CHAPTER VIII

TIMBER -- CHANGE OF OPINION -- "THE PRAIRIE"-- STRIP COAL MINING -- UNCULTIVATED LAND -- BLUEGRASS -- "SCRUB STOCK" -- STOCK PRODUCTION -- FERTILIZERS -- HORTICULTURE -- WILD FRUITS -- NUTS -- WATER -- FISH -- BUILDING MATERIALS -- CLAYS -- KAOLIN -- COAL -- ASPHALTUM, ROCK OIL, AND GAS -- IRON ORE -- PAINT BOULDERS -- POULTRY -- CORN

Many of the early pioneer settlers of Bates county probably crossed the Missouri river in their "prairie schooners" on the old ferry boat at Boonville, and began to feel quite joyful as they were nearing the "promised land," their future home, and we can imagine they started singing an improvised song; possibly one commencing like this:

Many of them came from Virginia. Kentucky, Tennessee. Ohio, Indiana and other timbered states and naturally settled along the rivers and other timbered streams not only for the convenience of timber for building purposes and fuel, but because they believed the timbered lands had richer and deeper soil and would produce more bountiful crops, superior to the prairie lands. The county was classed as a prairie county, most of the timber lands lying along the streams; the occasional upland timber being mostly "scrub oak," growing less dense, hence more limbs than body and naturally was tabooed by the pioneer as being "shallow land," but is recognized today as the most valuable fruit land in the county.

As the settlement of the county increased the prairie lands were reduced to farms, generally, with most satisfactory results. It is true, in some localities the soil was thin, thought not to contain sufficient loam to produce bountiful harvests, and in fact did not respond to the crude cultivation then given to it. Yet these same lands, with modern farm machinery, subsoiling, rotation of crops, and other up-to-date improvements in the science of agriculture, gained through our State Agricultural College, experimental farms and practical information regarding the chemical constituents of the soil and its special adaptation to certain cereals and grasses and the kinds of fertilizers to be used, have, under the management of thorough-going farmers, men who own these lands and are in Bates county to make their homes and farming and stock raising a business and a success, become the most valuable lands we have.

The great change of opinion regarding the prairie lands and their value for agricultural and horticultural purposes can be no better expressed than in the poetic language of Eastwood, on

In the strip coal mining districts of southern Bates county where the earth has been turned topsy-turvy to the depth of from five to ten and fifteen feet, melon vines have been known to produce melons from ten to forty pounds in weight, volunteers at that, and no cultivation. What might squashes and pumpkins, or any vegetable or cereal with cultivation produce on lands turned up to the frosts of winter and sun and rains of the spring and summer through deep plowing and subsoiling, and thereby allowing it to evaporate any deleterious chemical contents and at the same time gathering in the needed chemical fertilizers that the atmosphere is known to have in store and ever ready to part with when conditions are made susceptible? Our thrifty farmers are rapidly taking advantage of the knowledge of these methods and means of knowledge gained through valuable farm journals and state and federal bulletins.

There is today but very little uncultivated land in the county; every square yard of which, under proper, modern intensive farming will produce an abundant return in any and all the ordinary crops of this latitude.

Blue grass pastures of luxuriant growth, here and there in every section of the county the homes of the dairy farmers, and pure bred cattle breeders are found. In a drive over any portion of the county during the pasturing season fine herds of the various breeds of cattle, according to the peculiar fancy of the owners, can be seen grazing and lying in the shade of the forest trees. "Scrub stock" is really a thing of the past; so thoroughly has been the reformation that Bates county is making among the leading counties of the state in fine stock. Not only in cattle is the county taking first rank but in horses, mules, sheep and swine.

While for many past years, forty and fifty bushels of corn; fifteen and thirty bushels of wheat; and fifty to sixty bushels of oats per acre, were considered good yields, today many farmers with better knowledge and more scientific farming are increasing this yield from twenty-five to fifty per cent, in some instances by the use of fertilizers. While for many years the early settlers failed to plant orchards, today orchards abound throughout the county. The many varieties of apples, cherries, pears and plum trees make rapid growths and yield heavily; while peaches and apricots bear fine fruits, the average yield, however, is only every other year. It is seldom a failure on account of the severe winters but rather the warm days of February starting the sap upwards, swelling the buds, and then later heavy frosts. There is no more certain success in the entire country for the production of small fruits; blackberries, red and black raspberries of all varieties, stand the winter and bear abundantly, also gooseberries, while strawberries are not made a specialty, as in the counties farther south yet those who have taken an interest in strawberry cultivation both in the clay and sandy loam soils have met with entire success. Grapes never fail. There are many gardens also where red and white currants are raised successfully but this fruit is really a more northern shrub, and requires in this latitude, some little protection from the summer sun and should be planted where partly protected by buildings, trees or other shrubbery to insure success.

Bates county has indeed taken the blue ribbon at many pomological exhibitions and state fairs, and made most excellent showings in apples in size, beauty and varieties at several of the world's fairs, as part of the state's exhibit.

With an ample market so close at hand, and a remunerative price insured, the fruit yield of the county in both large and small fruits should be rapidly increased. General farming and stock raising has been considered principally all that was required to be a successful farmer, while horticulture has had a "back seat" or viewed from the gallery, yet, as a matter of fact, it is one of the most congenial pursuits and should form a part of farm life if for no other purpose than the pleasure and comfort and luxuries thereby secured.

The study of horticulture has been neglected; the general public has given to this very interesting feature of farm and town life but little study or attention. Fruit, fruit, and more fruit, is the crying call from the cities. It is no longer considered simply a luxury, but a necessity, healthful, appetizing and one of Nature's greatest boons to man, even if it did originally cause all the sin mankind has been heir to for six thousand years. But just give the boys of today a chance and they will do the same as Adam and Eve and enjoy it regardless of consequences. The acids of the various kinds of fruit assimilate with the blood and enrich it. To be successful in fruit production, either large or small fruit, in this day of insect life of voracious appetites and pests of many kinds, one must give to horticulture the same study and consideration he is required to give successful general farming and stock raising. While we can gain much from books and farm and horticultural journals of how to handle the orchard and the fruit garden, how to meet and defeat the destructive insect life that prey upon the tree, plant and fruit alike, yet practical knowledge of our own and the experience of our neighbors is quite as requisite, and for this reason local horticultural societies should be encouraged. If one has but a few "back-lot" fruit trees or is raising small fruit for the family use, he should become a member of such an organization and thereby gain the necessary practical knowledge requisite to success in this particular locality.

The large holdings of land, the increase in tenanted farms, and a prevailing idea that the production of fruit is a specialty not belonging to legitimate farming, has been detrimental to this industry. Instead of fruits and flowers that should adorn every dining table at least in season, it has been too much "corn bread and bacon" or "hog and hominy" as the saying is. Every home should be surrounded by groves of nut and fruit bearing trees. Every farmer should have his garden of small fruit; blackberries, red and black raspberries, gooseberries, currants and strawberries. Hillhouse has aptly expressed the idea, "I would not waste my spring of youth in idle dalliance; I would plant rich seeds to blossom in my manhood, and bear fruit when I am old." One often hears the older settlers remark, "I wish I had planted a grove of nut bearing trees, walnuts and pecans, twenty or thirty years ago. I would now be enjoying a rich harvest of nuts." Another says, "I made a serious mistake in not planting an orchard when I first started out farming." Why not begin now? There is no time like the present to plant a nut or fruit bearing tree. No greater Christian labor can be performed even if it be the last work of one's life than plant a tree that another may reap the fruit and bless the one who planted it. Civilization is gauged more perhaps, by horticulture than any other branch of industry in utilizing the land, and the luxuries enjoyed thereby can only be measured or appreciated by home culture.

In some of the farming communities throughout the county can be seen thrifty, tidy homes surrounded by fruits, flowers and vines, and at once we realize these people are civilized, and know how to enjoy country life. The freshly painted house, the tasty garden fence, the white-washed fruit trees, cultivated garden, blooming roses and the fragrant honey-suckle -- it is thus known the occupants own their own home, have "come to stay" and are devoted to Christian influences. So it is, horticulture lies at the the foundation of home comfort and family enjoyment and is a sure mark of progress and stability.

What one has accomplished, all can. What a contrast there is when one drives past these tenanted farms or one where the owner persists in not keeping up with the twentieth century civilization -- the house and out-buildings unpainted, shingles curled up and ragged from age, porches falling down, rail fence in front and bars to let down to gain entrance, with thorns, and thistles growing broader and higher, and jimpson, bull-thistles and cockle burrs ready to cling to your clothes if you attempt to enter or to learn if the premises are inhabited or a coroner is wanted. It is a pleasure to know, however, that but few farms in the county outside the tenements, are lacking in thrift and not up-to-date in modern methods and improvements and even some of the landlords have not lost all their pride and supervision, for:

As a voucher that Bates county is one of Nature's homes for the cultivation of fruit; one has only to observe the wild fruits of all the species known in this latitude abound throughout the county; wild plums, crab apples, persimmons, high bush huckleberry, grapes, black cherries, mulberries, paw paws, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, etc.

Along the rivers and streams walnuts, pecans and hickory nuts abound and the most afford nutritious food for swine during the fall and early winter months. Grand river and the Marais des Cygnes, tributaries of the Osage, passing through the county from northwest to southeast, together with the Deepwater, Mormon Fork, Mulberry, Panther, Walnut, Miami, Muddy and streams of lesser note, with their numerous branches, furnish an abundant water supply for live stock. Many lakes and springs of limpid water of more or less medicinal value are found throughout the county, while water from wells can be had for the digging or drilling anywhere. The streams and lakes abound in excellent fish, perch, bass, buffalo and catfish being among the varieties of the finny tribe, while the Government-State Fish Commission of Missouri has been liberal in stocking these lakes and streams with other kinds of food fish.

Besides the ever-growing timber supply along the streams, averaging in width from one-quarter of a mile to three miles, sandstone and limestone for building material exist in all sections of the county; in fact, there is not a township but shows evidence of their existence, cropping out along the bluffs and by excavating a few feet can be quarried to advantage, being in strata one on top of the other, varying in thickness from three to eighteen inches. The sandstone is of fine grain and texture and is said to be superior to the famous white rock of Carroll county, and more easily worked for building purposes. The front of the Rich Hill Bank building at Rich Hill, is faced with sandstone quarried on the town site, while the quarries in the southeastern portion of the county have been worked remuneratively for many years. During Sedalia's boom, in the hope of securing the state capital, scores of cars of sandstone were shipped over the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railroad to Sedalia for sidewalks, street crossings, curbing, and building purposes. Much of this sandstone north of Rockville is handsomely variegated, streaked with red, purple, and blue from the ochers and iron ore that permeates the soil or exists in the numerous boulders found in the vicinity. The front of the fine residence of Doctor Munford, editor of the "Kansas City Times," built in the eighties, was constructed with variegated sandstone from these quarries.

Shale, sand and blue clay and fire clay for brick making, are found in inexhaustible quantities in various localities. In some sections, especially in excavations made for surface coal around Rich Hill and in New Home township, a very high grade of kaolin for fine crockery and delft ware is found above and below the coal stratas. Fire clay brick pressed in standard moulds and burned in the retorts of the Rich Hill Gas Works took the blue ribbon at the last state fair in Kansas City in competition with the brick from the celebrated fire-clay brick works at St. Louis, being heavier in weight, the bricks being of like dimensions.

The wealth of coal existing in Osage, New Home, and Walnut townships is too well known to need any extended remarks concerning the same; millions of tons have been mined and shipped out over the Missouri Pacific, the Kansas City, Fort Scott & Gulf branch to Rich Hill, and later over the Kansas City & Southern and the Emporia branch from Butler. While shipments in not so large a measure are still going on, both from shaft and surface mines, the coal supply from these localities, at least for all local purposes, will be ample for many future generations, as new mines are constantly being developed and the older ones are still producing satisfactorily.

The coal measures, however, in Hudson, Pleasant Gap, and Prairie townships, in the southeastern part of the county, have not been equally developed for the want of adequate railroad facilities for transportation, but quite sufficient to show that a vein of superior quality of soft coal from three and one-half to five feet in thickness covers a large area of these three townships, and mines are in operation continuously for local purposes and some shipments over the "Katy" are made. That a branch line of road from the M. K. & T. or an extension of the "Frisco" to these coal fields is only a question of time, is probable; for this coal has good roofing and is susceptible to large mining for commercial purposes at a good profit.

Writing of the development of the coal veins in Osage township, years ago. Professor Broadhead, state geologist, had this to say: "More general prospecting in southern Bates, in and through the lower tier of townships, reveals the fact that the coal area of this section is vastly greater than has been supposed and beyond even our present conception." It is hardly questionable but that future development of the county on a scientific basis will reveal not only the wealth in coal as predicted by Professor Broadhead, but that there existed valuable deposits of asphaltum, rock oil, and natural gas in quantity to be of commercial value. Iron ore and paint boulders are known to exist near the border of Vernon county in the southeastern township. The sandstone rock is so permeated with a sort of gummy oil that it burns like coal for a time leaving fine white sandstone. When the Craig brothers were making brick in Rich Hill years ago, by the old-fashioned method, when the fires had gotten under full headway under the kilns and the pressed raw bricks had become sufficiently heated, a blue blaze permeated through the entire kilns and had all the appearance that the very brick was burning up, so saturated had been the clay, sand and shale with this oily substance and no further firing was necessary. Crude oil, or rock oil, as it is called, is known to rise out of the earth. It never is infused into the soil or sand rock from above. It must rise from an oil producing or oil holding sand far below the surface. This oil is found in considerable quantities at Mormon Fork in Boone township and other numerous places in the western tier of townships and in the southeastern portion of the county. Some day prospecting will be undertaken with sufficient capital and determination to use it in making a thorough test for oil and gas in this county and undoubtedly will meet with the same success as has been had in the section of country southwest in Kansas and Oklahoma. There never has been any deep borings in the county. In reaching the gas and oil sand strata in some of the fields in Kansas. Oklahoma and Texas, borings to the depth of three thousand feet and more are made and required to reach the best producing oil and gas stratas. There's no telling what a thorough investigation in those localities might reveal.

Bates county has a most successful poultry organization. This industry has had a most wonderful and successful growth within the last decade, not only generally among the farmers and town and village inhabitants, but has been made a specialty by those, who thoroughly understand the poultry business and the profits arising, therefrom. No very great outlay of capital is required to start in this business and no end to the demand at your very door, for the various products of the industry; whether it be turkeys, geese, ducks, fancy chickens or the old-fashioned barnyard fowls, great profits are assured. Fresh eggs are ever in demand and at prices quite sufficient to not require the government to intervene. If you are short on business, or long on inactivity, start a poultry farm. No landed estate is necessary. Any old acreage answers the purpose. Down in the Ozarks, turkeys roost in the trees and get most of their grub in the fields and forests. Make a pond for the ducks and geese and watch them swim with all the grace of a mermaid, and listen to the squawking of the geese and the quacking of the ducks and keep in mind they all lay the "golden egg." The present officers of the Bates Comity Poultry Association for 1918 are: Miss Elva Church, president; L. C. Culbertson, vice-president; George M. Hatrick, secretary. Directors: Mrs. Hardin, Mrs. J. H. Baker, Mrs. J. R. Baum, and Mrs. Maggie Poffenbarger.

by Lucien Green, Hudson, Missouri, from 1915 Year Book.

According to the forty-sixth annual report of the State Board of Agriculture of Missouri, corn raised in Bates county in 1913 was 1,144,469 bushels from 162,067 acres, an average of seven bushels an acre. Assuming that the acreage is the same this year and the average is a little less than twenty-five bushels an acre, the amount raised is about 4,000,000 bushels.

Indian corn was the gift of the Indians to American civilization. They taught the Pilgrim fathers how to raise it. how to pound it into meal and how to bake it into bread. Corn meal was the basis of Whittier's "Samp and Milk" and mush and milk and hasty pudding of people living west of the Alleghanies.

Corn meal is made into corn bread, corn pone, corndodgers, corn gems and a hundred other kinds of bread, "and all very good."

Corn meal mixed with rye flour and baked on the hearth in a spider or bake kettle into loaves weighing fifteen or thirty pounds are appetizing and gives the rail splitter more energy than any other bread.

Fried mush sweetened with maple molasses, accompanied by fresh pork sausage -- the result of corn and hog -- will keep the boy on the farm -- as long as the molasses and sausage lasts, and perhaps longer!

We are told that three-fifths of the world's production of corn is raised in the United States. Much corn is raised in the Argentine Republic and in the region near the Black sea. Corn is raised with more or less success in all countries that are free of frost for ninety days. Corn specialists have bred varieties of corn that do well in Minnesota and other Northern states.

The average yield of corn in our county is about twenty-eight bushels per acre. The record yield on one acre is 256 bushels in North Carolina. One hundred twenty ears of average Missouri corn is called a bushel. Sixty ears of good seed corn weighs about one bushel. An average ear of seed corn consists of about 900 grains. The cobs from seventy pounds of good St. Charles white corn weigh about nine pounds. Corn cobs boiled in water and sweetened with brown sugar give the molasses a maple flavor and it is sold in the fall by wholesale merchants as fresh maple syrup. The early settlers of the West frequently sold corn for eight to ten cents a bushel. The farmers of the treeless regions of the West usually shell their corn and save the cobs for fuel. Corn is of many colors and varieties: white, red. yellow, black, blue, calico, bloody butcher and a mixture of all.

A choice ear of sweet corn, well lubricated with butter and eaten from the cob -- hog fashion -- pleases the palate beyond the ability of words to explain. The science of corn breeding, selection of seed corn and making our soil richer and more resistant to drouth and insects is in its infancy, and no doubt will continue to be studied until the average yield in Missouri is forty or fifty or more bushels per acre.

The wrong use of corn has brought millions of our people to poverty and broken up many homes. The right use of corn has paid oft more mortgages, built more happy homes, more school houses, churches and palaces for the rich than all of our minerals. Fortunate is the young farmer who takes pride in raising good corn and in improving the soil.