The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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is quite as profitable as raising wheat. Cattle, sheep, and horses transport themselves to market, but you must draw your grain.
If you are going into stock-raising, you can afford to be at a greater distance from a railroad station than the man who raises wheat. It would undoubtedly be for the interest of the company to sell you their outlying lands along the branch line at a low figure, for it would enhance the value of those nearer the road. You will find St. Cloud and Anoka thriving places, which, with St. Paul and Minneapolis, will give a good home demand for beef and mutton, to say nothing of the facilities for reaching Eastern markets by the railroads and lakes.
"Do the people of Minnesota use fertilizers?"
No; they allow the manure to accumulate around their stables, or else dump it into the river to get rid of it!
They sow wheat on the same field year after year, and return nothing to the ground. They even burn the straw, and there can be but one result coming from such a process, — exhaustion of the soil, — poor, worn-out farms by and by.
The farmers of the West are cruel towards Mother Earth. She freely bestows her riches, and then, not satisfied with her gifts, they plunder her. Men everywhere are shouting for an eight-hour law; they must have rest, time for recreation and improvement of body and mind; but they give the soil no time for recuperation. Men expect to be paid for their labors, but they make no payment to the kind mother who feeds them; they make her work and live on nothing. Farming, as now carried on in the West and Northwest, is downright robbery and plunder, and nothing else. If the present exhaustive system is kept up, the time will come when the wheat-fields of Minnesota, instead of producing twenty-five bushels to the acre upon an average throughout the State, will not yield ten, which is the product in Ohio; and yet, with a systematic rotation of crops and application of fertilizers, the present marvellous richness of the soil can be maintained forever.
"Do the tame grasses flourish?"
Splendidly; I never saw finer fields of timothy than along the line of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, west of Minneapolis. White clover seems to spring up of its own accord. I remember that I saw it growing luxuriantly along a pathway in the Red River Valley, and by the side of the military road leading through the woods to Lake Superior. Hay is very abundant, and exceedingly cheap in Minnesota. I doubt if there is a State in the Union that has a greater breadth of first-class grass-lands. Hon. Thomas Clarke, Assistant State Geologist, estimates the area of meadow-lands between the St. Croix and the Mississippi, and south of Sandy Lake, at a million acres. He says: "Some of these are very extensive, and bear a luxuriant growth of grass, often five or six feet in height. It is coarse, but sweet, and is said to make excellent hay."
I passed through some of those meadows, and can speak from personal observation. I saw many acres that would yield two tons to the acre. The grasses are native, flat-leaved, foul-meadow and blue-joint, just such as I used to swing a scythe through years ago in a meadow in New Hampshire which furnished a fair quality of hay. The time will come when those lands will be valuable, although they are not held very high at present. A few years ago the Kankakee swamps in Illinois and Indiana were valueless, but now they yield many thousand tons of hay, and are rising in the market.
"How about fruit? I don't want to go where I cannot raise fruit."
Those native to the soil are strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, huckleberries, cherries, and plums. I picked all of these upon the prairies and along the streams while there. The wild plum is very abundant, and in the fall of the year you will see thousands of bushels in the markets at St. Paul and Minneapolis. They make an excellent sauce or preserve.
Minnesota may be called the Cranberry State. Many farmers make more money from their cranberry-meadows than from their wheat-fields. The marshes in the northern section of the State are covered with vines, and the lands along the St. Croix yield abundantly.
Mr. Clarke, the geologist, says: "There are 256,000 acres of cranberry-marsh in the triangle between the St. Croix and Mississippi, and bounded north by the St. Louis and Prairie Rivers! The high price paid for this delicious fruit makes its cultivation very profitable in Minnesota, as well as in New Jersey and on Cape Cod."
"Can apples be raised? I am fond of them, and should consider it a drawback if I could not have an apple-orchard," said the persistent Mr. Blotter.
I understand that till within a year or two the prospect for apples was not very encouraging. The first orchards were from Illinois nurseries, and it was not till native stocks were started that success attended the fruit-growers' efforts; but now they have orchards as thrifty and bountiful as any in the country. At the last State Fair held at Rochester, one fruit-grower had fifty bushels on exhibition, and two hundred more at home. It was estimated that the yield in Winona County last year was thirty thousand bushels.3
The St. Paul Press, noticing the display of fruits at the Ramsay and Hennipen County Fair, says: "These two fairs have set at rest the long-mooted question, whether Minnesota is an apple-growing State. Over two hundred varieties of the apple, exclusive of the crab species, were exhibited at Minneapolis, and a large number at St. Paul, of the finest development and flavor, and this fact will give an immense impetus to fruit-growing in our State."
The following varieties were exhibited at the last meeting of the Fruit-Growers' Association, of Winona County: The Duchess of Oldenburg, Utter's Large, Early Red, Sweet June, Perry Russet, Fall Stripe, Keswick Codlin, Red Astracan, Plum Cider, Phœnix, Wagner, Ben Davis, German Bough, Carolina Red June, Bailey Sweet, St. Lawrence, Sops of Wine, Seek-no-further, Famuse, Price Sweet, Pomme Grise, Tompkins County King, Northern Spy, Golden Russet, Sweet Pear, Yellow Ingestrie, Yellow Bellflower, Lady Finger, Raule's Jannet, Kirkbridge White, Janiton, Dumelow, Winter Wine Sap, Chronicle, Fall Wine Sap, Rosseau, Colvert, Benoni, Red Romanite.
Many of the above are raised in New England, so that those people who may cut loose from the East need not be apprehensive that they are bidding good by forever to the favorite fruits that have been a comfort as well as a luxury in their former homes.
"I take it that grapes do not grow there; it must be too far north," said my visitor.
On the contrary, they are indigenous. You find wild grapes along the streams, and in the gardens around St. Paul and Minneapolis you will see many of the cultivated varieties bearing magnificent clusters on the luxuriant vines.
"How about corn, rye, oats, and other grains; can they be raised with profit?"
The following figures, taken from the official report made to the last legislature of the products for 1869, will show the capabilities of the soil: —
| Average per Acre. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Wheat, | 18,500,000 | bushels, | 18½ |
| Corn, | 6,125,000 | " | 35 |
| Oats, | 11,816,400 | " | 43 |
| Potatoes, | 2,745,000 | " | 90 |
| Barley, | 625,000 | " | 30.6 |
| Rye, | 58,000 | " | 18 |
| Buckwheat, | 28,000 | " | 16 |
| Hay, | 430,000 | tons, | 2.08 |
| Wool, |