Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1903-05-12

purchased pure bred Percheron mare.
He has since sold $1,000 worth of
horses. the progeny of this one ami
NAL. This item needs no comment.
There are few everyday agricul-
tural truths which, like the Ten Com
mandments, need to be learned by
heart, and one of them is that the land
must be used fair and fed if a man
would have it feed him.
Some Danish milk dealers bar tur-
nips as food for cows and refuse milk
until the twenty milking and
also when COW gives less than six
pounds of milk per day. The Danes
value their dairy reputation.
There is enough for all in this world;
the! everlasting contest is over the
question of its distribution. The big
hogs lie down in the feed trough, and
this sets the little fellows, who can
only get a smell, to squealing,
The birds. have mostly disappeared
from the women's hats. This is good
move. Some day perhaps the men will
not want to kill every bit of wild life
they came across, from jacksnipe to
a bald eagle, and that will be still bet
ter.
What this country needs just now
more than anything else is people, both
men and women, who are willing to
be hewers of wood and drawers of wa
ter, people willing to do the dirty work
Of life for the well to do crowd who
won't soil their hands if they can helm
it.
Your local nursery man better than
any other man can advise you as to the
best varieties of fruit to set out in
your locality. He has made a study
Of this thing, and if you patronize him
he will take pride and interest in fur
nishing you with such kinds as will
best suit your conditions.
While the much advertised moth
traps will destroy lots of insects, they
fail to kill those particular varieties
which are destructive to our fruit
crops and therefore Of no practical
use. They simply cut down the food
supplies of the birds which do catch
the real enemies of the fruit grower.
We always like to see a big estate
we'll scattered either by will or by pro-
bate court proceedings. The law of
entail may be necessity where they
breed lords and dukes. but is wholly
antagonistic to the best interests of
free people. We have u great respect
for Il good, healthy inheritance tax as
one distributing agency.
In a country like ours, where only
just so much law is ever enforced as
the public wish enforced and where
the rights of private ownership in any
game birds or animals are contemptu-
ously repudiated. it is impossible to
preserve this wild life, and it is at best
only a question of very few. years
until it will have been practically ex-
terminated in all the well settled por-
tons of the country.
Some way the days are never long
enough for us in the spring of the year.
There is SO much to do Oh every hand
which must be done in the four or five
weeks which we call spring that one
hardly knows what to do first-seeds
to SOW, trees to plant, prune and graft.
fences to repair, buildings to paint and
fix up, garden to make and cleaning I'D
to do everywhere until one wishes that
he had the strength of youth to supple
ment the ambition of sixty as one sees
so much to be done and has so little
physical strength to do it. 1t is a great
thing to be young and husky
A man Should never grow too old to
take pleasure in planting a tree. A
noble tree or, better, grove of them
is more enduring monument to his
memory than any granite shaft in a
cemetery, which but few ever see and
which does the world no good The
cattle which shall find shelter from
the wintry wind and the heat of the
summer sun under the trees of your
planting would, if they could, bless
your memory; the birds which shall
nest in the branches will sing; your
praises all the summer long, while lit
tie children shall say mass for the re-
pose of your soul as they gather the
red checked apples, the fruit of your
patriotism.
Already thus early in the season APP
pears the all too common item in the
local papers that Farmer Jones had
one or more good steers killed by
lightning in the pasture near the wire
fence. This loss may be largely pre-
vented by simply grounding the wires
in the fence every eighty rods or SO.
1t can be done in this manner: Get
tive-eighths iron rod and drive it into
the ground to depth of three or four
feet, pull it out and then take strand
of heavy fence wire and put down in
the holes so made and lamp it down.
Leave it long enough above ground so
that it can be tightly wrapped around