Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1910 — BIG CROP ON ONE FARM [ARTICLE]

BIG CROP ON ONE FARM

Kansas Grain Grower Who Bogan ag Years Ago With Little Except Hope. MADE $150,000 LAST YEAR. How Has 12,000 Acres of Land and Will Plant It All in WheatSowing and Heaping. The crop of wheat from one farm in Thomas county, Kansas, sold last year for 9150,000. That farm embraced 10,000 acres of land. This year 2,000 acres have been added to it and if the crop is as large and prices as good as last year the farm revenue should approximate closely 9200,000. And that, most any one will agree, is a pretty fair Income for any downtrodden farmer. But beginning with that kind of a statement is telling the Btory backward. To bring the real Kansas atmosphere Into a story one must never speak of the dollars first, the Kansas City Star says. They always come, of course, in Kansas stories, but at the last and plentifully. To tell it right, one must start the story back twentyfive years, in this case, to the conventional setting when & pair of thin, jaded, harness-scarred ponies draws Into the landscape and outlines against the setting sun a dilapidated covered wagon. Bronzed by the sun, and with that spring that ambition puts into the young, the driver, ‘‘Jim’’ Fike, springs from the seat to the ground. From under a canvas be swings two chubby babies to the thick carpet of buffalo grass and turns to give his arm to his wife. They are young and vigorous and at once begin the making, on that wide prairie, that which they have been planning for years—a home. There is the regulation routine, the location, the trip to the land office, the filing of homestead papers, the building of the sod shanty, the like of which dotted the prairies in thousands in those days; the breaking of virgin soil and the planting of the crops, and then—sometimes —the harvest. Through all the years of drought and hard times, through all the disappoint nients that come with the early settlement of a country, through the bountiful golden harvests, this man toiled on, working harder and harder, but always with the firm belief that the country was destined to be a great country of homes. Hope died In many a breast these trying times and many were those who wended their way hack to the old home because they lacked the brave heart to face the hardships. But “Jim” itayed. "Jim" he was to everyone who knew him in those days, and ‘‘Jim’’ he still is to every resident of Thomas county. "Jim” Fike is one of the largest and most successful wheat growers in America to-day. The average yield last year on his 10,000 acres was about fiften bushels sn acre. The price paid for the wheat, which was not sold in the usual way, but marketed in carload lots, was within a few cents of 91 a bushel. A large portion of it was shipped to the West, where millers were especially eager to obtain it. The Fike wheat farm does not all lie contiguous, being made up of a number of farms ranging from 320 to 2,400 acres In extent. Harvest usually begins about July 1, but last year harvest was late, and? 1 all over Thomas county the hum of the header did not begin until about July 15. To cut thta 10,000 acres of wheat in fifteen days requires intelligent and systematic handling of the small army required to complete the work before the wheat is ruined in the field. Seven big steam plows were used in the fall plowing for this season’s crop.