Answer:
Hope my notes help!
Explanation:
The Spanish king wanted a large area for crops and livestock. The padres brought seeds from Mexico to get it started. The Indians had no experience but they were great farmers. They even learned how to ride horses and herd cattle. The Indians also used animals to help them. For an example, the oxen were used to pull plows over the ground while the Indian workers guided the animal or tractor that was pulling the plow. Plows are farm equipment pulled by an animal or tractor and they were used to turn over soil before planting the seeds.
The main crops were wheat, barley, beans, peas, and corn. The plants had to be watered so the padres devised a system to water them. They brought water to the fields with adobe clay pipes or stone troughs. Each mission planted orchards, vineyards, and vegetable gardens. Orange, lemon, apricot, peach, pear, Pomegranate, plum, apples, and fig trees were produced there. In the vegetable gardens the Indians grew tomatoes, onions, melons, garlic, potatoes, squash, pumpkin, and peppers. The gardens were surrounded by fences so the the cattle and the wild animals would not wander around there.
The first cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, and oxen were brought from Mexico to California by the padres. Corrals made with low adobe brick walls gave a little house for the animals near the mission compound. The herders took the animals to good places. When the herds grew bigger the ranch land was used for the livestock. The ranch did not have a fence so the animals often got mixed up on the open range. Sometimes the mission’s crops failed because of the floods and droughts. Then later everything was fine and it became success because of the crops. The crops enabled the missions and it became rich they had lots of food. Since it became a success in 1834, the mission’s records show that the missions owned 296,000 head of cattle, 321,000 hogs, goats and sheep, and 62,000 horses. Just 65 years earlier there were no cows, horses, hogs, sheep, goat or wheat in California.
