This farmer tells of his success and satisfaction in Idaho, as follows:
“I got very tired of the long severe winters of North Dakota and Minnesota, so I sold my stock and started west hunting for a better climate. My wife liked it in northern Idaho, and her health was a great deal better. So we purchased 160 acres of land. This land had been cut-over about fifteen years ago and the stock from the adjoining town had grazed over it and scattered clover and timothy seed so that the stumps were almost covered up with hay.
“I made my first payment about the 10th of July, and in the next thirty days I got in and with scythes and hand rakes put up some twenty-five tons of fine clover and timothy hay. I bought five Holstein cows that the Commercial Club had shipped in, paying $470 for the five cows. I bought a cream separator and began work within thirty days after making my initial payment. I found that 160 acres of stump land was too much for one man to undertake with my limited capital, so I had a chance of selling off ninety acres of it at an advance of $10.00 over the purchase price, so that I sold that much and have about sixty acres left. We had a lot of snow here the past winter, but the cold was not severe, there only being six nights of zero weather during the entire winter.
“I now have a good barn, a small house, seventeen head of cattle, three good horses, and have cleaned up fifteen acres of land. I expect to cut fifty tons of good hay this coming season, and I do all the work myself, with the exception of one boy. Our five cows have averaged us about $10 per month in cream checks.”
If a man wants to make a success of his life and has the will to do it nothing can stop him.
PLAN No. 763. A GOOD COUNTRY TO LIVE IN
This man came to northern Idaho, from Minnesota, regarding which he says: “Because we decided this was a good country to live in, I bought 120 acres of land from one of the lumber companies, cut-over land, and began preparations in October, 1914. By hard work I was able to get in a few acres for the crop the first spring, which cut me enough clover and wheat, hay and grain to feed a team of horses, two cows, some pigs and chickens. I have contracted clearing here at about $15 per acre. Off of the three and a half acres of clover that I sowed down the first October and November that I was here, I cut ten tons last season. This spring I have sown down one-half acre of alfalfa, three acres of wheat, twenty-five acres of extra fine clover, one acre in my garden and orchard, and about five acres of new clover. I have twenty-one hogs that I have raised on the clover stubble, two cows and two horses. Clover makes a wonderful crop here, producing from two to three tons in two cuttings every year. My wife and children are very much pleased and we expect to pass our remaining days in this valley.”
PLAN No. 764. IRRIGATED FRUIT LAND NEAR SPOKANE, WASHINGTON
He bought his land at Opportunity nine years ago at a cost of $350 an acre. He now has five and a half acres in bearing orchard, with 450 trees eight and nine years old. In 1913 they yielded an average of four packed boxes of apples to the tree, for which he received an average price of $1.31 a box, or a total return of $2,856.
The story of the production of these trees from the beginning is interesting. The first year they yielded nothing; the second year, one box; the third year, 125 boxes; the fourth year, 500 boxes; the fifth year, 1,200 boxes; the sixth year, 1,800 boxes; the seventh year, 2,300 boxes and the eighth year, 2,300 boxes that he sold at $1.20 per box. The lowest price that he received during this time has approximately been $1 per box and he says that the farmer can make money marketing fancy apples at 75 cents a box.