Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1911 — STILL DRY AND HOT. [ARTICLE]

STILL DRY AND HOT.

While corn is not suffering as yet for need of rain and will not for a short time longer if the farmers keep the ground stirred well by cultivating (not to close to the roots) the hay, wheat and oats crop is practically done for and not half a crop will be raised in this locality. Early potatoes are also a complete failure. Pastures and meadows are badly dried up and many lawns in town are as brown as though seared by a redhot iron. A recurrence of the hot weather has come again this week and the mercury has been hovering about the 100 mark each day. While we got a splendid rain only a week ago, all evidece of it has gone and we need a good steady downpour of a two or three days duration to soak up the ground good. Down in southern Indiana they have had tremendous big rains this week, some streams there being the highest ever known while many of the wheat fields were covered with water and some that were _ cut, w r ere washed away. Generally speaking. however, the drought is quite general and a much lighter crop than usual of the smaller grains and hay will be harvested all over the country. Hay will be a high price and cattle consequently cheap this fall. The far-sighted farmer will do well to put out a -few acres of sowed corn, sorghum, millet or hungarian, which with rains later will yield an abundance of cattle fodder, and he can make some easy money by buying up the cheap cattle in the fall from those farmers wdio are short of feed and keep them over to next season for tile big prices sure to prevail for cattle then.