526 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGEILULTUEE. 



A NEW SHEEP FARMING IN THE CORNBELT. 

 Joseph E. Wing, iH Breeders' Gazette. 



Once a party of us were making a trail up a difficult mountain. We 

 went up a very narrow and steep canyon which after a time degen- 

 erated into a mere cleft in the mountainside and was one succession 

 of waterfalls and impossible, steep, slippery, mossy banks and ledges. 

 We had come down this canyon on horseback, on the sure-footed moun- 

 tain horses and had taken it as a matter of course that we could make 

 a trail up it, so we worked and made it from the bottom as we went. 

 And at last we ran it into the ground! Literally, we were "up against 

 it." We could see no outlet from the pocket into which we were 

 landed, for ahead of us was a waterfall and on each side awfully steep 

 slippery banks with only enough earth on them to hold grass roots and 

 under that shaly rock, the worst for trail building. And we went to 

 bed, as cowboys will, without trying to figure it out; we had worked 

 till dark and let the morrow care for itself. And that night I 

 dreamed that I went up to the mist of the little waterfall and there 

 found a great cavernous place where the rocks overhung, that I turned 

 at the cavern and going out to my left found a pass over the ledges 

 and so to the easier slopes beyond. And in the morning I went to see 

 if my dream was true, and, lo! it was even so. With ease and laughter 

 and gay spirits we made the trail above and since then many thou- 

 sands of cattle have pased under the shadow of that jutting cliff and 

 out through the cavern to the pineclad hillside. 



Last night I lay awake, out on our upper porch, my little boy In 

 my arms, and the first winter's storm raged in the oak trees and I 

 felt real regret that my hair is thinner than when I ranched it, and 

 after a time it flashed over me: 



"Why, you have the problem of keeping sheep in health and profit 

 on eastern farms, on farms in this very cornbelt solved. You have by 

 thought and experiment settled point after point. There remains now only 

 the connecting of the links, and you can, if you can get men to believe 

 and do the work, lead them to keep sheep successfully in goodly num- 

 bers in these regions where for a decade they have thought that they 

 could not keep sheep at all and have "proved it. Now can not you 

 write this thing up convincingly enough so that some men will give a 

 demonstration that will convince the others?" 



Here some doubting Thomas may ask: "Why don't you do it your- 

 self, Joe?" The fact is, we may. If we do not, right off, it will be 

 because of these reasons. We keep pure-bred sheep. We have in a 

 flock of about 60 ewes invested quite a little money. To stock a farm 

 with pure-bred ewes costing around $30 each would be expensive. To 



