The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1886-09-04
Correspondence Baltimore County Union.
LETTER FROM IOWA.
A Former Baltimore Countian Who is
Pleased With Lis Western Home.
WINFIELD, HENRY COUNTY, Iowa, |

WINFIELD, HENRY COUNTY, Iowa,
August 10Th, 1885. !
Messrs. Editors Seeing an item in a recent
issue of your paper relating to the terrible drouth
in Jefferson county, Iowa, hasten to correct the
impression that your readers may get by the state
ments made therein. 1t is true that we have had
what is known as dry season and that wells have
in some cases failed to supply sufficient water for
the increased demand by stock in dry time
But let me say that a majority of such wells are
shallow ones and are fed only by surface water.
Localities, like wells, differ, and while cannut
speak of that locality only by what hear from
those who live there and have visited here within
q month, can assure our Baltimore county friends
that our crops above the average for the past
eight or ten years. Of our own county can say
that many have harvested over sixty bushels of
oats to the acre, while know of one crop of over
three thousand bushels that averaged fraction
over ifty-o bushels per acre, and do not know
of but two or three crops that have averaged less
than thirty bushels, and the time of sowing and
condition of ground prior to sowing have bear
ing on the result, fully satisfying me that there
was q cause other than the dry weather for the
shortage. Our corn, too, is above the average for
the time above specified and will or promises to
be of a good quality. Pastures and meadows
were injured by such long drouth, but the pres
ence almost daily of heavy dews kept vegetation
growing nicely until the harvest weather came on,
which always shortens and browns the pasture,
causing it to look dead. Even then the cattle
that had access to good, pure water were thriving
we'll. But there were some that were driven two
miles or more every day to the creeks, in the heat
and dust, for their ill of water that was standing
in pools more or less stagnant, and only the one
draught in twenty-four hours, that look as if the
dry weather was an injury to them. After whole
summer of such treatment the owner dug hole
(not welD only seven feet deep and has found
water sufficient for all his horses, eight or ten in
number.
To be sure Henry county is better county than
Jefferson in many ways, but ! did not know that
from twenty to forty miles west of us it was SO
much dryer. If we could have it as dry each sea-
son for the next i've some of our farmers would
get rich thereby for it has been the excessive wet
seasons that have hindered our progress, though
through it all enterprising farmers have accumu-
lated slowly while some have done exceedingly
WELL The most of our land is dark loan, the
soil being of great depth, often deep as six and
eight feet, and some river bottoms show a rich
soil as deep as eleven feet, which is capable of
producing crops of corn and oats for many years.
One piece of land that know of produced its first
crop of timothy and clover last year and was cul-
tivated, I am told, for twenty eight successive
seasons, and the last crop of corn was "forty
bushel to the acre" crop. Many farms have been
cultivated necessarily for fifteen and twenty years
ton. But farmers are adopting the plan Of rota-
ton, which pays much better than the old method.
hope that our friends of the East will not
think that Iowa is suffering badly, for she can
stand more drouth than many of the Western
States and as much as any State anywhere. A
dry June has never failed to bring us a fair corn
crop and as pasture ground Iowa is not exceled.
We always have plenty of grass and to spare
The health of our people, too, is good, and since
the breaking of the native sod the malaria has
only troubled few on river bottoms and is not to
be dreaded any more. There are bargains to be
had in farms, and it has always been SO for fifteen
years that I know of. Iowa occupies the best
position geographically of any State in the Union
and is destined ere many years to take the lead
in several ways. Even now, with thousands of
her acres in the northwestern counties unbroken,
yet fertile and cheap, she stands second in the
yield of corn, and IN cattle State is her supe-
rior. Our county fairs are not surpassed in any
State and our products always find good market.
We beat the world last year in New Orleans for
creamery butter and can do 1t again. We have
had splendid rains in the past three weeks and
fall blowing is progressing while the pastures are
green and everything seems promising.
Respectfully, E. T. P.