In San Diego County they are happy with ten inches per annum, and fortunate if they get five; in Santa Barbara, twelve and a half inches insure their crops; the Sacramento Valley has an average rain-fall of about twenty inched, and eighteen inches insure them a full crop on soil properly prepared.

In 1873 they had less, yet the crops did well wherever the farmers had summer-fallowed the land.

This practice is now very general, and is necessary, in order that the grain may have the advantage of the early rains.

When a farmer plows and prepares his land in the spring, lets it lie all summer, and sows his grain in November just as the earliest rain begins, he need not fear for his crop.
There is less difference in climate than one would suppose between the Sacramento and the San Joaquin valleys.

Cattle and sheep live out-of-doors, and support themselves all the year round in the Shasta Valley on the north as constantly as in Los Angeles or any other of the southern counties.