Palmer,
£ ■ s>
Alaska
Dorothy’.M. Bell,\E
Edit
tor
Published every Friday nt Palmer, Alaska, for ftie Matanuskiji ■V'clley
Farmers* Cooperating Association for the purpose ef-giving-news of the
Associations work, problems, and accomplishments,
_1 ----<*- -*V—,~t
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Single copy lotf
SPRING! J .
' . '• ■ '
In these eight short lines Browning conveys the idea
and the feeling that accompanies a beautiful. '•
spring morning.
The year's at the spring
And day’s at the morn,
Morning's at seven,
The hill-side's dew-pearled,
The lark's on the wing,
The snail's on the thorn,
God's in His heaven—
All's right with the world.
Robert Drowning
Yes — it is time to drag out the
garden tools and fanning equipment
to get it In shrpe lor the
spring, work. It doesn't look
too much like planting with
the snow on the ground, but if
the sun keeps up his good /*
work, the snow won't last / >
long. ( (
With carloads of fertili-\v
zer and seed arriving, farme'r^
ore getting things in shape l
for the spring work os soon W:
os the weether will permit.
Plowing has been done here as
early os April 12,and much of
the groin and hoy is planted by
the first of May. It won't be
long until the tractors will be running night and day to get this work
d one.
When the first group of 1935 settlers came through the State of Utah,
on their way to Alaska, one of the newspapers wrote an article critici
zing the government for this attempt at transplanting farmers to the
on Id north. The statement was made that Alaska was noted for its
beautiful scenery but---who could eat scenery?
Ten years later—it seems to be a much different story. Now writers
enlarge upon the numbers of steaks we eat at one meal. Our fair Valley
is referred to as the "Bread Basket of the North", although Fairbanks
area ort he Tanana Valley rightly deserves that distinction for it is
the wheat producing region. We arc acclaimed to be the best fed people
in the world, because we are not limited in meat,eggs,milk, or butter.
Much of this we produce ourselves and could produce all of it. It has
been several years now that we have not had sufficient milk and cream
to make butter and cottage cheese or that famous butter milk that we
hoc? at one tine. The icecream freezers were put in operation here in
order to take cere of our surplus milk, but it has been a long time
since anyone thought or worried about how to handle our surplus nilB.
And from the present outlook it will be a long time before we will have
that problem.
Who would dare say that we haven’t made progress? It was only a few
years ago too that many thought the Matanuska Valley project ha^ com
pletely folded up. Now the crltieism is aimed at the cost of the pro
ject in comparison with its present value and progress. But--wo have
scored at least one point that progress has been made -and we do not live
on the scenery.