Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1905-11-21

y ~ ..IES
Eggs are an economical ration at any
price under Is cents dozen. When
they get above this figure they become
expensive and may be classed as lux
uries.
In a speculative way much real es-
tate is traded in by spectators insight
and unseen. While this may be all
right for the spectators, it is all wrong
for the man who wants to make home.
When the wild fowl begin to migrate
to the south it is time to begin to get
ready for winter in good earnest. We
always feel sorry for these fellows who
always wait for winter to come before
they get ready for it.
For the first time in the history Of
the west there are many farmers more
proud of the highways which they have
cared for the past summer adjoining
their farms than any other thing con-
nected with the farm.
About as much money can be made
off a small piece of land when devoted
to celery culture as. any other crop
which can be raised. This is a crop
which requires quite a good deal of
hand labor and not little skill, but it
pays the grower very handsomely.
There is hardly spot on the CONT
nent where in any unsettled part it is
necessary for settler to go through
the hardships and privations the pio-
neers of fifty years ago had to endure.
Everywhere the railroad is in advance
of the settler, and the building of a
home in new country is today pic
mic compared with what it used to be.
Wheat, barley and oats are the most
adaptable of all crops grown by the
farmer. These will grow and do we'll
from Texas to Assiniboia, where they
are assured of a sufficient supply Of
moisture. Corn is much more sensitive
to the question of latitude, demanding
a. SiOolCi oCSlSO VI ACdG anu luOlSIulG
and a much longer season in which to
mature.
We noted field Of corn on which
the owner had sown rape at the time
Of the last blowing The rape was not
very good in October; neither was the
corn. 1t is q pretty hard matter.to get
two crops at once off the land, and it
may be pretty safely assumed that all
catch crops sown in corn, whether
rape, vetch, cowpeas or soy beans, are
always grown at the expense of the
corn crop.
There is near Philadelphia a market
gardener with just one acre of land,
and he grows each year pieplant to the
value to him of $125 from the roots
which he has planted right under the
wire fence which surrounds his lot. We
know Of thousands of farmers all
through the west who grow ten feet of
most luxuriant weeds along all the
fence rows on their farms, and they do
not get $125 out Of them either.
Hunting bee trees is quite u favorite
pastime in the fall where the, native
timber is still unmolested. 1t is an old
unwritten law that the bee tree and
its honey belong to the man who discov-
ers them, and this law is generally re-
spected in the newer portions of the
country, but where the country is we'll
settled the real law comes in, and the
tree and the bees belong to the owner
of the land upon which they may be
found.
The agricultural department at
Washington has undertaken a series of
interesting experiments with the sweet
clover plant to determine what its val
ue is as soil renovator for WORKOUT
soils. This plant is one of the most
easily and surely grown Of all the
legumes-in fact, has way of intro
ducing itself to the extent that it is
rated as weed pest through much Of
the country. 1t grows rank and tall
on the poorest soils and seems as much
at home on clay knoll or sandbar as
on the richest alluvial soils. 1t has al
ways seemed to us as though it must
have some mission, and if it possesses
the same soil nitrifying power that
clover or alfalfa have there is a lot of
land where it can do good work upon
which these plants will not grow at all.
Waste acres on the farm lie in con-
nection with the depression which
needs tile draining and which in wet
season never produces any crop save
weeds, with old straw stack bottoms
scattered in spots over the grainf1elds,
with the pasture SO heavily stocked
that the growth is mostly weeds, with
the ten foot strip of weedy waste
which lies adjoining SO many line
fences, with the rod wide strip of good
land which, dedicated to the public for
highway purposes and not used, should
instead be growing some crop Of value
instead Of weeds, to many steep hill