Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1908-07-23
COMMON TREE AS
AN INSURANCE
INCOME CAN BE PRO-
VlDEO BY PROPER PLANT
ING.
ON WASTE PLACES ON THE FARM
THEY WILL BRING A FINE
REWARD.

AT time when there is such great
interest in the preservation of the
forests of this country. many farmers
nave had their attention called to the
fact that the planting of trees, on poor
Or low ground that will bear but half
a crop at best, is a good investment in
the long run.
The following from Chicago
stock journal shows the value of trees
as a means of insurance:
Many American farmers are paying
costly premiums upon life and annuity
insurance in the hope that when they
are dead and gone their families may
receive something wherewith to tide
over the pinch that may come when
the head of the family goes over to
join the great majority; or per-
haps that in their old age, when the
power of labor is gone from them,
they may have an annual income that
will keep the wolf from the door.
In Cass county, Michigan, forty-fve
years ago was a plain farmer of the
old-fashiOned order who was bent on
getting all that he could out of his
land, reckoning not of the future
He had slashed the timber from one
end of the quarter section to the
other and was using up the plant food
kind nature had stored in the ground
just as fast as annual grain crops
could do it. The very extreme of eX-
travagance in these directions set his
young son and principle helper to
thinking.
One day the boy said, Father I'm
going to set out a lot of walnut trees
on that piece of lowland that never
gives half a crop and a lot more
around the edge of the farm
Nonsense" exclaimed the old gen
tleman, you'll do nothing of the
sort! I've no time to bother with such
foolishness and l cant spare your
time either"
well, then, I'll do it on my own
time" replied the son. 81 know that
some day the walnuts will be worth
something, and it wont cost you
cent III promise you that"
The boy carried out his plan. Some
years before the old farmer died the
walnuts were a sight to behold and he
had become through their beauty ana
promise of great value entirely recon
ciled to the "fOOlishness" of the boy
in using up spare time and idle land
for such a purpose. A few years ago,
when the boy himself had become a
gray-haired man, a representative of
great furniture company visited the
farm and>before he left had paid the
farmer $4,000 for the walnut trees.
Without the trees the farm itself was
not worth $4,000
There are many important questions
to be solved by the people of the
United States, but few of them are of
greater moment to the welfare of the
people than the timber question and
that other question that is directly re-
lated to the timber questionable
floods that each spring destroy mill
ions of dollars worth of property in
country, town and city because the
great regulator of surface waters
the forest-has become thing of the
past. "a
Forestation not only is life insurance
to the individual who grows the trees
but life and property insurance as
well of future productivity of the land
and maintenance of normal climatic
conditions, so important to all life.
indeed, it is impossible to enumer-
ate in the space at command that
ways in which the simple work Of
that boy on the Michigan farm served
the world. May we not learn the les
son he taught by putting it into actual
practice?