Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1920 — LETTERS FROM OUR READERS [ARTICLE]

LETTERS FROM OUR READERS

A. S. Laßue Writes U« From State of Washington Colfax, Wash., July 16, 1920. Mr. Frank Babcock, Rensselaer, Ind. Dear Editor and Neighbor: I promised to write you, so here I am sitting on my sister’s porch on the hillside looking over the top of the business buildings on Main street and only half way up to the top of the hill. The town lays in a valley with only two business streets. The town has 3,500 population. The hills all around the toyn are about as high as our court house. Most all the hills are just as high and they farm all of them. The roads run through the valleys and along the side of the hills; very left crossroads, most of them running east and west with some angling roads. The crops are fine. The estimate on the wheat crop of the west is 32 bushels per acre, some fields will go 50 from 75 to 90; barley about the same as oats. Farmers are making their hay now. They cut their wheat for hay as they have no meadows. Some alfalfa ground here. This wheat hay makes about threb tons to the acre, worth $25 per ton. Common harvest hands are getting from $5 to $7 per day. Header drivers get from sl2 to sls per day driving eight head of horses. Combined drivers get about S2O per dav They drive from 24 to 32 head of horses, and and sack on these machines. It is a great sight to see them harvest on these big hills. I have two cousins who have out 750 acres each of wheat that will make 35 bushels per acre. .They can contract their crop now at $2.50 per bushel. To put out this crop they drove eight horses and three plows. They run five outfits of this kind on each farm. It took them one-half day to make one round.

They were 24 days plowing the 750 acres. Tuesday evening we had a very hard rain here and some wind. It blew some of the wheat down. West of here, 2Q miles, it done lots of damage. It blew one orchard of 100 acres f all to pieces and some buildings and damaged a lot of wheat. We have been on the go ever since we got here. This evening we are going over to Palouse, Wash., 18 miles, to brother Abe’s, and Saturday he will drive us up to Springedale, Wash., 35 miles northwest ofSpokane. That will be a drive of 150 miles from Palouse. We will stay up there with brother Clint about 10 days. There is where - will get some good trout fishing. Then we will go back to Palouse and drive around here until about Aug. 1, when we start on our camping trip to Yellowstone park. I started my letter backwards, I will tell the other end of our trip. We had a fine trip out here. Everyone had their meals with them, so we divided our grub and candy, played cards and had £ Jolly good time. Ab6ut every 90 miles wa changed engines. Would stop ahput 15 to 20 minutes. All got off afr' Aberdeen, S. D., where we took onr a new engine. Seven miles out it went back on us and we stayed out there until 11:30. It made us threen. hours late. The next stop we put on an electric engine of about the size of a baggage car. It takes three men to run it and it has more power than two of the large steam* engines, running about 25 miles per hour up over the mountains, so we made up one hour. We got away ’from all Jerking of the cars on this system. There is 440 miles of it. The country through Montana is very %ough and very poor. Idaho has some beautiful little farms. We reached Spokane at noon Sunday and left at 4 p. m„ arriving at Palouse at 6:36 that evening. Got the paper all O. K. and it looked good to me. » Well, I suppqse you will get, tired of all this stuff I am writing you, so will quit, with love yourself and family, A. S. LARUE.