ALASKAN FRONTIER FARMING. 80 bushels of oats and 67 bushels of wheat. Not so bad for a country once known as Seward's Folly, or Seward's Ice-box! But the Alaskan farmer has other resources in the agricultural line that Nature has prepared in advance for him. I refer to the wild berries; the tons and tons of blueberries and cranberries that waste each year, as well as the raspberries of the burnt-over hillsides and the red currants of the thickets. In August his children may be seen gathering these berries for the market or for home consumption, 319 celery stalks four feet in height, whose name is crispness itself (the uninterrupted growth does it, they explain), cabbages of unequaled quality and weighing up to 30 pounds (again the continuous daylight), turnips weighing 18 and 19 pounds, with other vegetables in like proportions, besides ruddy clusters of tomatoes, cantaloupes and such hot-house products. Sugar beets five and six inches in diameter, and grown in 60 days' time, together with such unusual growths as tobacco plants high as man, may be noted at this wonderful little fair, for Teams drawing thirty cords of wood to Fairbanks on sleds. The largest load is seven and one-half cords. the commonest plan being to place them in kegs, cover them with sugar and set them away in some cool place until needed. Once a year the Tanana Valley Valley farmers and the gardeners of Fairbanks hold a fair at which there is the keenest rivalry as to who can show the largest and best display of grains and vegetables. And truly this fair is a revelation to the man fresh from the States, the Chechaco, as he is known in the North. Here one sees ripened grains of numerous hardy varieties, potatoes of a couple of pounds weight, the Alaskan farmer is nothing if not curious, and has the faculty of wanting to try everything he has ever grown back in the States, just to see if he can make it mature. Yes, it is a revelation in agricultural possibilities this Northern fair, and the man from south of the 49th parallel leaves the hall bursting with prophetic utterances as to the Alaskan farmer and the great State he will build some day when his occupation shall have risen to the same prominence as that of his brothers of the mines. |