Six Mowers in the Alfalfa: Inside the Northwest's Largest Irrigated Ranch
The superintendent of the Moxee Company's farm walks a reporter through 680 acres of alfalfa, 180 of barley and a hop yard rented out for a quarter of the bale — and explains why California-style hay stacking won't do for Yakima Valley stockmen.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
W. B. Lawrence, superintendent of the Moxee Company's farm, the largest irrigated ranche in the Northwest, was met by a representative of this journal Saturday.
"We are in the midst of our hay harvest," said he. "Six mowers are running full time in the alfalfa fields."
"How many acres have you in hay?"
"About 680 in alfalfa, which, as you know, yields three crops per acre, and each acre yields in a season an average of five tons — a total of 2,650 tons. There are also 220 acres in timothy, clover and mixed hay, averaging 1½ to 2 tons. The quality this year promises to be excellent."
"You talked last winter of trying the plan common in California, where they put up the alfalfa in stacks about forty feet square and cover same to protect from the weather?"
"We have decided not to follow that method, as the stockmen who purchase most of our hay and feed it out to cattle and sheep on the place object. They do not like to handle the hay twice, as they would have to do where put up in such large blocks. They would have to pitch it once from center to edge of stack, and again on feed wagons. Instead we will build the stacks eighteen feet wide and as high as possible, about twenty feet."
"What are your other principal crops?"
"Barley occupies the next largest acreage — about 180 acres."
"Why do you prefer barley to other grains?"
"It gives on an irrigated farm a larger crop, and hence is more profitable. It comes off quicker, too. We intend putting most of this land in alfalfa this fall."
"How about your fruit crop?"
"We will have from ten acres of apples about five cars of fruit. Other varieties are not promising so well."
"Are you cultivating the hop yards this year?"
"There are 104 acres in hops and we have rented all but 10 acres. We get for rental one-fourth of the hops in the bale."
“"Six mowers are running full time in the alfalfa fields... each acre yields in a season an average of five tons, a total of 2,650 tons."”
The Moxee Company was a corporate irrigation venture that turned sagebrush benchland into the alfalfa and hop fields that still define the Yakima Valley. Its scale — hundreds of acres fed by company ditches — foreshadows today's fights over who holds the water rights when the Yakima runs short, and over whether hay, hops or apples get the acreage. The valley is still arguing the same questions, only now with drought curtailment orders and junior-versus-senior rights on the docket.
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