. Ox-team days on the Oregon Trail /by Ezra Meeker ; revised and edited by Howard R. Driggs. pounds. This was soldfor eighty-five cents a pound, or a little more than a hun-dred and fifty dollars for the bale. This sum was more money than had been received byany of the settlers in the Puyallup valley, except perhapstwo, from the products of their farms for that year. Myfathers near neighbors obtained a barrel of hop roots fromCalifornia the next year, and planted them the followingspring — four acres. I obtained what roots I could get thatyear, but not enough to plant an acre. The following ye
. Ox-team days on the Oregon Trail /by Ezra Meeker ; revised and edited by Howard R. Driggs. pounds. This was soldfor eighty-five cents a pound, or a little more than a hun-dred and fifty dollars for the bale. This sum was more money than had been received byany of the settlers in the Puyallup valley, except perhapstwo, from the products of their farms for that year. Myfathers near neighbors obtained a barrel of hop roots fromCalifornia the next year, and planted them the followingspring — four acres. I obtained what roots I could get thatyear, but not enough to plant an acre. The following year(1867) I planted four acres, and for twenty-six successiveyears thereafter we added to the area planted, until ourholdings reached past the five-hundred-acre mark and ourproduction was more than four hundred tons a year. None of us knew anything about the hop business, andit was entirely by accident that we engaged in it. But see-ing that there were possibilities of great gain, I took painsto study hop culture, and found that by allowing our hops 156 Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail. The site of the cabin home in Puyallup is now PioneerPark, Ezra Meekers gift to the city that he founded. In itstill stands the ivy vine that for fifty years grew over thecabin. to mature thoroughly, curing them at a low temperature,and baling them while hot, we could produce hops thatwould compete with any product in the world. Others ofmy neighbors planted them, and so did many people inOregon, until soon there came to be a field for purchasingand shipping hops. But the fluctuations in price were sogreat that in a few years many growers became discour-aged and lost their holdings. Finally, during the failure of the worlds hop crop in theyear 1882, there came to be unheard-of prices for hops, andfully one third of the crop of the Puyallup valley was soldfor a dollar a pound. I had that year nearly one hundredthousand pounds, which brought an average of seventycents a pound. My first hop house
Size: 2003px × 1247px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectoverlan, bookyear1922
