The Ward County independent. [volume] (Minot, Ward County, N.D.) 1902-1965, 1914-09-03

that makes full-sized business men;
and it is q good lesson for young
farmer lad or even q bankers son to
mix up with the class of men found
at the leading stock shows Of our
country.
l told you before, came to North
Dakota in 1882, and l now tell you
that I came with the idea Of raising
wheat few years, getting rich and
going back to southern Michigan, for
/ supposed that a bushel Of wheat
would always be worth dollar, or
nearly so. When l came out here I
was paying Z per cent on some money.
/ kept on raising wheat till by and by
/ was paying 20 per cent on some
money; that is how l got rich raising,
wheat. But finally, after several years
of drouth and low prices. the year Of
1881 came along and that year we
were favored with an enormous crop;
that is, wheat went thirty bushels to
the acre on the average, and we had
got to raising some flax at that time,
and flax was good crop. We got
|good price that year. It was about
the first or second price better than
fifty-eight cents since 1883 and / be-.
lieve that year, 1891, wheat Melted
better than 70 cents in the local mar
ket. Now that crop wiped off some
of the debts for me, and made up my
mind that it was toss-up whether ]
was going to farm it here, or 60 back
to Michigan and 60 into profession
that l had thought of going into when
was boy studied the matter
over for year or two and concluded
that if stayed here I was gCing to
do something else besides raise wheat.
Now, my credit wasn't very good. l
didn't have very much money left af-
ter had gotten my debts cleaned up.
but / took what had and took all the
credit had and went to the best bank
could find, or the man that thought
the most of me, and borrowed all the
money they would let me have, and
went to St. Paul and bought a lot of
pumpkin seed feeders and brought
them home. had been trying for
several years to raise corn and at
this time had got corn so it had some
feeding value mature, by the
time frost came, to about roasting
ear condition, and at this time1 do
not recall the year but it was in the
early nineties-I ground up barley and
fed the corn that raised, immature
though it was, to those steers through
the winter. Fifty of them sold in
the early spring just warmed-up
butcher stuff as they would style them
on the market. They made me some
money, but the other forty ate their
heads of. Seemed to want to grow
into oxen. Couldn't get enough meat
onto this forty to make them fit for
market until in May. That taught
me lesson, namely, you can raise al
better steer than you can buy. If you
60 to South Dakota or Kansas or any
other stock country and 60 out among
the farmers and pick up bunch Of
feeders today, and Tom Brown has
got twenty or thirty young steers and
has probably corn enough to feed part
Of them himself and the balance he
wants to sell, will he sell you the best
ones He might let you have some
that look to you the best, but Brown
can look back at the dam and grand
dam of those steers and from the
knowledge that he has of the feeding
qualities Of those steers he will fool
you every time, and that is what q
fellow gets when he gets stuff to feed
at st. Paul and Sioux City takes
what he can get, and the North Dako-
ia man goes home thinking he has got
a fine bunch Of steers. Sometimes he
does, hut usually he finds, as did,
that they don't nearly all feed up
alike. So believe the way to start
with beef cattle is the same way
started. When bought another
bunch Of cattle I bought all the high
grade heifers, shorthorn grade heif-
ers, could afford to buy, brought
them home and commenced raising my
own feeders from that time on. ! found
after while-it didn't take more
than three or four years to prove IT,
that there is more money in feeding
half dozen steers at a profit than
there was in feeding a carload ut q
loss. 4 got it soaked through after a
while.
Now, to be brief, I have fed a num-
Der OF carloads Of steers that / have
raised. have fed them In straw
sheds, that II, sheds covered with