HOSKINSON, Riley M

• Individual
• Ancestors
• Descendants
• Relationship
• Timeline
• Family
• Book

Opportunity in small farms 1896

The information in this article from The Aberdeen Herald was apparently first published in the Seattle Times. I cannot find of copy of the Times article. Excerpts of the Times article were also published outside Washington Territory in at least two newspapers, the Cottonwood Report from Cottonwood, Idaho and the Big Timber Pioneer from Big Timber, Montana. The article summarizes Riley's almost two decade experience farming on Bainbridge Island and is most interesting for stating clearly that of the 160 acres of land he was granted in 1882 under the 1862 Homestead Act, he only ever farmed about five acres. While he cleared more land than this, his offers to sell through the years were an attempt to sell acreage he never intended to farm himself. "It has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that any man with sufficient pluck and energy to tackle the logs and brush of these uplands can make a good living on five, or at most ten, acres....The upland soil looks exceedingly thin, but will, with a little help in the form of manure, produce splendid crops of vegetables, and for fruit growing these lands are rarely excelled anywhere. Apples, pears, plums, prunes and cherries, together with strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, currants and blackberries, all thrive and bear abundantly. And the better the land is cultivated and cared for, the more and better it will produce. The writer of this cultivates some five acres, and sells therefrom each year some $650 worth of various products, such as fruit, vegetables, chickens, eggs, butter, &c. And what one man has done another can do, with like brains and perseverance....There is a large amount of such land around Aberdeen that can be bought for from $10 to $20 per acre, enough which when so cultivated will support a population of tens of thousands. The small farms is made an absolute necessity by reason of the difficulty with which the land in cleared, but nature seems to have made ample compensation for this in a soil exceedingly fertile and a climate of such mildness that growth is continuous and outdoor work can be carried on the year around."