Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1890-06-13
4 FEW SUGGESTIONS.
A Former Dakotan Gives the Farmers
Some Useful Hints.

A Former Dakotan Gives the Farmers
Some Useful Hints.
Ed. TRIBUNE: Seeing from your paper
that you inserted my last letter, causes me
to interest myself again in the prospects OF
North Dakota and her people. l see many
have sown wheat and oats again this year,
even after their repeated disappointments
and failures. Now 1 know that barley, if
.sown early, say the middle or last week of
April, would be much more successful
than either wheat or oats and that corn is
always a success.
1t would be no trouble to any one to
winter five sows, and have two filters from
each every year would make at least one
Hundred animals. These, selling at eight
to ten dollars each, would be $1,000. Ten
about all that would be required to put
them on the market in November or De-
.cember. Then there are many roots, such
potatoes, sugar beetS, and also vegetables,
from which a good return could be had.
Flax might also be grown to advantage,
from which ropes, binding cord, sacks and
coarse cloth might be manufactured, not to
speak of the oil and fine linen goods that
could easily be made.
What does Gov. Pierce mean by propos-
ing that they should raise barley and make
it into malt? Prohibition Dakota indeed!
1 think Gov. Pierce should look after the
interests of the people by getting freight
give the people al outlet for their produce
at a fair rate and give the people of west
ern Montana a fair price. My young
people in Missoula say they pay over a
dollar a bushel for potatoes and so cents
for eggs and butter, and everything at as
high a ratio.
Why not have a pork-curing establish
ment? 1t would pay within two years if
not at first. 1t seems to me that the people
of North Dakota are not sufficiently alive
to their W interests or they would not
lag as they do. The climate is blamed for
all these wants of success. l do not blame
the climate; that l consider is excellent
or oats will ever be successfully grown as
q main CROP.
Then in regard to. cattle raising. Think
it is a grand climate for that, but the poor
animals will require shelter and a bite of
hay during the big billiards.. The cause
of so much loss Of life is not the climate of
North Dakota as the genuine laziness of
the people. Let them form enclosures dug
out for them in the side of ravines where
they could 20 during a big blizzard, and
with sufficient hay put up and enclosed
with a fence where they can tear away the
fence when required and there will be no
difficulty in future. AS to hay, when it
was selling the last two winters at two to
four dollars per ton in Bismarck, it was
selling in Helena and Missoula at twenty
to thirty dollars a ton. Surely it would
pay some energetic persons to invest and
4 send on such articles as also benefit the
people of North Dakota.
1 think the climate of North Dakota bet.
ter in many respects than that of Pennsyl-
vania and would rather live there than
here, but if the people pretend to winter
cattle without shelter and without hay
they deserve all that they get.
There Is nothing that will produce
healthier chickens or more eggs than bar
ley, and with plenty of it there would be
no difficulty in farming and making a sue
cess of it In North Dakota, in the way Of
raising both both pigs and chickens.
No, North Dakota is not done-it has not
quite begun. There will be happiness and
better times for her yet, but neither wheat
or oats will do 1t. .
ELLEN F. ARNOLD.
CALIFORNIA, Pa, June 8. 3