The Possibilities Of Irrigation

I have given an account of my poor, little experiment in Irrigation,

because it is one which almost every farmer can imitate and improve

upon, however narrow his domain and slender his fortune. I presume there

are Half a Million homesteads in the United States which have natural

facilities for Irrigation at least equal to mine; many of them far

greater. Along either slope of the Alleghenies, throughout a district at

le st a thousand miles long by three hundred wide, nearly every farm

might be at least partially irrigated by means of a dam costing from

twenty-five to one hundred dollars; so might at least half the farms in

New-England and our own State. On the prairies, the plans must be

different, and the expense probably greater, but the results obtained

would bounteously reward the outlay. I shall not see the day, but there

are those now living who will see it, when Artesian wells will be dug

at points where many acres may be flowed from a gentle swell in the

midst of a vast plain, or at the head of a fertile valley, expressly, or

at least mainly, that its waters may be led across that plain, adown

that valley, in irrigating streams and ditches, until they have been

wholly drank up by the soil. I have seen single wells in California that

might be made to irrigate sufficiently hundreds of acres, by the aid of

a reservoir into which their waters could be discharged when the soil

did not require them, and there retained until the thirsty earth

demanded them.



An old and successful farmer in my neighborhood affirms that Water is

the cheapest and best fertilizer ever applied to the soil. If this were

understood to mean that no other is needed or can be profitably applied,

it would be erroneous. Still, I think it clearly true that the annual

product of most farms can be increased, and the danger of failure

averted, more cheaply by the skillful application of water than by that

of any other fertilizer whatever, Plaster (Gypsum) possibly excepted.



I took a run through Virginia last Summer, not far from the 1st of

August. That State was then suffering intensely from drouth, as she

continued to do for some weeks thereafter. I am quite sure that I saw on

her thirsty plains and hillsides not less than three hundred thousand

acres planted with Indian Corn, whereof the average product could not

exceed ten bushels per acre, while most of it would fall far below that

yield, and there were thousands of acres that would not produce one

sound ear! Every one deplored the failure, correctly attributing it to

the prevailing drouth. And yet, I passed hundreds if not thousands of

places where a very moderate outlay would have sufficed to dam a stream

or brooklet issuing from between two spurs of the Blue Ridge, or the

Alleghenies, so that a refreshing current of the copious and fertilizing

floods of Winter and Spring, warmed by the fervid suns of June and July,

could have been led over broad fields lying below, so as to vanquish

drouth and insure generous harvests. Nay; I feel confident that I could

in many places have constructed rude works in a week, after that drouth

began to be felt, that would have saved and made the Corn on at least a

portion of the planted acres through which the now shrunken brooks

danced and laughed idly down to the larger streams in the wider and

equally thirsty valleys. Of course, I know that this would have been

imperfect irrigation--a mere stop-gap--that the cold spring-water of a

parched Summer cannot fertilize as the hill-wash of Winter and Spring,

if thriftily garnered and warmed through and through for sultry weeks,

would do; yet I believe that very many farmers might, even then, have

secured partial crops by such irrigation as was still possible, had

they, even at the eleventh hour, done their best to retrieve the errors

of the past.



For the present, I would only counsel every farmer to give his land a

careful scrutiny with a view to irrigation in the future. No one is

obliged to do any faster than his means will justify; and yet it may be

well to have a clear comprehension of all that may ultimately be done to

profit, even though much of it must long remain unattempted. In many

cases, a stream may be dammed for the power which it will afford for two

or three months of each year, if it shall appear that this use is quite

consistent with its employment to irrigation, when the former alone

would not justify the requisite outlay. It is by thus making one expense

subserve two quite independent but not inconsistent purposes that

success is attained in other pursuits; and so it may be in farming.



As yet, each farmer must study his own resources with intent to make the

most of them. If a manageable stream crosses or issues from his land, he

must measure its fall thereon, study the lay of the land, and determine

whether he can or cannot, at a tolerable cost, make that stream

available in the irrigation of at least a portion of his growing crops

when they shall need water and the skies decline to supply it. On many,

I think on most, farms situated among hills, or upon the slopes of

mountains, something may be done in this way--done at once, and with

immediate profit. But this is rudimentary, partial, fragmentary, when

compared with the irrigation which yet shall be. I am confident that

there are points on the Carson, the Humboldt, the Weber, the South

Platte, the Cache-le-Poudre, and many less noted streams which thrid the

central plateau of our continent, where an expenditure of $10,000 to

$50,000 may be judiciously made in a dam, locks and canals, for the

purposes of irrigation and milling combined, with a moral certainty of

realizing fifty per cent. annually on the outlay, with a steady

increase in the value of the property. If my eye did not deceive me,

there is one point on the Carson where a dam that need not cost $50,000

would irrigate one hundred square miles of rich plain which, when I saw

it eleven years ago, grew nought but the worthless shrubs of the desert,

simply because nothing else could endure the intense, abiding drouth of

each Nevada Summer. Such palpable invitations to thrift cannot remain

forever unimproved.



In regions like this, where Summer rains are the rule rather than the

exception, the need of irrigation is not so palpable, since we do or may

secure decent average crops in its absence. Yet there is no farm in our

country that would not yield considerably more grain and more grass,

more fruit and more vegetables, if its owner had water at command which

he could apply at pleasure and to any extent he should deem requisite.

Most men, thus empowered, would at first irrigate too often and too

copiously; but experience would soon temper their zeal, and teach them



"The precious art of Not too much;"



and they would thenceforth be careful to give their soil drink yet, not

drown it.



* * * * *



Whoever lives beyond the close of this century, and shall then traverse

our prairie States, will see them whitened at intervals by the broad

sails of windmills erected over wells, whence every gale or breeze will

be employed in pumping water into the ponds or reservoirs so located

that water may be drawn therefrom at will and diffused in gentle

streamlets over the surrounding fields to invigorate and impel their

growing crops. And, when all has been done that this paper faintly

foreshadows, our people will have barely indicated, not by any means

exhausted, the beneficent possibilities of irrigation.



The difficulty is in making a beginning. Too many farmers would fain

conceal a poverty of thought behind an affectation of dislike or

contempt for novelties. "Humbug!" is their stereotyped comment on every

suggestion that they might wisely and profitably do something otherwise

than as their grandfathers did. They assume that those respected

ancestors did very well without Irrigation; wherefore, it cannot now be

essential. But the circumstances have materially changed. The

disappearance of the dense, high woods that formerly almost or quite

surrounded each farm has given a sweep to the heated, parching winds of

Summer, to which our ancestors were strangers. Our springs, our streams,

do not hold out as they once did. Our Summer drouths are longer and

fiercer. Even though our grandfathers did not, we do need and may

profit by Irrigation.