6o LoN L. Swift tion rents from $8.cx) to $10.00 an acre when it is near town ; when eight or ten miles from market, for $5.00 to the acre; and truck land near town brings $20.00 an acre. An answer from Marion county gives the rental of nursery land at $10.00 an acre. Range land is rented for ten cents an acre. More leases are made for one year than for any other period of time. This fact is probably due to the newness of the State, because the landowners do not wish to make long-time con- tracts with people they do not know. In the Willamette Val- ley and coast counties, which have been settled longer than Eastern Oregon, more long-term leasing is done. Where summer-fallowing is carried on almost exclusively as in the Columbia River district, farms rent mostly for two years, be- cause each farm is divided into two sections and it takes two years for each part tO' raise a crop. What is summer-fallowed one year raises grain the next. But in counties that are newer than the average, like Wallowa and Grant, grain land is seldom rented for more than a year at a time. Many farmers throughout the State who rent for one year give the lessee the option of leasing the next if he does good and satisfactory work. Stock ranches are generally rented for three or five years, because it takes time for stock to mature. Landowners are almost unanimous in desiring that the system of renting should be long. They say this secures the best results because it gives the tenant a better chance to take an interest in the farm by reaping the benefit of his labors and improvements ; and in a long period of time, the renter has a much better opportunity of making money enough to buy a farm, which is, of course, the desired goal of this class of farmers. A long-term lease does not make any difference in the share each party receives except when new land is to be broken and brought under cultivation, in which case, the lessee generally gets the whole crop for the first year. Both the lessor and the lessee receive the benefits derived by long-term leasing and the ratio of division does not change. Scarcely anywhere in
Oregon is it customary to give a written notice three or six----
