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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1897 | 7 |
| 1898 | 13 |
| 1899 | 1 |
21 stories matching hard
- The Grocery Store Debate on Women's Financial Autonomy
A group of men at a local store argue that women are incapable of managing money, only to be challenged by a young farmer who defends his wife as an equal partner.
- The Butter Wasn't From Washington—and the Dairymen Knew It
Creamerymen and farmers across Washington protest dealers who relabeled eastern butter as local creamery product, calling it a fraud on consumers and a threat to a young industry's hard-won reputation.
- The Wheat Boom That Carried a Bust in Its Backwash
As six-bit wheat enriched the Palouse, a farm editor warned that debt and one-crop farming were setting up another 1893-style crash.
- 12,000 Cattle Roundup—Only 100 Good Enough to Sell
A Yakima rancher returned from the Columbia roundup with a hard tally: a long winter and scarce feed left almost the entire herd unfit for market.
- Apples and Prunes, Not Peaches: The Hard Truth About Shipping Fruit East
A horticultural commissioner's verdict — apples and evaporated prunes are the only sure commercial crops — forces Northwest growers to reckon with soft fruit that spoils on the long haul east.
- 1,200 Cattle Bound for the Yukon Gold Camps
A Seattle-led expedition planned to drive a thousand head over the Dalton Trail and float them down the Yukon, with the herd fattening in the Wenas Valley before the journey.
- The Best and Most Reliable Pickers to Be Obtained
Hop tying and strawberry picking brought cash onto the reservation and goods into Yakima's stores — and the growers knew exactly whose labor they were counting on.
- They Called the Prairie Worthless. He Planted Wheat Anyway.
A government immigration inspector bought gravelly land south of Tacoma and proved the skeptics wrong — sixteen bushels an acre of No. 1 hard wheat.
- The Wheat Was Ready. The Threshers Weren't.
After several lean years, farmers in the big wheat district around Spokane finally got the crop they had been praying for — and then two weeks of rain and snow arrived before the machines could get to it.
- The Fruit Boom on Orcas Island
A local resident reports on the rapid agricultural expansion of the San Juan Islands, predicting a tenfold increase in fruit production.
- A $10,000 Co-op With No Fruit in the Store
A Seattle farm reporter walks into the Tacoma offices of the Washington Fruit Produce Union to find both its manager and secretary conveniently 'out of town,' an empty warehouse, a treasurer who ran off with the funds — and hundreds of farmers who had just paid $5 apiece to join.
- Washington Slams the Gate on Oregon Sheep
A new state law quarantines out-of-state flocks at the border, and the Oregon herders who have grazed Mount Adams every summer are suddenly out of luck — with 50,000 sheep and nowhere to put them.
- The Sugar War: Why Yakima Farmers Wanted Hawaii's Sweet Deal Axed
Northern Pacific distributed beet seed in North Yakima to test sugar production, but farmers argued they couldn't compete with Hawaiian sugar grown with cheap labor.
- The Weed That Beat Wheat Hay
A Cheney-area farmer's experiment with prickly lettuce convinced him the despised weed was better cattle feed than his best wheat and oat hay.
- Washington Apples Fight Back Against a New York Snub
A Seattle commission man rebuts a trade journal's claim that Northwest fruit can't match California's, citing 10,000 boxes of fancy apples already shipped east.
- When Every Eastern Market Was Swamped: The 1897 Fruit Glut That Broke Northwest Growers
A Northwest agricultural writer tallies the wreckage of a boom season — glutted markets, freight and icing bills nobody could pay, and a blunt prescription for growers: dry your prunes and hold for a price.
- The Palouse Wheat Boom Was a Gold Mine—Until the Debt Came Due
An agricultural professor traces the Palouse’s speculative wheat economy: inflated land purchases, the rain-ruined crop of 1893, the panic that followed, and the sudden recovery by 1897.
- The Codlin Moth War: Hogs, Padded Poles, and a Walla Walla Grower's Doubts About Spraying
W. S. Offner reported a quarter-million-dollar fruit trade from the Walla Walla valley—and explained why the standard spray calendar failed against the orchard pest.
- The Wholesaler Tells the Growers the Truth: 'We Don't Love You'
Sixteen years in the Seattle commission trade and no patience left, R. Merchant tells a room of fruit growers that no middleman has ever cared about them — and that neat, uniform packing, not grievance, is the only thing that ever got a farmer paid.
- Don't Bond the Valley to a Dry Ditch
A Wenatchee editor warns that a $100,000 Wright-law irrigation bond would repeat the Kennewick failure—leaving settlers with debt, abandoned orchards, and no water.
- A Fruit Grower's Pitch: Stop Sending Cash East — Feed Alaska Instead
Before the Northwest Fruitgrower's Association, S. L. Moore argued that Washington farmers should diversify beyond wheat and prunes, supply Alaska and Western markets, and let the Northern Pacific's traveling fruit exhibit lure settlers west.