Year: 1876




NEWELL, Buena Vista Co.. Iowa,


March y, 1876.
To the Editor o, the Free Press and Times


In answer to inquiries from the East
would give the following items Of infJrma-
tion in regard to Northwestern Iowa I'M
proved land will cost from ten to fifteen
dollars per acre, according 10 improvement
and proximity to town. The cost OF build
ings Is not exorbitant. People here content
themselves with small houses. 4 sixteen by
twenty-four can be built for from two t.
three hundred dollars. Sod houses. which
will stand three years 1.-THE sd being very
tOugh), cost fifteen dollars and if person
wants cheaper house he can dig hole in
the bank and live there, as have seen
many doing. Lumber is high, being worth
from SIG to S3S per thousand pine shin
giles cost s. A good deal OF building pa
per is used here.


Stock Is not pestured here as in Vermont.
being herded on the plains. a boy and
dog with good horse can herd from one to
two hundred head of cattle with profit, the
price for herding per head being only one
dollar during the season, which lasts from
the middle of May until the middle of Oc-
tober-though if We had pastures seeded to
timothy the season would be a month
longer. No farms are fenced here.
Cattle are herded on spectators and
railroad land and grass is moved on
the same. In regard to the price of rais-
ing wheat, providing we raise fifteen bush
els OF wheat to the acre and get one dollar
per bushel we can do well; but wheat has
never averaged a. well as that in this coun-
ty. When the yield is twenty or twenty-five
bushels 10 the acre 1t can be raised for less
than one dollar. Machinery is high and
labor also, especially through harvest.
Help i worth two dollars per day and the
cost OF a reaper il two hundred dollars.
Forty bushels to the acre Is a good yield for
corn, and q man can raise corn 10 sell or
feed tor twenty-five cents per bushel and
make some money. Potatoes do very well
and grDw very large. They are raised with
little care. Thev are never hoed but
ploughtd in and ont and the ground har-
rowed


Good water is found from ten to twenty
five feet below the surface, and man can
dig ten eet the first day. as the soil Is loose.
" ellis Will stand a good many years with
out stoning.


The cost OF unimproved land is from three
to ten dollars per acre. The cost oi plough
ing the FIRST time is three dollars per acre.
and there is no need of fencing. If you
do fence the pests will cost twenty cents "A
piece Wire is used good deal for fencing
and willow hedge is being grown quite ex-
tonsively No crop worthy of mention can
be raised the first year on the first plough
ing or breaking, as it is called here. About
farming on small scale, think about the
same amount of money is made as on
more extensive one. Ii man doesn't wish
to hire much help, so acres will do for
farm. but if he wishes to raise grain to sell,
he wants one reaper for every one hundred
acres of small grain (wheat and oats), and
a two horse cuitivator for every forty acre :
of corn. and men in proportion to work the
same


We have less cold weather here than you
have in the latitude of Burlington. Our
February is like your March A. K.


Out of the exuberance of his heart
Galena man warbled when the Spring
Time Comes, Gentle Annie" and at the
conelus ion of the first verse he was reminded
by his " lie Of the fact that when spring did
come the children would have to have a
new suit of clothes, the house Il fresh coat Of
paint and the madame stylish bonnet and
pnll-back. A seventeen dollar mortgage
would have to be lifted, wood-shed built,
a spare bed room furnished for his mother
in law, who was coming to stay all summer,
and sundry other little matters looked
after.