14 
COI.ORADO Experiment Station 
fall plowing’, and gives much the same effect as a cultivation, since 
it cleans the land of weeds and permits an actual cultivation in the 
shape of plowing. 
Grain for the most part should be grown only for feed or seed. 
A small amount can be reserved for a cash crop to supply local de¬ 
mands. Where grain is used it should follow peas and pea-grain 
mixtures, or alfalfa where old fields are being broken up and new 
stands established. 
At present there is a strong tendency to farm larger areas than 
is advisable with the help and capital available. In most cases a re¬ 
duction of the size of the farms with better rotations and farm man¬ 
agement, would result in large returns. 
Sub-irrigation appeals strongly to the average man. In fact, 
the sub-irrigated districts have been called “the lazy man’s paradise.” 
It is the hrag of some of these “lazy men” that they “can turn on 
the water and go fishing for three weeks.” Sub-irrigation per¬ 
mitted the early settlers to farm large areas, but it resulted in the 
destruction of the fertility or the seeping of the lands themselves. 
Surface irrigation, while requiring more work, will live much longer 
and return heavier crops. Sub-irrigation on new lands when first 
applied will often produce enormous crops, but the yields are certain 
to run down, except under the mo'St favorable conditions, unless 
ways of keeping up the fertility are employed. This means that 
more capital and more labor must be applied to individual units of 
land to even make profits over most of the districts where bonanza 
farming formerly prevailed. There has been a noticeably marked 
change in sentiment on this matter the last few years. 
It is fundamentally important that farmers in general raise 
more of their own living. The hardy garden vegetables do won¬ 
derfully well under irrigation and possess a quality scarcely to be 
surpassed, yet there are not nearly so many gardens as there should 
be. Every farm should have a good garden and, whether the gen¬ 
eral farm crops are fed or not, each farmer should have some 
chickens, a few cows, and a few pigs so that all eggs, butter and 
meat used in the home will be produced on the farm and small sur¬ 
plus of poultry and dairy products may help reduce the grocery 
bill. 
The leading farm crops in the Valley are wheat, oats, barley, 
native hay, field peas, and potatoes. Alfalfa has increased remark¬ 
ably in the last three years, and sweet clover has attained a wide 
distribution. Sugar beets were formerly grown, but their produc¬ 
tion has been abandoned, not because they were not adapted to Val¬ 
ley conditions and soils, but because the population was not ready 
for the intensive garden culture necessary to grow sugar beets sue- 
