Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 101, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1899 — Warden Harley’s Truck Farm. [ARTICLE]

Warden Harley’s Truck Farm.

The one hundred acre truck farm at the Indiana state prison at Michigan City has been so great a success this year that little doubt remains but that Warden Harley will ask the next general assembly to buy it for the state and add it to the prison ground. The tract was rented this year’ and prisoners were put to work as an experiment, The success of the farm has exceeded the most sanguine expectations of the prison authorities, and the farm has been a source of luxury to the prisoners and of revenue to the state. Prisoners have been able to have vegetables which they have not had before in their fare, and the abundance of the produce raised by the prisoners has more than filled the demand for the prison kitchen. The state has an option on the track at SSO an acre, and the prison officials feel that it would pay the state better to buy the ground than to continue to rent it. It lies in a pleasant valley near the prison inclosure, and promises rich yield with proper cultivation. The prison officials will have no trouble in getting men to work on the farm. They say the prisoners like the farm work better than anything else, and that they beg to be allowed to get out and dig in the ground. ,