Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1902-01-02

Fifty dollars worth of paint and n
little labor put on the house and farm
buildings will add $500 to the value of
farm when it is offered for sale.
Looks count for almost as much with q
| farm as with woman.
The railway companies of the coun-
try buy Il good many old horses and
cows during the year, which, curiously.
seem TO have preference for commit
ting suicide OH tie track about the time
their usefulness is ended.
a careful investigation showed that
of 100 patrons of western creamery
thirty of them kept their cows ut an
actual loss, while one man received
S2.33 for each dollar spent for food for
his COWS and another only GO cents.
Twenty ceres of shocked corn hurt
/! by the drought and yielding thirty-five
bushels per acre were husked and
shredded under the writer's observa-
ton lately at an expense of So per
acre. ton and n half of excellent
shredded fodder being secured from
each acre.
Old and worn steel rails are now be-
ing converted into most durable and
satisfactory railway tie at very small
expense. a substitute for the wooden
tie, so short lived, must be found, and
the old rail will help to do it, Tracks
laid with these ties do not require one
half the work in maintenance.
An Iowa boy whose daily work had
been gathering the crop of corn OH the
farm got up one night in his sleep,
went to the barn, harnessed the horses,
hitched on to the wagon. drove out to
the cornfield and husked~ more than
half load of corn before he woke up.
doing the work just as well as though
he had been wide awake.
Don't set price upon your farm
nowadays unless you mean to sell.
Notwithstanding most men are sharp
enough after the dollars. not a few
have been unable to keep up with the
real advance in the price of good farm
land and setting price on their land
which seemed to them high have been
picked ur before they could say Jack
Robinson"
1t seems like piece of foolshness to
make the statement that any person is
crazy when he attempts to beat fast
train at railway crossing. but so
many fatalities result from Just such
folly that the truth needs pounding in
to the public. 1t is very poor way by
which to exhibit that spirit of bravado
which is SO very characteristic of the
American people.
Olives are likely to pass from high
priced delicacy to a common and low
priced food product. The olive crop
of California is large. and the price of
the olives has dropped from $40 per
ton to 500. The lady who serves six
course supper at some feminine func-
ton will have to substitute something
for the olive and wafer which so often
make one of the courses.
A cute machine manufactures the ar
tificial comb. and swindler takes it
and fills it with glucose honey. scatter
ing here and there a dead bee on the
comb, and the deiuded purchaser eats
1t, associating 1t with apple bloom, the
fragrance of white clover and summer
flowers, while the stuff is made of
paraftin instead of beeswax for the
comb and glucose for filling.
Speltz, or. more properly speaking,
emmer, a European cereal but little
known in this country, is being doomed
by some of the northwestern papers
The merit Of this plant seems to lie in
connection with the semiarid belt. as it
can stand heat and dry weather better
than any of our common cereals. Like
bronze grass, there is no place for it
where corn, oats and barley will do
we'll
Rather curiously, farm land may be
said to be worth per acre in the corn
belt just as many dollars as it will one
year with another produce bushels of
corn per acre; thus il the land will
only grow twenty-five bushels of corn
to the acre such land is not worth over
SO. while if it will produce sixty-five,
seventy and eighty bushels per acre
such figures respectively represent in
dollars its value per acre.
The difficulty Of tanning and civiliz-
Ing WILD fhinUS fS wnll illucfra tod In,