The Ward County independent. [volume] (Minot, Ward County, N.D.) 1902-1965, 1908-01-30

the meeting Tuesday night was the
address by Hon. Treadwell Twitchell,
from Cass county. Twitchell is one
of the old seventy-niners in the state
and has been engaged in farming for
years. True he took vacation and
was sheriff from Cass county for
term or SO, and he has taken numer-
GUS other vacations and has sat in
the Senate and the House in our
state legislature, but the farm to him
Is the same as a pond to duck.
He always gets back to it.
At present he is the owner of 5000
acres of fine land in Cass county
which he is farming. He has made
money from the farm, but long ago
cut wheat out exclusively. The past
season he raised 500 acres of splen-
did clover as good as Minnesota ever
saw, and next season will have in a
thousand acres of clover This is a
fine thing for cattle, besides it en-
riches the soil
He gave graphic description OF
the wheat that is raised in the Red
River valley after the land has been
cropped to wheat, wheat, wheat year
after year Finally the land gets so
poor that it will grow scraggly kind
of straw, but little or no wheat
He says he keeps cattle to eat up
the grass that he grows, and because
he wants to enrich the soil from
their manure
| To manure wheat land, he would
scatter the manure over the land in
the fall, plow it under and then in
the spring, plow again Harrow the
land till every lump is out and you
will get crop He is quite hog
raiser He once sold all Of his mar
Reliable hogs, keeping only the pigs
These he fed on $16O worth of shorts,
let them run on the clover and in
the fall let them follow the cattle
He sold the hogs for $4,000 which
represented quite a neat profit.
He ran 100 hogs on alfalfa pasture,
feeding no grain and they made an
excellent growth. Don't hang your
hat on the wheat peg he told the
farmers. 1T isn't good for your hat. .
He once figured out how much
more money he would have made
had he never raised any wheat on his
farm, but raised oats instead. He
says he knows he would be worth
$150,0OO more today.
You don't have to raise oats, he
said. Raise barley. He experiment
ed by sowing barley on a patch OF
land which he had bought and which
was covered with wild oats. The first
year he got no barley, and was COM
PEELED to go into the field with a
mower and NOV down the worst OF
the wild oats and barley. The sec
ond year he sowed barley and got 27
bushel per acre, the third year 50 and
the fourth So He raises 500 acres
Of corn every year and told how he
once made the corn pay net profit
Of $21 per acre for fifty acres.
He fed fifty head OF cattle fifty
acres of corn. They gained on an
average of $50 pounds each. He
bought eighty shoats at $685. each,
and after turning the cattle off, fed
the hogs half rations, allowing them
to pick up after the cattle. He sold
the 80 shoats for $3.50 each, which
made him a net profit of $21 pei
acre for the corn.
He admitted that western North
Dakota beat the Red River valley dur
ing the past six years. Gov Devine
gave an enjoyable address in the
evening. Mr. Devine's talk to the
farmers are always timely and his
advice is quite generally needed
He told them the story of his farm