. Dry land farming in the Southwest .. . Hogs and Alfalfa Near Amarillo, Texas. Personal I HAVE written the articles in this booklet for the dry land farmers of the southwest along the Rock Island Lines because I know what they can do. My father moved his family to Kansas in 1875 when I was a small boy. He located on an upland farm that had been aban- doned because its previous owner could not keep body and soul together on it. We brought our seed with us from Illinois and of course the crops generally failed. At that time the crop failures in eastern Kansas were as frequent as they are now in
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. Dry land farming in the Southwest .. . Hogs and Alfalfa Near Amarillo, Texas. Personal I HAVE written the articles in this booklet for the dry land farmers of the southwest along the Rock Island Lines because I know what they can do. My father moved his family to Kansas in 1875 when I was a small boy. He located on an upland farm that had been aban- doned because its previous owner could not keep body and soul together on it. We brought our seed with us from Illinois and of course the crops generally failed. At that time the crop failures in eastern Kansas were as frequent as they are now in eastern New Mexico. We milked cows and when the drought killed the crops, the prairie grass sup- plied enough feed for a fair yield of milk. Every week my mother drove seventeen miles to town and sold the butter for 10 cents a pound. Think how we would have prospered had present prices prevailed! The first brood sow was bought _ on credit from a man whose crops had failed and he sold her because he had nothing to feed her. We paid for her with but- ter money. We had rye bread all one win- ter, because all other grain failed, and we had to go twenty miles to a grist mill to have the rye ground for toll. Kafir and milo were unknown and no- body knew anything about the science of saving moisture. We had to grope in the dark and tried more things that failed than we did those that succeeded. When we found anything that paid we stuck to it. Always the dairy cows and the prairie grass furnished an income. We milked scrub cows because we could not afford any other kind. It was ten years before we felt able to even buy a pure bred bull. But every cow that we milked was a profitable one. My father was a good judge of cows. We lived in a range country of beef cattle. He would ride around among the herds of beef cattle until he found a cow of strong dairy type. Usually she had some Shorthorn blood. The beef men were glad to sell us such cows because they were not as smooth as the other c