Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1902-07-22

When select ring gets hold of
county fair association, it is soon all
day with the county fair.
1t is usually the homely COW which
fills the pail and makes the butter rec
ord. The handsome COW stands for
beef, not butter.
The liquid fertilizer which may be
easily gathered up in a barnyard after
heavy rain makes one of the best Of
stimulants for the rose garden.
Marked as has been the advance in
She price of beef, the advance in the
prices Of the foodstuffs which pro-
duced it have been still greater.
The advance in the prices of all
building material is operating to pre-
vent many substantial improvements
in both the cities and on the farms.
The south is just beginning to wake
up and realize what splendid market
the north offers for the early vegeta-
bles and fruits which the south can
produce in such abundance.
A California cherry grower whose
trees We're irregular in bearing two
years ago placed several hundred
stands of bees in his orchard, and for
two years past his crops have been
very heavy.
Notwithstanding the great boom in
pork prices there is very little boom in
the highly bred breeding stock. When
that forty-five hundred dollar hog was
found after his sale to have a tainted
pedigree few years ago it put a
damper on fancy prices for Poland
Chinas.
A man whom we know has about
ruined his small fruit business by his
miserable tricks in packing and mar
keting his fruit-short measure, dirty,
rotten berries and all that sort of fool
ishness and dishonesty. The consum-
er soon sizes up producer in these
matters.
Illustrating some of the possibilities
connected with vegetable gardening in
the southern states, we note that one
Florida gardener sold 951 crates of to-
matoes from two acre patch and that
they averaged him $1.5O per crate net,
or $I13 per acre. This is as much as
lots of men make from an eighty acre
farm in the northwest.
We noted skeleton barn for the
storing Of hay lately. 1t was just a
well braced frame covered with a
board roof, the boards to be removed
when the hay was used up. 1t afforded
perfect shelter for eighty tons of hay
and did not cost over 500. Where a
man cannot afford a well built barn
this method is worth trying.
The Poles and Bohemians have
learned how to make money on the
sandy, timbered tracts in central Wis
consin. They coax growth of clover,
plow the clover under, plant potatoes
and raise the finest potato in the coun-
try; then sow to fall rye and clover
the land again. They are getting rich
off land which in an early day was
thought to be worthless for agricul-
tural purposes.
The country owes much to the I'M
ceasing restlessness and discomfort of
the American farmer, the man who is
always migrating to some new section,
the uneasy fellow who is always will
ing to sell out no matter how well he
| may be situated. Still in the long run
this migratory habit has been bad for
him, thousands of men having at fifty
years Of age little or nothing to show
for life spent in hard pioneer work.
All through the section Of the coun-
| try where the writer lives there are
| thousands Of acres of oats at this date,
| the last Of June, SO rank and heavy
that an ordinary summer wind and
rain storm would lay them out fat.
If this occurs, and it is quite likely to,
there will be great waste. After
heading out, if SO blown down, such a
crop can be made of more value made
| into oat hay than to let the crop half
rot on the ground waiting for the har-
vester.
While the system Of cold storage
now so generally coming into use gives
the big corporations controlling such
plants the opportunity to corner and
fix the price to the consumer of the
commodities SO stored and held, there
is no disputing the fact that the proc.
ess has been Of inestimable benefit to
the producer, as it has not only equal
lied but advanced prices. which often
because Of the very perishable nature
Of eggs, butter, meats and fruits, were
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