Canaseraga, N. Y.
=Something from Central California.=
Being a Californian, and having not as yet crossed the State line, it
is with great pleasure that I read the reports from other States or
localities throughout the United States. I was pleased to see in the
BEE JOURNAL a report from Kern county—a county joining Tulare county
on the south—of my neighbor realizing nearly 300 pounds per colony.
Now I have reasons to believe that bees will produce a great deal of
honey per colony in Kern county, as I own a small ranch containing 685
acres down there, and am quite familiar with the country. We have the
largest alfalfa fields in the world in Kern county, Calif. We have a
man in Kern county who owns in one body almost 1,000,000 acres of land.
I have seen the time that all the counties in the San Joaquin valley,
consisting of Kern, Tulare, Kings, Fresno, Modara, Merced, and
Modesto—all were joined in large tracts, and had their herds after
herds of bellowing cattle roaming over its one level plain, as the San
Joaquin valley is level, not one elevation 50 feet high in a valley
that is 75×200 miles in size.
Our Senator, Tom Fowler, who owned cattle all along the coast from San
Francisco to Los Angeles, used to say: "I own the cattle that roam on
a thousand hills." I am the same old 76. Tom and all of his bellowing
herds are no more. The "76 ranch," which is located in Tulare county,
was Tom's head-quarters. It has been cut up into small farms, all the
way from 20 up to 2,000 acres, and there are thousands of happy and
beautiful homes, school houses, churches and towns, instead of the
mustang and its master.
Our part of the State is not generally known, as this is central
California, and the cities north and south try to claim us as theirs.