Dry farming was slow to make its appearance around these parts. It slowly began in the early 1900s and timing could not have been better. The area was in a very wet cycle that lasted through 1916. The following is a 1911 account of dry farming in Lassen County.
”While much of the farming of the county is done dry, which is to say without irrigation, there is very little scientific dry farming. Indeed, it is all but unknown. However, a beginning has been made, in a few small farms in Honey Lake Valley, and in the Madeline Plains, where may be seen the most substantial evidence that it is profitable. Those who are interested in this form of farming may learn something to their profit by communicating with Mr. Isaac Metcalf, whose address is Termo, Lassen County. Two years ago, Mr. Metcalf lost his all by fire. Coming then to the Madeline Plains without even a team of horses, he began dry farming on 160 acres, practicing the Campbell system. The first year, he cut from forty acres of barley 761 sacks averaging 110 pounds each; and from eight acres of rye ninety-six sacks averaging 130 pounds each. The same year, he turned five sows and their pigs, thirty-nine in all, upon a piece. of alfalfa a little less than two acres in size, upon which they made their living until winter. Then he fed them about one hundred sacks of barley, following which he killed thirty-one of them, these bringing him 3,800 pounds of cured meat. Mr. Metcalf now has a comfortable and pretty residence, a fine barn and other appurtenances, and a small but thriving young orchard of apples, pears, plums prunes, quince and a few grapes. He has no land to sell, but those who. see his place will agree with him that a fair valuation of his possessions is $5,000, all of it accumulated by two years dry farming.”