Just as freighting was hard work so were most activities connected with farm industries in a pioneer community. Even though some land was under cultivation there was much brushland to be cleared especially for the late-comers. They found that tall sagebrush indicated fertile soil while the land that raised nothing but greasewood was not so good. Lafayette Carter tells that it took many years with horses and the equipment they had, much of it handmade, for a man to clear all the land he had purchased, and that it took all day with a good team to plow an acre of land. In the early years and even later for small jobs they used a hand plow with one horse. As the man walked along following the plow, the reins were tied together and placed over one shoulder and under one arm, leaving his arms free to hold onto the handles of the plow. A well trained horse responded to "gee'' and "haw" with an occasional tug at the lines to remind it, but walking along behind holding the plow steady as it turned the heavy soil required strength and endurance and plowing a straight furrow a degree of prowess.
Clearing the land and plowing were not the only processes in preparing the land for planting. Good weather in the late winter months was utilized to haul manure from the corrals onto the land which served a multiple purpose, cleaning the corrals, fertilizing and lightening the clay type soil and alleviating its alkaline condition. At first the manure was pitched onto the wagons and off onto the fields by hand but later manure loaders and spreaders were used. The disk, or disk harrow was a kind of surface plow with rows of blades that broke up the large chunks of earth, the harrow, a many pronged device that was pulled over the ground to level and further refine it into workable soil. After this there was ditching, by hand at first and later with a ditcher and marking the land for irrigation. The marker was likely to be a handmade device which, pulled over the land made two or three furrows at a time. All this, along with planting, made spring a very busy time.