The Director of the Colorado Experiment Station, Fort Collins, 
and the Superintendent of the U. S. Drv Land Experiment Station, 
