Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/352

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346
OREGON AND WASHINGTON.

which was, according to that report, one bushel higher than the yield of any other State. Minnesota came next, with a yield of nineteen bushels. The fact is, that good tillage in the Wallamet Valley will obtain an average yield of thirty bushels to the acre, one year with another. The records of our agricultural societies show that premiums have often been given on wheat fields yielding forty, fifty, and even sixty, bushels per acre; and that from sixty-three to sixty-seven pounds per bushel is not uncommon. In Marion County the average in an entire neighborhood, one year, embracing a dozen or fifteen farms, was ascertained to be as high as thirty-four and a fourth bushels per acre. The wheat of the Wallamet Valley is of a superior quality. It contains more gluten than wheat raised anywhere on the Pacific Coast; and on that account, the flour made from it commands in San Francisco, where its quality has become known, a higher price than any other, among bakers and large hotel-keepers, for it is more profitable; it makes a greater weight of bread to a given quantity of flour.

"Oats is the principal crop raised for feed in the Wallamet Valley. It is always a sure crop, yielding from fifty to one hundred bushels per acre. It weighs usually from thirty-six to forty-three pounds per bushel, and commands from ten to fifteen cents per hundred pounds more in the San Francisco market than California oats. Corn and barley are cultivated in the Wallamet Valley to some extent, and good crops of both have been raised, yet they are not well adapted to the climate. In some particularly warm localities corn is raised every year for fattening hogs. The bulk of the pork, however, is fattened on wheat. It is a cheaper feed, and, with experience in curing, has been found to make equally good meat. Rye and buckwheat are good crops; the former yielding from twenty to thirty bushels per acre, and the latter from forty to fifty bushels. These crops do best on the hilly lands of the valley. They are always sure. The rye and buckwheat flour of the Wallamet Valley is superior to that of any other part of the Pacific Coast.

"Timothy, clover, blue-grass, and several other varieties of grass, are cultivated throughout the valley for hay and feed. Timothy is the principal dependence for a hay crop. On the rich bottoms and swales it yields from two to four tons per acre, and is always a sure crop. The native grasses of the valley furnish excellent pasturage, summer and winter, for stock of all kinds.