Colorado Agricultural College Farm Costs. 
35 
THE COLLEGE FARM AS A 
SERVICE BUREAU. 
To operate the lands of the College Farm, which consist of 
480 acres of irrigated land at the home plant and approximately 
1,300 acres of foothill pasture land four miles from the home plant, 
requires a considerable force of farm labor. Since a force must be 
maintained, it was thot that the farm force could be so organ¬ 
ized as to do> a large proportion of the miscellaneous jobs which 
must always be done about an Agricultural College and Experi¬ 
ment Station. Accordingly, the existing force of the College Farm 
was slightly increased and so organized as to constitute an institu¬ 
tional service bureau. The type of service which the farm, acting 
as a service bureau, was called upon to do was highly varied. 
The Agricultural College does not have a central heating plant. 
Because of this fact, it is necessary to haul coal to the individual 
plants of the several buildings. This was done by the College Farm. 
The labor of keeping the roads and drives, and general up-keep ap¬ 
pearance of the institution was performed by the same farm service 
bureau—in fact, if any department of the institution, or the insti¬ 
tution as a whole wanted work done, it called upon the farm and if 
the farm was able to do the work it was taken care of at once and 
bills rendered to the proper department. In addition to the work 
already mentioned, the farm did such things as the construction of 
experimental roads upon the campus and roads adjoining. A con¬ 
crete mixer was purchased by the Farm Manager and since that 
time a large amount of concrete curbing about the campus, concrete 
sidewalks, irrigation flumes, concrete weirs, concrete floors and 
building foundations have been constructed. None of this work is 
properly farm work, as it has no connection, outside of the build¬ 
ing of irrigation flumes and weirs, with the operation of the College 
Farm. By this organization of a service bureau within the force 
of the college farm the institution was able to have at hand at all 
times a force well trained in the performance of general institu¬ 
tional service and repair. This force could do most pieces of work 
cheaper than it could be contracted for on the outside, thus effect¬ 
ing a direct saving and the “readiness to serve” feature was often 
of more value to the institution than the cost of the work, because 
frequently this service would have the work done in less time than 
it would be possible to get bids from outside contractors, 
