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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1897 | 8 |
| 1898 | 23 |
| 1899 | 3 |
34 stories matching practic
- The Great Soil Debate of 1897
A Washington agricultural expert challenges the common practice of summer-fallowing, warning that the method is depleting the state's soil nitrogen and threatening long-term fertility.
- Turning Alkali Wasteland into Productive Soil
A Yakima farmer reports a successful experiment in reclaiming unusable alkali land through irrigation and flooding.
- The Butter Fraud Crackdown
State officials threaten public exposure for wholesalers passing off cheap eastern butter as premium Washington creamery product.
- The Campaign for Wide-Tired Wagons
A push for state legislation to mandate wider wagon tires to preserve Washington's rural roads from destruction.
- The $100 Cannery: Whatcom Farmers Learn to Preserve Their Own Harvest
A traveling demonstration in Laurel and Nooksack City showed growers how to solder, seal and process fruit—and argued that small local canneries could outlast the timber boom.
- The Rural Route Comes to Stay
Postal inspectors ride the 30-mile Yakima circuit and find 200 mailboxes where there were none — and a carrier pay raise to $400 a year.
- Every Street a Sled Trail: Seattle Breaks in Dog Teams for the Klondike
In the winter of 1898 the thoroughfares of the Sound cities turned into training grounds — sleds, go-devils and sail-carts everywhere, companies buying and selling sled dogs at $25 to $100 a team, and one man solemnly breaking in a team of billy goats.
- The Great Wheat Debate: Can Eastern Washington Change Its Ways?
A professor and a local farmer clash over the future of the region's soil, debating whether to abandon the 'summer-fallow' method for a more sustainable crop rotation.
- The Poison That Was Too Weak to Hurt a Child
Yakima County's fruit inspector found orchards sprayed and Paris green so adulterated that a child who ate it showed no serious symptoms.
- The Saloon at the State Fair: A Temperance Warning from Yakima
An impassioned editorial condemns the state fair commission for auctioning saloon rights, warning that liquor will corrupt young men and tarnish the fair's educational mission.
- 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.
- Counterfeit Yakima Potatoes on the Sound
A Tacoma paint dealer tells the valley's paper that Puget Sound merchants were passing off second-grade Western Washington spuds as Yakima's prized crop — and that in a full year he got the genuine article only three times.
- The Debts a Country Owes Its Farmers — and Its Farmers' Wives
An 1898 farm-column editorial tallies what rural Washington neglects: untrained road supervisors, school directors so illiterate the legislature had to bar them, and farm women who never see a newspaper or a neighbor.
- 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.
- When the Creamery Burned, Yakima's Milk Had Nowhere to Go
Captain Dunn lost his creamery to fire, put his cows on the range when no skimming station could be arranged, and warned that Yakima's dairy economy would feel the loss.
- 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 Railroad Barons and the Range Wars
Northern Pacific executives visit Yakima to defend their controversial new land-leasing system against local sheepmen.
- 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.
- Three Bad Years of Hops, and a Trainload of Sheep Pointing the Way Out
Yakima County's hop growers have lost money three seasons running. The remedy, this farm editor argues, is to stop shipping raw hay out of the valley and start feeding it to cattle, hogs and sheep here — as forty carloads bound for Montana just proved.
- A Dry-Hills Gamble: Sixty Settlers and a Well
When boosters claimed Yakima’s brown hills could farm, thirteen families put up $25 each to drill for water and prove it.
- The Berry Math That Made Puyallup
A fruit-growers' manager laid out the 1898 economics of Western Washington berries: $1 a crate, 75-cent hired labor, and a cannery on the horizon.
- Yakima's Experiment Station Bets on a Twelve-Foot Wonder Crop
The Northern Pacific test plots at Yakima prove Japanese hemp flourishes in the valley, and a Pacific-coast expert predicts a lucrative new staple for Washington and Oregon.
- The Valley That Organized Itself: Nooksack Farmers Build a Co-op and Demand Pure Food
At a December meeting in Deming, farmers from the Upper Nooksack and Sumas Valley formed a permanent association, secured a power separator for 200 cows, and called for a pure food law to stop the adulteration of fruit jams.
- 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.
- Wenatchee Bets the Valley on Alfalfa — And Dreams of Dairy Herds
A touring correspondent finds the apple country sowing alfalfa by the acre, convinced the real money is in feed, stock and cream rather than in boxed fruit shipped east.