Trees and plants require water for their growth, but they do not all need it in like quantity, nor at the same time; therefore, the scientific farmer on arid lands, where there is an abundance of water for irrigation, has an immense advantage over his Eastern brother who depends for water upon the rainfall alone.
While the valuable raisin crop of the Californian is drying in the sun and the slightest shower would damage, or perhaps ruin it, just beyond lies the orange orchard, the trees of which are suffering for water. The fruit, the size of a large walnut, is still hard and green, and must have an abundance of the life-giving liquid if it is to develop into the rich yellow orange, filled with delicious juice, which adorns the New Year’s market. How would our ranchman prosper if he depended upon rain? As it is, he furrows his orchard from its highest to its lowest level; then into the flume which runs parallel with the highest boundary of the grove he turns the water from pipe or reservoir, and opening the numerous little slide-doors or sluice-gates of the flume, soon has the satisfaction of seeing each furrow the bed of a running stream, the water of which sinks slowly, steadily, down to the roots of the thirsty trees. After the water has been flowing in this manner for some hours, it is shut off, for it has done enough work. In a day or two the ranchman runs the cultivator over the ground of the orchard, leaving the soil fine and crumbly and the trees in perfect condition for another six or eight weeks of growth.
The first attempts of the American immigrant at irrigation were very simple—just the making of a furrow turning the water of a stream upon his land. Then, as he desired to cultivate more land and raise larger crops, his ditches had to be longer, often having branches. Soon neighbors came in and settled above and below him. They too used of the stream; there was no law to control selfishness, so there were disagreements and bitter quarrels over the water. Lawsuits followed and sometimes even fighting and murders. The remedy for this state of things was found to be in a company ditch, flume, or reservoir, with the use of water controlled by fixed laws.
There are some crops, notably grapes, which are grown without irrigation. The grapevine, instead of being treated as a climber, is each year trimmed back to the main stem, which thus becomes a strong woody stalk, often a foot or more in circumference, quite capable of withstanding the heat and dryness of the atmosphere and of drawing from the soil all the nourishment needed for the fruit.
Wheat, barley, and oats, both as grain and as hay, are largely raised without irrigation. Olives, and many deciduous trees, by careful cultivation may flourish without water other than the rainfall; yet notwithstanding this, for a home in southern California, land without a good water-right is of little value.
The wealth of the region is in a great measure in its expensive water system, which, by means of reservoirs, dams, ditches, flumes, and pipes, gathers the water from the mountain streams and conveys it to the thirsty land below.
Chapter XV. — California’s other Contributions to the World’s Bill of Fare
By 1874 people in the Eastern states had begun to talk of California canned fruits. Apricots and the large white grape found ready sale, but California raisins, though on the market, were not in demand. That line from the old game “Malaga raisins are very fine raisins and figs from Smyrna are better,” represented the idea of the public; and figs, raisins, and prunes eaten in the United States all came from abroad. But how is it to-day?