Year: 1869

limestone outcrops at most of the
banks of the streams, and burned will
prove a valuable enrichment for the
soil when exhausted by the present
wretched system of farming. Selling
all the grain raised, burning the straw,
and putting the same ground year
after in the same crop must wear out
the soil in time however fertile it is
As wheat, the all in all reliance here
for money, turned out so poorly in
Weld and price, times are necessarily
"hard" and money scarce, SO scarce
that interest is from fifteen to thirty
per cent. on mortgage security, and
but little money to let even at that
price. Blessed is that country which
relies not on agriculture alone for its
prosperity, for, when that fails as it is
sure to some years, business is para
lized to a degree which we of the east
know nothing of. 1t is this which
gives the east such an advantage over
the west. The manufactures give a
home market for the farm; serve to
keep money in circulation when crops
or prices fail, and furnish employ
ment for those whom the farm cannot
at certain seasons. The furnace which
you Of Warren, hear, propose build
ing, would be benefit as much to the
country round as to the town, and the
farmers will consult their best inter-
ests by aiding it as literally as their
brethren of the city.


Fruit is not extensively raised here
as yet; but then the country is scarce
ly old enough, as but few settlers have
been here more than ten or fifteen
h. -
may be only middle aged man. The
winters are said to be severe for apples
except of the hardest varieties, as per-
haps the reason is that the trees grow
too fast to bear, or too late in the fall to
mature before freezing; it must be
that. If their culture was understood
they would thrive, for the plum and
crab apple grow wild in the timber
and bear abundantly. Grapevines,
too, grow by the streams. and some
varieties of the grape are said to do
well as for small fruit and vegetables
no country excells this. The wild
strawberries redden the prairies thrO'
the early summer, and the tame ones;
blackberries and raspberries richly re-
pay the little cultivation bestowed up
on them. Though about 8 degrees
west of the latitude of Warren, vet
vegetables, owing to the quicker, war
mer soil, are nearly month earlier
herethan there; potatoes fit for the
table by the twelfth of June this year
and not much of year for potatoes,
either, as Fenstermaker said of the
rabbits. Turnips, melons, squashes,
everything in the vegetable line grow
on the uninriched and almost untend-
ed ground, and in size which people
would regard as gigantic; though the
natives complain of the small quanti-
ty owing to the wet, were almost as
plenty and cheap as the pumpkins OF
the clay soil of Trumbull county. So
if apples do not bear well the people
of Iowa will not be in a very destitute
condition.


But sufficient. have not space
to speak of the many other things of
interest of the seeders for planting
the wheat or the headers and harvest
ers for gathering it; the two horse
corn planters or the sulky cultivators
or of the breaking plOw for plowing
the prairie sod, drawn by six yoke Of
oxen and turning yard wide furrow,
or any of the other strange and won
derful matters of this truly gre at west,
but will leave them for an abler pen
than that nf P. H.