The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1910-02-28
FOUGHT FARMING
BATTLE ALONE.
went Into Wilderness and
Made a Ten Strike.
Ole MARTINS heroic STORY


Miles From Any Human Being, He
Broke the Land With Hand Guilt
vator and Won With His Nerve and
Brains-Oles Experience With Potato
Growing.
This is the story of a farmer who
won because he had nerve and under
standing enough to sit down on his |
land and fight it out to finish, a
farmer who had never heard Of the
word encouragement and whose only |
definition Of failure was that it meant
''try again q little harder" also it is
the tale Of man who farmed as much
with his head as he did with his hands.
and he did an enormous amount of
work with those latter.
His name--not that it matters par
ticularly--is Ole Martin, and six years
ago he drifted into these United States
from Sweden. where he had been farm
ing in rocky and exhausted land for
fifteen years. Six months after his
arrival at New York he was in Alaska,
and six months after that he had few
acres of land on the Kenai peninsula.
Then he began to farm. There We're
no neighbors- then, at least, for it
was not until later that taciturn
Scot sat down a short distance away
and began to farm on his own ac-
count
Had No Dogs or Horses.
The location was three and half
miles north Of the new town of Sew
ard. and there was no railroad; also
there were no horses and at first not
even a dog, so supplies had to be
packed in. A man who has never
carried sixty to hundred pounds on
his back over rough, unbroken coun-
try can only imagine that. Ground
had to be broken and cleared. Then 1t
had to be prepared for sowing, and
the old methods of Sweden and the
United States even were useless. Mar
tin began with potatoes and failed.
His results were watery caricatures
Of the potato of commerce. He had
got his seeds from Seattle, and he
tried again and failed again. Then he
began to farm with his head, He pro
ceeded to educate his potatoes and
teach them TO grow respectfully. This
could only be done by growing and re-
seeding. Soon he had real potatoes
and began to sell them.
Cultivation was problem, for with
out tools it was difficult. Martin solv
/ ed this problem, however, in his own
patient way. He built himself hand
machine and pushed it himself with
| prodigous labor. Later, when he had
secured dog team, he broke them to
4 haul the cutivator. 1t was n severe
/ task, for he was alone. There was no
hired man-iust Ole himself and the
dogs
Decided on Garden Truck.
Finding himself SO close to a grow.
ing community, Martin saw that IN
garden produce there would be a mar
Let, and he set to put some seven
acres under cultivation. In nearly all
his work he had trouble with his seeds
Those from ts,e States would not grow
well in soil where there were 14C
inches of rainfall in year and so he
had to educate his turnips, his cauli
flower. carrots, cabbages and the resi-
to grow in damp soil.
The government maintains expert
ment stations. but these We're and are
too few: also they are only experiment
stations, and the real work must bt
done by the real farmer. Martin wen
through it all, and he built his lof
house. barn and outbuildings. He cut
his hay-tons of it--by hand and rick:
it alone He finds time for flowers
and these are his amusements. En-
built an incubator aud is raising chick
ems and is housing them in lof
house equipped with stove. Ever,
bit of work on the piace-every las
tap-has been done by this farmer sin
gle handed. He has combined tn
} work of the experiment stations ant
, the farm. and to him is due the sue
cess of farming on the Kenai. Nov
the railroad has come to him. and b
can ship his products in to Seward
even across the sound to Cordova anc
Valdez, and he is well to do.
! Fought Twenty Hours a Day.
But the trials and the fight of those
early days, when he was wrestling
twenty hours of summer day ant
eight hours of winter twilight will
I a rough, semiarctic country. pushing ;
: clumsy, homemade cultiyator by hant
4 and smiling cheerfully. will not sool
a fade, nor will the days when eighteel
9 hours of yellow sunlight brought TIT
t seeds rushing to the surface and ma
s tured them in FIVE weeks. Those wer
+ he moments when he saw the thing
The future held And he's not goini
to sell out and go back to Sweden
He's going to stick on the job. It
mis- home now, and he sees the tim
In ten years--no. five-when he wi
have farmer neighbors all about hiI
and the rich soil will be working 70
the men who can conquer it.
: Up in the Tanana valley and in til
a Copper river and the Snsitna, too
. fo,p,ors mo fotjoxvin0 tho fraol. of NJ