ty of the product would be
immensely improved if the growing stalks and roots could have water when
and only when they need it. The difference would be between, say, twenty
and forty bushels of grain or roots to the acre, and that means the
difference between profit and loss. There is probably not a crop of any
kind grown in the great West that would not be immensely benefited if it
could be irrigated once or twice a year; and probably anywhere that
water is attainable the cost of irrigation would be abundantly paid in
the yield from year to year. Farming in the West with even a little
irrigation would not be the game of hazard that it is. And it may
further be assumed that there is not a vegetable patch or a fruit
orchard East or West that would not yield better quality and more
abundantly with irrigation.

[Illustration: RAISIN-CURING.]

But this is not all. Any farmer who attempts to raise grass and potatoes
and strawberries on contiguous fields, subject to the same chance of
drought or rainfall, has a vivid sense of his difficulties. The potatoes
are spoiled by the water that helps the grass, and the coquettish
strawberry will not thrive on the regimen that suits the grosser crops.
In California, which by its climate and soil gives a greater variety of
products than any other region in the Union, the supply of water is
adjusted to the needs of each crop, even on contiguous fields. No two
products need the same amount of water, or need it at the same time. The
orange needs more than the grape, the alfalfa more than the orange, the
peach and apricot less than the orange; the olive, the fig, the almond,
the English walnut, demand each a different supply. Depending entirely
on irrigation six months of the year, the farmer in Southern California
is practically certain of his crop year after year; and if all his
plants and trees are in a healthful condition, as they will be if he is
not too idle to cultivate as well as irrigate, his yield will be about
double what it would be without systematic irrigation. It is this
practical control of the water the year round, in a climate where
sunshine is the rule, that makes the productiveness of California so
large as to be incomprehensible to Eastern people. Even the trees are
not dormant more than three or four months in the year.

But irrigation, in order to be successful, must be intelligently
applied. In unskilful hands it may work more damage than benefit. Mr.
Theodore S.