Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 199, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 August 1911 — EDITOR CRAW VISITS IN JASPER COUNTY. [ARTICLE]

EDITOR CRAW VISITS IN JASPER COUNTY.

Didn’t Know Haw Goad Thtogs Were North of Rensselaer Until Ho I Recently Had a Look. Oxford Gazette. We visited in Jasper county four days the pail week, north of Rensselaer in a country we had an idea was slough and scrub oak sand ridges, with but few, other than web-feet natives living there besides bullfrogs. We saw No bullfrogs. Many names and farms belonging to Germans. As good corn as we have seen in Benton this year. Good wheat. Good oats, though both were hurt by dry weather. Poor potatoes. Meadows only fair. Pasture better. As good houses and barns. More silos. Ten to one milch cows. As good horses as here. There is one peculiar thing about the land. Some farms had the corn we speak of, while maybe the very next farm will be “bogus” land on which the corn will be altogether inferior. No satisfactory reason is given for the bad land. Nearly every farmer keeps a herd of milch cows and sells either milk or cream.. I. F. Meader, with whom we had a delightful visit, milks seven cows, and his receipts from averages about $36 per mop th. He sold last year near $750 worth of hogs, beside poultry, eggs and other farm products. The great dredge ditches the story.

Some land we thought no good is very productive when properly cultivated. We saw some land now worth SIOO per acre that ten years ago was unsaleable at $35. We saw John Poole’s farm. Did not stop to dig for dead men. . Saw the great Kankakee marshes on the south side of the river. For more than two miles a high dyke road had been thrown uji by a big dredge and people are cutting hay this summer, but it will several years before corn and oats are cultivated there. Some of the farmers got all their frame timber and floor lumber from the trees on their own farms. The oak, jack and white, is good. The country was an agreeable surprise. There are school houses every two miles and churches at convenient places.

We had a delightful visit. The C. & E. I. takes a traveler 40 miles in about seven hours, and the train men seem to think that is going some. We spent three hours in Goodland and are ahead a good pocket, knife and a Filipino penny which we picked up in the park. We met a lot of old friends in that town, but missed Phil Poutre. We got lost going up and when going north it seemed west. Mr. Meader went to that country ten or eleven years ago when a boat was needed during the rainy season if one got over the farm. He saw the leal hardships that come to a pioneer in a wet land with a limited capital, and it invested in scrub oak ridges and low swales almost on a level with the great river ten miles away. He had seen the canals dug through the low places and some of the hills until the water level has been lowered 8 to 10 feet, and intelligent farming has been followed by abundant crops. His land could easily be sold for >IOO, which would have been three times its value ten years ago. They live on the direct route between Rensselaer and Chicago, and the honk, honk, of auto, and chug, chug, of motor is heard almost constantly, some days as many as 200 pass: Rock and gravel roads and the dredge ditch are making this a desirable country in which to live. Not far hence the land will become the garden spot for Chicago and Gary. Already acres of cabbage and cucumbers are grown and the yield is as high as >IOO net per acre.