Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1903-05-26

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The duck breeders of the state of
New York have formed trust. 1t
will clearly be quack concern.
Western farmers are not kicking over
the fact that they have to pay 4 cents
for nails to put together a pen to hold
seven cent hogs.
There never seems to be enough
and churches in any town
to prevent more or less beer kegs being
piled up at the depot.
California boasts the largest aspara-
gus bed in the world--1,000 acres
from which 100 car loads of asparagus
were shipped last year.
We regard it as big mistake for n
man to rush off toward the north pole
to get farm and home until the ad-
vantages of the south land have been
The scarcity of help to care for the
crop is compelling. some of the owners
of the large peach orchards in Califor-
MIA to cut their fine orchards down and
put the ground into alfalfa.
The prairie dog will bore hole about
five inches in diameter down into the
earth and will bring to the surface and
pile in mound around the hole about
three wheelbarrow loads of subsoil.
The learning how to properly bal
ance the rations fed to domestic ami
mails is the A B G of learning how to
keep them with profit. 1t is the great
secret of success in all lines of animal
industry.
Taking the June pasture as stand
ard of excellence as Il ration for the
dairy COW, it should be the aim of ev-
cry dairyman to counterfeit this ration
as nearly as possible at other seasons
of the year If he would feed his COW to
get the most from her.
Taking, boys as they run through
the country, there is much more dam
ger that they will not have enough
work to do than that they will be over
worked. You can't make q dude and
worthless cad out of Il working and
industrious boy, for work means manli-
ness, honor and integrity.
A friend tells US that one skunk will
clean.out all the cutworms on an acre
of corn. aPerhaps this is so. but it is
not all he will clean out, for he will be
more than likely to clean out your
chicken house at the same time. No
plilanthl'opist can work the skunk
L
The farmers of the state of New
York would much rather see the $780,
100000 which tits proposed to put into
the enlargement of the old Erie canal
put into the building of good roads
throughout the state. They quite log
icalIy reason that the canal enlarge
ment may benefit the city of New York
and theswestern farmer far more than
it Will them
The greatest crop of winter wheat
Kansas is looming up with prospec-
tive 100.000000 bushels, Nebraska with
60,000,000 and Oklahoma with 10000.
600, to say nothing of the other
winter wheat states. Then there is
the crop Of spring wheat in the far
north, in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Al
berta, Manitoba, Assiniboia. an en-
pire of new wheat lands brought into
use. America could furnish the world
its bread inside of ten years.
A field of winter wheat in north cen
trail Texas in April was spotted all
over with dark green clumps of wheat
twice as tall and vigorous as the rest
of the crop. AS the wheat there is
pastured all winter the inference was
that these spots were caused by the
droppings of the cattle, but we were
surprised to learn that instead wher-
ever they appeared there had been the
hole of a prairie dog before the land
was broken up. This fact suggested
two things-ons that there is much
fertility in subsois when brought to
the surface; the other, that subsoil
drainage has not little to do with
good crops.
The milk haulers for the creameries
and the rural mail carriers had six
weeks of horrible country roads to
travel as best they could this spring all
through the country. In some places
not even four horse team could pull
the milk wagon through, and in not
few cases the mail carriers made their
trips on foot-a bad state of affairs sure
enough-and. as usual. this condition of