1848 (including the time of the Whitman massacre and the main campaign of the Cayuse War), followed by occasional entries for September 1848, January and March, 1849, January and February, 1851.[1] The comparatively advanced farming techniques and machinery used at the Cowlitz Farm were undoubtedly imported from England.[2] Crops in the numbered fields were rotated, and the manure provided by the flocks and herds was used systematically. There was also an extensive system of drainage ditches.[3] The farm journal contains observations on the relative advantages of fall and spring sown wheat and oats, of heavy and light sowing, etc. The sheep were dipped for scab, and Roberts tried to get them off the ground and into shelter during the winter.
During the 1840s, the Cowlitz Farm was the primary site of PSA Company production. Here crops were grown to meet Hudson's Bay Company requirements for its North-west posts and to fulfill its contract to supply foodstuffs to the Russian-American Company at Sitka. At the time Roberts took charge, production was probably at its peak;
- ↑ The Nisqually Farm journal published in the Washington Historical Quarterly provides a useful comparison, and includes March 1849 to December 1852 under P.S.A. Company administration. Victor J. Farrar is editor of "The Nisqually Journal," March 10, 1849–December 31, 1852, in X (1919), 205–30; XI:59–65, 136–49, 218–29, 294–302; XII:68–70, 137–48, 219–20, 300–303; XIII:57–66, 131–41, 225–32, 293–99; XIV:145–48, 223–24, 299–306; XV:63–66, 126–43, 215–26, 289–98. While they supplement each other in time, the emphases in the Cowlitz and Nisqually journals vary and different events predominate. William F. Tolmie, who had charge of the Nisqually Farm for many years, testified that the P.S.A. Company's business at Cowlitz was the "production of wheat, oats, butter, pork, horned cattle, sheep, horses, and other farm produce. At Nisqually, the breeding of horned cattle, sheep and horses; the exportation of the same, and of wool, hides, tallow and salt beef." V. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev., 105. See also footnote 18.
- ↑ The journal mentions various kinds of plows and harrows, probably from what A. C. Anderson described as the farm's "large depot … of costly implements" kept at Vancouver. "There was a costly threshing mill of English manufacture, and other implements." See his "Memo relating to the Cowlitz Farm, &c, 1841."
- ↑ Roberts estimated the value of the "ditching" at $8,000. V. 2, P.S.A. Co. Ev., 71.
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