The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1905-01-25
Earth river and the grain had to be
transferred to the railroad.

transferred to the railroad.
Some reader may want TO know
where two boat-loads OF wheat came
from if the crop was DESTROYED. 1t
was not total loss in this locality.
There was something left, and over
SO large an area as covered by the
south part of Renville and northern
and eastern Redwood counties. even
three bushels per acre left some
thing to sell.
The settlers at this time were a
good deal discouraged. They had
witnessed the raids of the hoppers
for three years, during which some
had suffered total loss and others
had secured a small yield, but
hardly enough to make further ex-
istence on the land possible, and
the land was again sown to the eggs
OF the little pests, ready to eat up
the coming crop. In localities where
there were no eggs deposited the
farmer took his chances on the fly
ing marauders, but many who knew
they must pasture the young hop
pers gave up the struggle, though
most of the land was' seeded.
| On the farm we had about 2.400
acres in wheat out of total of 200
acres that had been broken up. The
crop was put in by "a tenants who
did all the work and had half. I
paid for blowing and furnished the
seed. The summer was too dry to
have raised a full crop under nor
NAL conditions, but when we had to
pasture an army of locusts we we're
up against a pretty tough PROPOSE
ton.
| The report made up after thresh-
| ing by Wallace Belt, now DIR. Belt,
is brought down to a pretty fine
point, as it had to be on so thin a
subject One tenant had one and
one thirty sixth of bushel per
acre, eight had 2 to 8 bushels, with
John Garlic at q, the Volts at 81,
and Pike on the the Collins place,
| section "a, gets credit for four and
eight-ninths bushels. The average
was about four bushels per acre.
In some localities near the Mime
sofa river and on Sleepy Eye creek
and on sandy land there was scarce
| ly anything. [ have seen an army
of hoppers start from their hatch
ing ground to grain field with the
order and precision of an army and
move across in close ranks, not
leaving bit of green behind. The
field instead would have the ap-
pearance of having been burned
over.
The season of 1877 opened cold
and wet and large part of the eggs
deposited the fall previous were
destroyed, and the hoppers that
did hatch were not so hungry as
before, with the result that far less
damage was done to the ~ crop
than had been expected.
Many methods were resorted 10
for the destruction of the young, .f
which the burning of the grass
where eggs were laid in the prairie,
digging bitches or blowing deep
burrows around the field, using
sheet iron pan smeared with coal
tar and piece of cotton cloth with
net or bag carried by two per-
sons were the most used. I drove
to the farm occupied by G. E. Good
win one day and found him stand
ing by his half mile ditch watching
the enemy go over into the wheat,
and more woe begone attitude and
expression it would be hard to i'm
agine.
To the great relief of the farmers
the ~ crop of hoppers seemed TO be
in poor health, they could not eat
all the time and had lost the vigor
and aggressiveness shown by their
kind in previous years, and were
good enough to light out as soon as
they got wings. The damage they
had done was considerable but all
were rejoiced and hopeful just in
our vicinity until an afternoon about
the middle of July, when a great
1eecy cloud seemed to be moving
between the earth and the sun that
proved to be one of the largest
- n Al )