554- 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
TULY 25 
PROSPECTING ON PUGET SOUND. 
Hunting: a gardening Location. 
Soil and scenery ; fruit and seed culture; 
the chicken business; tide flat lands ; 
a long walk ; wait till the boom rolls 
by. 
While on a prospecting trip to western 
Washington the writer had a good chance to 
see that part of our country as an Invest¬ 
ment for a market gardener. The route 
taken was over the Canadian Pacific Rail¬ 
road from Winnipeg to Vancouver; and the 
northern part of the Puget Sound was the 
part thought most desirable on account of 
the young towns being mostly engaged in 
manufac'uring, and now importing most of 
their vegetables from California. I made 
my headquarters in New Whatcom, making 
excursions all around this point, mostly on 
foot, giving a first class opportunity to see 
the soil and talk with those working ranches 
along the route. 
The soil at New Whatcom is a heavy 
clayey one capable of making bricks, and 
therefore not an ideal soil for a market 
garden, being too cold for producing early 
vegetables. The principal business of this 
point is logging and saw milling. There 
are four large saw mills, but only two of 
them were running. The land Is heavily 
timbered, and it coses something like $100 
an acre to clear it. I lay on the top of some 
stumps which must have been over six feet 
in diameter. Many of them could not be 
taken out for less than $15 each. The best 
farming land is the marsh or swamp bot¬ 
toms. This land is not so heavily timbered 
and Is rich in vegetable matter. If in a 
state of nature about seven miles from 
town it was held for from $60 to $120 an 
acre, and where cleared an even $100 an 
acre was added to the price. 
At this point I visited the orchard of Mr. 
John Bennett, as I learned that he bad 
taught the residents what their soil was 
capable of producing in a horticultural 
way. Being a compatriot of the writer, 
and the climate seeming to be almost the 
same as that of Great Britain, quite an in¬ 
teresting conversation was held regarding 
the gooseberry. Mr. Bennett has originated 
several new varieties, but says that even 
the equable climate of western Washington 
Is not. as favorable for the growth of this 
fruit as that of our native Scotland. I 
found that he thought the Puget Sound 
country was superior to California for rais¬ 
ing fruits such as plums, and that one or 
two varieties of peaches did well. The 
Gravenstein Apple grows to perfection and 
experiments are being made with every¬ 
thing in order to find out just what can be 
produced in this line. The Chamber of 
Commerce has on exhibition a turnip 
weighing 50 pounds. It was no unusual 
thing to come across potatoes weighing five 
pounds. These large tubers were not good 
unless baked, which drove off the excessive 
moisture. As an indication of the amount 
of moisture in the atmosphere I saw moss 
growing on the roofs. I tried to rent a 
place, but the rental asked was $25 an acre, 
which I considered too high. 
The next point visited was Anacortes on 
Fidalgo Island. The soil here is better 
adapted for gardening, being more of a 
sandy nature. Anacortes is only about 15 
months old and has about 1,500 inhabitants. 
The same conditions prevail here that were 
found at Whatcom. Having been advised 
to see Mr. March, who has the reputation 
of taking off $1,000 from an acre of land in 
cauliflower seed, I crossed the island to his 
place and spent the night with him. He 
was the only man I found who used man¬ 
ures, or considered them necessary to his 
soil. Inquiry resulted in eliciting the in¬ 
formation that he used Sitka fish guano 
liberally, also all the manure his stock and 
hens produced. He also practices green 
manuring, as he has great difficulty in 
getting fertilizers at a reasonable price. 
Wood ashes were spoken of, and it seems 
that the native fir and cedar give hardly 
any ashes; the people can burn fir wood in 
a box stove all winter and there will be no 
need to take the ashes out of it. 
Mr. March has 150 hens and claimed to 
have taken $600 from them from January 
1st until the end of April. While I was 
there a large basket of eggs was brought 
into the house. Eggs were selling, at re¬ 
tail, at that time for 35 cents per dozen. 
The chickens are fed every morning and 
night on boiled potatoes mashed and mixed 
with cracked wheat. At the time of feed¬ 
ing they are also given a quantity of whole 
wheat. So successful is Mr. March with 
his chickens and seeds that he proposes to 
confine his efforts to these staple articles 
and expects next year to have 1,000 chick¬ 
ens. I saw his two incubators and brooder 
house and have no doubt that with his 
usual thoroughness he will be successful in 
his enterprise. 
After leaving Mr. March, I took the 
train for Avon, intending to visit the 
famous Skagit Valley. Here I got my first 
glimpse of the great tide flats of the Skagit 
delta. Imagine the train running through 
a heavily timbered country with such a 
heavy growth of underbrush that it is nec¬ 
essary to cut one’s way through It with an 
axe, and all at once running into a country 
as level and cleanly cultivated as a garden 
running as far as the eye can see, and you 
will probably rub your eyes several t1m»s 
just as I did to see if you are not sleeping or 
dreaming. The train soon leaves this tide 
flat land and runs into the timber again. 
The point I was making was Skagit City. 
To reach this point I had to walk down 
the north branch of the Skagit River 14 
miles. All along the river where land was 
cleared were found hop fields, the average 
Sound rancher, having gone crazy on the 
hop question. Those with a few acres of 
hop3 made a pot of money out of last 
year’s crcp, and every available acre has 
been put into the crop. Mount Vernon 
and Skagit City on the river are saw 
milling towns, and are mere clearings 
in the woods. The soil here is even better 
than at Anacortes, being warmer and more 
of a sandy loam, but there is no market at 
these points for a market garden. I found 
the majority of the settlers all through this 
locality Scandinavians. The clearings 
would amount to from 3 to 20 acres to a 
place, and all the people seemed to be con¬ 
tented and placed enormous values on their 
land. A friend of mine there had a place 
with about 20 acres under cultivation. He 
is putting his land, as rapidly as cleared, 
into fruit trees, mostly plums and peaches, 
and although a large land holder he does 
not want to sell. Next morning I tried to 
catch the mail boat at a place called La 
Conner and had to walk six miles to git 
there. On the road I made a closer acquaint¬ 
ance with the tide flat lands. 
There are five distinct deltas, compris¬ 
ing altogether something like 48,000 acres 
of rich soil. The principal crops are oa's 
and hay. Farmers claim a yield of 100 
bushels of oats and five tons of hay to the 
acre respectively. Hay was selling for 
$22 per ton retail when I was there. Here 
was a deposit of salt and vegetable matttr 
about 15 feet in depth, well drained and 
cultivated. In order to keep out the tide, 
dykes or embankments were made follow¬ 
ing the course of the slews. These em¬ 
bankments were also utilized for roadways. 
Seeing the name of Tillinghast, which I had 
noticed in The Rural, I made a call on 
him and put some inquiries regarding 
the farming interests in the neighborhood. 
Mr. Tillinghast did not think his lard 
needed any manure, although he used some 
on his seed beds. Mr. March was cited as an 
example of a man using manures and the 
most successful in his line in the section. I 
was told that while Mr. March’s place was 
upland and needed manure, the rich deposit s 
of the tide flats made manure unnecessary. 
The price asked for this tide flat land was 
$300 an acre, and the holders did not want 
to sell even at that price. 
Mr. Tillinghast gives contracts to neigh¬ 
bors to raise his cabbage seed. He buys 
the seed lrom them at 25 cents per pound, 
and the average yield of seed will be about 
1,000 pounds to the acre. As it takes two 
years to raise a crop of cabbage seed, this 
would make an average of $125 an acre for 
the farmer. 
While talking with the seed merchant I 
was unfortunate enough to lose the mail 
boat. I then had the alternative of wait¬ 
ing until next morning or walking another 
six miles to the nearest railroad. I chose 
the walk. The whole distance to the rail¬ 
road was through these tide flats. The day 
was bright, warm and sunshiny, and teams 
could be seen in all directions plowing. 
The railroad station was nothing more than 
a shed where an exchange of freight was 
made. There was no agent. The farmers 
had left several veals addressed to various 
points. When the train came along the 
men took up this freight, and left what¬ 
ever they had for this station. As there 
was no place to eat, and after a walk of 12 
miles the cravings of nature demanded 
something, I started to walk until a place 
to eat was found. This took me another 
eight miles and into Anacortes. I had 
therefore walked 20 miles and was tired 
and hungry, but had seen a good deal of 
the best farming land around Puget Sound. 
To sum up what I found, land was held 
at too high a figure owing to real estate 
booms, and the starting of too many “ wild¬ 
cat towns,” but the booms were dead and 
the reaction had set in. The lumber trade 
was almost dead, and this was their staple 
business. There was no likelihood for the 
lumber business to revive this year, and 
the workingmen were getting anxious to 
sell their land or town lots for money to 
live on or move away. Under these con¬ 
ditions I did not think it would pay to buy 
land at the prices asked for it, but I thought 
that the following spring things would be 
nearer their level and a better chance for 
investment would be found. There was no 
use In raising vegetables where they would 
have to be sold on credit, with a doubt if 
the cash would ever be received for them. 
The local Puget Sound papers report that 
the big saw milling concerns were in a 
large trust and that half of the mills in 
this trust were being shutdown in order 
to cut down production and keep up prices, 
the mills so shut down receiving an allow¬ 
ance according to their capacity. 
Indian corn dees not reach maturity in 
this country; but there are roasting ears. 
The plant, judging from some stalks seen, 
grows about 18 inches in height. Good 
coal, iron and other minerals are being 
found all around the Sound, and there is 
every indication that this is to be a good 
manufacturing section; but it cannot be a 
farming country for a long time on account 
of the great cost of clearing the land. The 
return journey was made via the Union 
Pacific and Rio Grande railways. This 
route carries one through the great Amer¬ 
ican Desert for over a thousand miles. 
Here one sees nothing but sand and sege 
brush except along the banks of rivers or 
where irrigation is practiced and there 
glimpses of Alfalfa and some grains are to 
be found. According to the Chicago pa¬ 
pers, a mysterious lake is now forming 'n 
the heart of this desert, with no satisfac¬ 
tory explanation as to whence it comes or 
whither it may go. 
[Later investigation shows that the water 
comes from the Colorado River. Where 
the river in its lower course passes through 
the United States it runs through a mighty 
chasm with bluffs on each side from 0,000 
to 8,000 feet in perpendicular or nearly per¬ 
pendicular height. After it enters Lower 
California, (which belongs to Mexico) on its 
way to the Pacific Ocean, at the head of the 
Gulf of California, the bluffs disappear, 
and it is found that the river has been send¬ 
ing an imtm nse volume of water westward 
The 100 Cents 
a Dollar. 
The Shrewd farmer everywhere 
seeks fertilizers that will increase his 
crops and so enlarge his income. He 
not only demands one hundred cents’ 
worth of plant-food in every dollar’s worth 
of fertilizer that he purchases, but his invest¬ 
ment must also pay a handsome dividend in the 
increased value of his crops. The state chemists 
[report a high valuation on our goods, but the high- 
' est valuations that we receive are from the farmers 
themselves, who have used our goods and who 
know, therefore, whereof they speak. 
The thoughtful farmer will notice 
f the state reports do not give the agricultural 
the fertilizers, whereas the agricultural value 
^nly value which benefits the growing plant, 
these facts: — 
valuation does not tell from what source the 
| of plant-food are derived. For example : it does 
nitrogen in blood any higher than nitrogen in 
^yet nitrogen in blood is a most valuable plant-food, 
Nitrogen in leather is almost worthless, 
valuation does not take into account the proportions of 
plant-foods in the fertilizer. This, however, is of vital importance to the plant 
in promoting its growth. The progressive farmer will always pur¬ 
chase the Bradley Fertilizers because they are composed of the best 
materials, combined in those proportions that experience has shown produce 
the largest crops. We tvill send you on application “Bradley’s 
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and give you the reasons for their great success. Address 
Bradley Fertilizer Co., 27 Kilby St., Boston. Bochester, N. Y. 
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