True, there was considerable communication from 1849 onward
between Utah and California, and there is a possibility that some of
the many Utah settlers who located in California brought with them
accounts of the methods of dry-farming as practiced in Utah. This,
however, cannot be authenticated. It is very unlikely that the
farmers of Washington learned dry-farming from their California or
Utah neighbors, for until 1880 communication between Washington and
the colonies in California and Utah was very difficult, though, of
course, there was always the possibility of accounts of agricultural
methods being carried from place to place by the moving emigrants.
It is fairly certain that the Great Plains area did not draw upon
the far West for dry-farm methods. The climatic conditions are
considerably different and the Great Plains people always considered
themselves as living in a very humid country as compared with the
states of the far West. It may be concluded, therefore, that there
were four independent pioneers in dry-farming in United States.
Moreover, hundreds, probably thousands, of individual farmers over
the semiarid region have practiced dry-farming thirty to fifty years
with methods by themselves.
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