The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-12-10
FARMING IN ALASKA

FARMING IN ALASKA.
 Farming in Alaska!--the bare idea of 1t! We'll that is because you don't un- derstand the climate of Alaska. You wouldn't be so much astonished if your head were not crammed with false mo- tions about the climate. Alaska could make one hundred million dollars a. year just raising red raspberries if it could ship them by wireless telegraph and the outside world could consume such quantity-but that story is only to suggest to your imagination how some things dncluding red raspberries) grow In Alaska-not everything, but only some things.
 Alaska has an area in round num- bers of six hundred thousand square miles. That is equal to three hundred and eighty-four million acres About ten million acres of. that (rnostly in the sitka archipelago) in good timber :and- densely forested with pine, spruce, fir, hemlock and red and white cedar From what have seen Of the country there are, should estimate, about one million acres on wh'ah Gn industrious and thrifty population could make 8 frugal but comfortable living by straight farming B't in addition to this, there are proba ply not less than five million acres on which stoLL could be subsisted about as we'll as in Minne- sota-with about the same winter care. In almost every part of the country up there stock can be ,ickly fattened during the brief summer season--from the middle of June to the middle of September-on the smazing growth of luscious forage grasses ard plants that cover the earth. .......
 If you have got little money laid up and are possessed by a romantic notion that you would like to go to Alaska, and start a little farm and raise berries and vegetables for market and chickens and eggs and such truck, and grow up with the country my cordial and friend ly advice to you is--don't. Your little money would be gone and your heart broken before you would probably make a success of 1t. There is indeed a chance that you might succeed--about one chance in a hundred. The berries and vegetables will grow all right in , many places after you get the ground cleared and "humanized," which takes three years, and the chickens and ducks and the cows will thrive, but there is nobody in the country to furnish reg ular market for your truck. But you could, of course, sell little of it at an astonishingly high price, occasionally, when some one chanced along who wanted it and happened to have the money in his clothes.
 Don't let any one with a romantic and unconscionable pen bamboozle you with fairy story about sweet little home and a profitable truck farm anywhere at all in Alaska. It can be done; 1t has been done. have myself seen beauti- full gardens up there. But don't you try it unless the pioneer spirit is so strong in you that you can't be happy anywhere else.
 If you will write the secretary of ag- riculture, Washington, D. C., he will send you the reports of the government agricultural experiment farms at Sitka
 at Renal, at Kodiac, and way up north in the Yukon valley. They are very in- tere g. and they aim to tell the exact truth-do tell it, have no doubt, but not the whole truth-can't: nobody can; life is too short. Nothing will reveal the whole haggard truth to you but go- ing and seeing for yourself. And if the pioneer maggot Is in your brain, then
 go and God prosper your pluck. But never let anybody's fairy stories be-
 guile you into going to Alaska to grow
 up with the country without money ir your sock to put you back home if you . don't like it.
 You may like it, It is beautiful country, most interesting country tc visit, country rich beyond words tc tell in a prodigal opulence of escenery; rich also in a generous endowment oi natural resources-coal, iron, gold, tir Ca world of tin lately discovered up or Seward peninsula near Nome) silver copper, timber (millions of acres ot red and white cedar that is almost as
 precious as mahogany). fur-bearins game; fish (such fish-volumes wou1dn't tell the whole story of Alaska's wealth of fish), and climate that is healthfu and invigorating everywhere and sur. prisngly mild in winter, for such higt attitudes, all around that part swept b, the warm Japan current.
 The winter climate at Sitka is mucf
 warmer than that of Washington. Wa. ter but rarely freezes at Sitka. Bu |, that is only the beguiling half of tho ,, truth. The summers are cool-not fros ty, but just delightfully."- cool. It is tht sweetest place that know of in all tht |, world for people to go who want to es cape from the heat. But heat happens to be one of the things that most crop. need-and most of them need lot of it
 Wheat, oats, barley and such thing. will grow and mature a crop in Sitka but you are liable to have to do you ,, harvesting under an umbrella, and you , are in luck if you don't even have tt wear 8 cork e-preserver--the rainfall is about one hundred inches a year a th@t pcipt: but that is about the wet test point in Alaska, and there is { great deal of fog. But don't go and ge the notion into your head that folk. never have any fun or fine weather a } SitlSa, for when the sun does shint there it just seems to fondle the earth l and that is true of the whole coast O.