The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1898-03-31
the entire product Of plant, as rule,
being sold at a fixed price to brokers
who distribute it to the dealers.

|
We come now to tie important
question regarding the Puget sound
country, what is the chance for the
farmer. What part of the land can be
brought under cultivation and under
what conditions? With the mining
interests in the Olympic and Cascade
ranges, the vast areas given over to the
lumber and fish industries, what is
there left for the farmer who wants to
make home in this agreeable and
salubrious climate? In an area west of
the mountains of say 100000 acres,
after deducting the mountain districts
as given up to mining industry, and
say 100000 acres for waters of the
sound and its tributary streams and
yet an unknown quantity valuable for
the timber only we still have, at a
guess, 100000 acres of land sus-
ceptible of cultivation or enough for
$4,000 farms of eighty acres each.
Of the large area of arabic land,
what is known as tide lands, meaning
places where the low shore of the
sound can be reclaimed by dyking
and shutting out the high tides are
the best. These lands when reclaimed
are perhaps the most fertile to be
found in the country and produced
enormous crops of hay, oats, rye, hops,
fruit and vegetables, but are not
adapted to wheat growing as it makes
too rank a growth and does not head
we'll.
There are some small prairies or
openings here and there, all of which
are most desirable locations, growing
crops with seldom failure from any
cause. these places though, so far as
can learn are all taken up.
The next most desirable lands for
agricultural purposes is found in the
valleys and on the lower benches of
the uplands, which border the numer-
Gus streams that come down from the
mountains.
This class of lands is covered by the
vine maple and alder and occasionally
by growth of small evergreens, and
can be readily and easily cleared. On
lands of this last class the farmer can
find plenty Of places to locate and by
industry and thrift can in few years
be independent
Coming now to the heavy forests of
fir, cedar and pine, the question is how
can the settler clear these lands and
make home? Well, considered from
the standpoint of the cost and labor
involved it can not be done until the
time arrives when the timber is
wanted for market; there are logged
off lands that can be bought cheap
and the stumps can be gradually
worked off, but for the ordinary
farmer single handed to clear so heavy
a tract of trees from the land is about
out of the question.
That it is done to quite an extent is
true, but some of the methods adopted
will show the difficulty of the under
taking, for instance, the practice of
Telling trees by burning. At the first
two inch hole is bored into the tree
and then another hole below for
vent; then fire or what is commonly
used, red hot iron is placed in one
of the holes and soon the tree is in
blaze. After the tree has fallen the
work is resumed say, at every ten feet
until the tree is burned into sections,
which have become so dried and
charred that they can lie finished up
by a grand bonfire. This may seem
easy and SO it is to get rid of one tree,
but just next to it is another and
another, and when all have been
burned down the settler has yet the
stumps to get out of the way.
I met resident of valley farm of
100 acres above Snohomish, part Of
whose land was cleared readily, but
he wanted to build house on a plot
of high ground OF about an acre and
a half, which was covered by big fir
trees and he said to me it cost a great
amount of labor and burning and 800
pounds of powder to remove the trees.
To go partly over the ground again,
western Washington offers great in
ducements to the farmer who wants to
raise oats, barley, hops, potatoes,
vegetables of every kind, prunes, cher
ries, plums, pears, apples and all
small fruits, timothy, white and red