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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1902 | 2 |
| 1903 | 16 |
| 1904 | 8 |
26 stories matching much
- The Sunnyside Canal's New Problem Was Too Much Water
Farmers who once feared the canal could never water the whole valley are now drowning in seepage — so a private company has been chartered to drain the land before the state district can get its paperwork done.
- Seattle's Farm Paper Says No to Paying for Portland's World's Fair
As The Oregonian promised a $100,000 state appropriation for the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial, a Seattle agricultural journal argued the money would be better spent on roads and irrigation — and doubted the crowds would ever show up.
- The Moth That Ate Washington's Apple Boom
Government experts blamed the codlin moth for ruining a quarter of the nation's apples each year. In Walla Walla and along the Snake River, some orchardists were already pulling up trees in despair.
- The End of the Wool-Loading Perk
Railroads are ending the practice of loading wool for shippers, a move that threatens to lower prices for regional wool growers.
- A Farm Paper Accuses Olympia of Auctioning a Senate Seat
After the 1903 legislature adjourned, The Ranch blasted lawmakers for graft, railroad favoritism, a $3.25 million budget and $125,000 in fair appropriations.
- A 1.5-Million-Acre Taking: The Colville Reservation Was About to Be Thrown Open
Federal officials and land agents anticipated a rush of white homesteaders into the southern half of the Colville Indian Reservation, framing Indigenous land as 'closed' and state growth as its natural destiny.
- A Swedish Immigrant Built Seattle's Clean-Milk Dairy One Gallon of Cream at a Time
Alfred Kristoferson arrived to find a booming city where cream came watery and milk carried disease. His answer — pasteurization, doorstep delivery, and a health officer's endorsement — became a one-man public-health campaign.
- Budget Cuts Silence Washington's Farmers' Institutes
A Pullman college president tells The Ranch that six or seven faculty posts were cut, leaving no one free to carry agricultural lectures into the countryside in 1903.
- How an old mining ditch and a boulder patch became a $6,000 orchard
A correspondent's tour of the Methow valley and the benches above Pateros finds peaches by the boxcar, seven-pound carrots, and a warning that California land had already outrun the poor man.
- The Farmer Who Said the Colleges Were Failing Rural Washington
Addressing the state dairymen, farmer Wm. F. Izett argues that the land-grant colleges move too slowly and cost too much to save the farm — and pitches a cheaper, faster kind of agricultural school as the 'machine gun' the countryside needs.
- Two Farmers Who Started With Nothing and Built Dairy Fortunes
A Scandinavian immigrant with no money and an Ilwaco homesteader who once lacked even winter underclothing became models of dairy success through testing, breeding, and relentless work.
- When the Hay Ran Out, the Neighbours Around Brewster Signed Their Names Together
An Okanogan County fodder famine had stockmen facing the loss of whole herds they had no money to feed — until country people who owed them nothing co-signed a note to buy the hay.
- Seattle's Fruit Brokers Declared War on the Shrinking Apple Box
In a market where every Puget Sound mill cut its own crate, Seattle commission men pushed a uniform standard—and growers demanded $5,000 bonds to keep the middlemen honest.
- The Produce Hustlers of Western Avenue
A newspaperman walks Seattle's commission district and finds winter vegetables, Yakima potatoes and shipments bound for Alaska, Asia and the East.
- Washington Dairymen Declare War on a Seattle Butter Dealer
At a dairy convention, producers accuse a Seattle dealer of cold-storing eastern butter and mislabeling it to break the market—and call for an organized, public fight.
- The Great Chicken Confinement Debate
A practical poultry raiser challenges the industry-backed myth that fancy, confined birds require expensive, proprietary feed mixtures to survive.
- Oregon's Lobbyists Descend on Olympia for the Lewis and Clark Fair
Washington legislators balk at donating $200,000 to Portland's 1905 exposition, as Senator J. P. Sharp calls it an indiscriminate giveaway of public funds.
- A Creameryman Confesses: 'Our Business Conditions Are Rotten'
In an unusually candid letter to The Ranch, the manager of the Rockwood Creamery Co. says reckless price-cutting and smooth-talking rivals are cheating Washington dairy farmers and quietly ruining the state's butter.
- "You're Stealing Every Day": A Redmond Dairyman's Anonymous Cry
Writing to Seattle's dairy journal under a pen name, a Redmond farmer accuses the creameries of skimming pounds off every can of cream and getting rich on other men's cows — and the editor answers with a demand for a name he can prosecute.
- Farmers Take On the Commission Men—and Demand Weekly Checks
Yakima growers propose a $5,000 bond for produce brokers, while Sumner farmer W. H. Paulhamus recalls how organized producers stopped getting 'did' by middlemen.
- Island County Farmers to Seattle: Stop Skinning Us Through Middlemen
A tour of Island County found farmers demanding better roads, cheaper steamer rates and a direct city market—and warning that Bellingham or Tacoma could steal the trade.
- Chehalis Bets on Condensed Milk
A Tacoma company picks Chehalis for a new milk-condensing factory, and local farmers get a pitch to supply it.
- Seattle's Milk Supply Caught in a Secret Trust
A quiet combination of milk dealers and a new condensed milk company threatens to control prices, squeeze out independents, and lock Skagit farmers into low-paying contracts.
- 'Only Another Name for a Sort of Annual Picnic': Washington's Road-Tax Fight
A good-roads convention hears that farmers resent paying their road tax in cash instead of working it out, that the money vanishes into 'graft or rake-off,' and that Spokane County's section-line roads were laid out so badly they must be rebuilt from scratch.
- The Fruit Broker Who Shipped Bananas to the Arctic—and Planned to Make His Employees Co-Owners
J. B. Powles buys out Seattle's oldest commission house, revealing a rags-to-fortune run built on produce, Alaska trade and an unusual plan to share ownership with his workers.