The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-12-17

grants a chance to go to work as soon as they reach their new homes. Ex- pert truck farmers from the North have been brought down and experienced peach men have been imported to show the possibilities of Baldwin County or chards.
 Help Each Other.
 In several of the communities 1t has been the practice when an immigrant came in for all the colonists to turn in and give him free three or four days work in the building of his house and the clearing away of his farm. Ills turn comes with the next immigrant. and with his neighbors he rallies to the help of the new conner in smoothing the way and giving him start. The immigrants start off sensibly and modestly. Their first houses are not ambitious structures They are ra ather small but comfortable. They are usually of boards and blanks from the nearest saw mill with small glass windows brought over from Mobile and with tar roofs shipped from Mobile or the North. It Is the purpose of the inn migrant that the small square struc- ture with the tar roof shall accommo-
 date him and his family until he Is
 able to build a strong, permanent home for his family
 | me NOTIntTn dtS hot given to raising cotton. That sort of
 farming is new to them. Some of them
 have learned cotton raising and have
 indulged in it to some extent. but they never became addicted to the one crop l idea. I was told that cotton was never
 planted or cultivated in Baldwin Coun- | ty unless the farmer was certain that | he would get at least bale to the acre
 with but little fertilizing.
 1 Fruits and vegetables are the long
 suits of the immigrants. Most of them
 before coming to Alabama had some
 experience in that sort of farming.
 Peaches are just now the most popu-
 lar fruit industry. The possibility of peach growing has astonished the older | residents of Baldwin County. In the years past it was hardly thought that | Ba ldwin County was one of the best
 peach growing sections in the South.
 And yet the immense yield of the Sto-
 yer orchard at Dolive was the first
 shipment to go North last year from
 any portion of the country and they
 brought top prices in the Chicago mar
 ket Sonora in the southern portion
 of the cotton belt has the rich
 est acres in fruit orchards. These | orchards even in the month of Decem-
 Der are delightful to look upon. It is | told there that F.. w. iPerce, who owns | a very fine twenty-five acre orchard
 was offered last year $500 an acre for
 the yield of his orchard. There are
 miles of orchards about Sonora and
 hundreds of new peach trees continue | to come in.
 They raise figs down here, and raise
 them at a profit, Figs are planted in orchards and cultivated like peaches They are gathered, preserved put in l jars and sold in the Chicago market at hne figure. The growing of straw berries is also attracting great atten- | tion from the colonists. Heavy ship
 ments of this fruit were made the past summer out of Baldwin County. While vegetables of every descrip- tion are grown in Baldwin County, the vegetable exports are chiefly In beans and Irish and sweet potatoes. The po-
 tato crop is the most important to the
 colonists. The Baldwin County pota- toes are the first to reach the Northern markets, and they bring the highest figures. Beans are also good sellers and good shippers. Last summer the steamboats from Marlow and Fairhope which carried the produce of the farm CTS about here, were swamped with vegetables. The boats on their regu- lar daily trips were unable to handle the immense shipments of vegetables. and repeatedly extra trips had to De made.
 The only thing that the Baldwin County immigrant has been dissatisfied
 with is the lack of transportation facil-
 ities. He has on this accosint been at a serious disadvantage with his com petitor in Mobile County. He had to pay wharf charges at Marlow and Fair hope and Mobile and steamboat charges
 before he could reach the shipping point from which his rival started. If