It is true that the time of saddle farming is past but the time of real farming is in its embryotic state in Dawes county.

Dawes county, the only county in the western half of the state without a sandhill, has more running creeks, more timber, more irrigated acres of alfalfa and excepting Cherry, more miles of railroad than any of the twentyfive western counties in Nebraska. Dawes county has two rivers and over twenty-six creeks winding through fertile valleys verdant with fields of alfalfa, wheat, oats and corn. There are more than 13,000 acres of alfalfa in the county. Though this is a great increase over the alfalfa acreage five years ago, five years more will see even a greater increase. Thousands of acres of the best land in the county lie idle. Too many farmers are waiting for volunteer alfalfa to take their places. Others have too much land and can develop but a small part of their holdings. Within six miles of Chadron are five separate ranches each comprising over two thousand acres and each capable of supporting ten families or fifty families in all, if the land were divided up in smaller tracts and the resources of each developed. The resources are here. All that is needed to make Dawes county a garden spot is new energy and new capital.

Seventeen hundred bushels of carrots to the acre seems almost impossible, but such a crop

was raised by J. W. Good on his farm six miles east of Chadron. He raises every year from five hundred to six hundred bushels of onions to the acre and from thirty to thirtyfive tons of stock beets to the acre. Last year, one of the driest years of record, his corn went fifty bushels; his wheat has run as high as thirty-six bushels and his oats sixtythree bushels to the acre.