Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1903-05-19

The most severe and longest drought
which ever occurred in this country
was in the year 1862.
A live bird to nest and sing in the
tree by your home, madam, is worth
two dead ones on your hat.
OF all the choice beef breeds of cat
tie the Herefords seem to be the best
adapted to the range conditions of the
southwest.
A quarter section farm within the
limits of the corn belt is well worth
$50 per acre whereon to grow seven
dollar hogs.
The cherries worn by the ladies on
their new spring hats look so tempting
that the birds are likely to get on mi
lady's hat after all.
The first wren to find its way to our
place this year fell victim to a black
cat. Then the cat fell victim to a
combination of circumstances and will
catch no more wrens.
The large surplus of cash owned by
western farmers a year ago has been.
much of it, disposed of. Some has gone
into more land right at home, some in
to oil stocks, some into mining schemes.
more into cheap lands in the north
west Not one-half of this surplus has
been well invested.
A friend writes and says he has 100
bushels of potatoes for which there is
no market and, wishing to feed them
to his hogs, wants to know whether it
will pay best to boil them or feed
them raw. If we were in his place and
had the facilities for doing the work,
we would by all means cook them be-
fore feeding.
We visited the home of man not
long ago who had set out q lot of apple
trees, an acre or more, and he had set
the trees right in the middle of a
jack oak grove, intending later OH to
remove the native timber. The trees
We're all either dying or dead. He
might better try 10 raise his children
in dark cellar.
A noticeable feature of the great cot
ton fields of the south is their freedom
from weeds. they being in this partic-
ular very far ahead of the great corn
is bestowed upon the cotton crop than
on the corn or else the shade of the
cotton plant absolutely stops the
growth of all other vegetation.
We are asked whether it pays for
one to try to save his own vegetable
seeds. We hardly think that it does,
aside from corn. beans and few other
things. 1t is just as much bother to
save few seeds as a lot. and the
quantity required for an ordinary FAM
lily garden is so small that it is far
less trouble 10 buy them than save
them.
Barley will make just rs much pork
as corn pound for pound and of even
better quality for horne use. for it will
| have the much priced streak of lean
and streak of fat. Now, If you are too
far north to grow corn and can grow
forty bushels of barley to the acre. you
live in Il hcg country and can make
Iaore money out of the pig than any
other animal you can keep on the farm,
We were down in the land of the live
oak. Spanish moss and the miStletoe
lately and were much interested in not
ing the singular relation existing be-
tween the tree and its parasites. The
mistletoe forms q most perfect union
with the tree, q more perfect one than
is usually secured by the process Of
grating. while the moss clfngs to the
tree like long gray beard on a rugged
old man.
Where the writer lives very much of
the fine stand of clover of last years
seeding is dead Why it is hard TO say,
for the fields went into the winter in
fine shape. the ground well soaked,
The winter was q mild one too. There
is this comfort about it. however,
though the clover may be dead its ben
eft to the soil Will much more than
repay for all it cost. A clover field
never dies in debt to the man who
sowed it.
A farmer living near the city of San
Antonio. Tex, with nothing in sight to
Justify the outlay, sank deep we'll
and was most singularly rewarded with
an artesian flow of good water sutti-
cient in volume to irrigate 100 acres of
land. This well raised the value of
his farm from $50 to $500 per acre,
and it is all rented out in small pieces
to truck growers, who get most eX
traordinary returns. No one else has
heen able IN strike the flow of wafer