FARMING ON THE EDGE OF THE ARCTIC
This is the story of Chicken Billy and his ten-thousand-dollar potato
patch. It is about a young American who became the poultry king of the
Klondike, and then turned to farming with such success that he has had
a field of potatoes that brought in ten thousand dollars in one year.
Chicken Billy is a representative type of the farmers of the Far North.
I first met him yesterday afternoon when he called at my hotel here in
Dawson. A rough-looking man of less than medium height, his face is
bronzed by the hot summer sun of the Arctic and his hands are horny
from handling the plough. He had brought some of his crops of hot-house
vegetables into Dawson for sale, and he wore his working clothes--a
flannel shirt open at the neck, blue jeans somewhat the worse for wear,
and a pair of rough boots that reached to his knees.
Billy was born in Philadelphia and went to school there. He was still
under twenty when he passed the examinations for appointment to the
navy. He was so excited over his success that when he came into the
hands of the surgeons to be tested as to his physical fitness his heart
was throbbing at the rate of a hundred-odd beats to the minute, and the
result was that the doctors said he had heart disease and pronounced
him unfit for service.
Billy then worked at odd jobs, without great success, until one day he
read in a newspaper about the gold strike in the Klondike. The article
was headed “Gold at the Grass Roots,” and Billy tells me he decided
to dig into the grass and take out a fortune. He had only seventeen
dollars at the time, but with that he got to St. Paul and thence worked
his way up to Skagway. He walked in over the Dyea trail and fought for
his own with the miners of Dawson. He got some gold from his various
ventures, but made no big strikes, and finally gave up mining to raise
chickens. For this purpose he bought an island in the Yukon not far
from the mouth of the Klondike, and built a henhouse of logs with glass
windows facing the south.
For a while Billy prospered. His eggs sold for fifty cents each, and
his fat chickens brought in forty or fifty dollars a dozen. He built up
his flock until he had nine hundred chickens, and his fresh-laid eggs
became so well known that he acquired the nickname of Chicken Billy.
When he thought he was on the sure road to success, competition arose.
The other poultry raisers cut prices, and chickens dropped to a dollar
apiece. Billy began to lose money and so looked about for other kinds
of farming. He is now raising only fancy chickens, and is devoting his
energy to hogs and potatoes, with occasional crops of turnips and oats.
My visit to Billy’s farm was one of the most interesting trips I have
had in the Yukon. We started up the river from Dawson in a gasoline
boat about three feet wide and forty feet long. The boat had a big
paddle wheel at the end attached to the engine by a long iron shaft.
We had gone only two miles when this shaft broke and we had to row
ourselves to the nearest island. Leaving the beach, we made our way
through the potato rows from one farm to another. The first farm we
visited was owned by a Swede. He had eleven acres under cultivation,
half in potatoes, and half in oats. The oats are grown for hay, and
some of it stood in shocks as high as my head, while that not yet cut
reached halfway to my waist.
The owner told me that this oats hay often sells for sixty dollars a
ton. When I asked what he expected to get for his potato crop, he fixed
the price at ninety dollars a ton, saying that it might go as high as
one hundred dollars. He told me of one crop from three acres that had
yielded him thirty-seven hundred dollars. That was when the Guggenheim
syndicate began to dredge out the gold of the Klondike. They were
employing large numbers of men, and potatoes were scarce. Since then
he has raised nothing but potatoes and oats. The next farm we visited
produced potatoes and carrots. The woman in charge told me that the
carrots paid as well as the potatoes. She said that she and her husband
enjoyed their summer home on the Yukon. They live in Dawson in winter.
Leaving this farm, we found ourselves at the end of the island with
the next one about a half mile upstream. This was Billy’s island, and
a loud shout brought his helper after us in a canoe. Upon landing we
first took a look at the hot-house, where cucumbers and tomatoes are
raised for the markets of Dawson. This is one of the most interesting
features of farming in the Far North. There are more than twenty-five
big hothouses in Dawson itself, and they are all doing well, although
Billy says his farm makes more profit than any two of the others.
Billy’s hot-house is about thirty feet wide and fifty feet long. It
consists of a great pit walled with logs to the surface of the ground
and above that a framework entirely covered with glass. The house is
kept warm by wood fires, the ever-present gasoline tank having been
made into a stove for the purpose. The plants are set out in beds upon
low tables, which are connected with a network of wires. The vines of
the cucumbers and tomatoes are trained on the wires. They climb up the
walls and hang down from the roof. Many of the cucumbers are over ten
inches in length and the largest tomatoes are bigger than the head of a
baby.
Leaving the hot-house we took a look at the hogs. During the summer
they are kept in enclosures out in the open and in the winter they
live in the log henneries, which have been turned into pig pens.
The buildings are warmed with good stoves, and the fires are kept
up day and night. In the winter the pigs are fed upon potatoes and
grain. Their food is cooked and served hot morning and evening. Every
bit of manure is saved, Billy says, for the soil of the Yukon needs
fertilizing, and this by-product is worth almost four times as much as
in the United States.
I went with Billy from pen to pen to examine the stock. It is said that
a man may be known by the way animals act in his presence; that if
they like him he is to be trusted, if not, he is a man to be watched.
If this is true, Chicken Billy should sprout angel’s wings. His hogs
seemed to love him. He talked to them as though they were human, and
they lay down and rolled over like pet dogs. One of his biggest boars
did tricks. The babies of the hog pens were of all ages, from little
red piggies as big as a kitten to lusty black Berkshires the size of a
fox terrier.
Chicken Billy started in the hog business with fourteen
pigs--Duroc-Jerseys, Berkshires, and Yorkshires--most of which had
taken prizes at the agricultural fair at Vancouver. He bought them for
sixty dollars apiece, and shipped them into the Klondike for breeding
purposes.
Leaving the pigs, we went to the farmhouse, a log cabin of two rooms
besides a kitchen. The earth was banked up around the outside to keep
out the winter cold, and inside were great stoves. For dinner we had
eggs fresh from the hens, fried with ham that fairly melted in our
mouths. There were mealy potatoes as good as any that ever came out of
Ireland, although they had been harvested more than a year before. The
bread was made by Billy’s hired man, and there were more cucumbers than
we could possibly eat.
After dinner we took a skiff and rowed from the island over to Billy’s
potato farm on the mainland. This farm was on the banks of the Yukon,
and the crop was raised within a stone’s throw of the river in a
seventeen-acre field a half mile long. I have seen many farms, but none
better cultivated and more free from weeds than this potato patch. The
rows were perfectly straight and the vines reached to my knees. Billy
told me he hoped to get six or seven tons to the acre, or more than
three thousand bushels in all. At one hundred dollars a ton the gross
receipts would be something like ten thousand dollars.
In the centre of the patch is a log cabin with a great cellar where the
potatoes are stored until shipped to market. This is so well built and
so insulated with air spaces that the potatoes do not freeze, even in
the severest weather.
There is no doubt that potatoes can be raised in most parts of Alaska
and the Yukon. When Luther Burbank was in Dawson he said that these
regions may some day be among the chief potato lands of the world and
that by selective breeding a potato can be developed that will mature
here to perfection. Even now the country is raising nearly all that it
needs, and the potato imports are decreasing. This year the crop is
especially good, and the potatoes are equal in quality to any brought
in from outside.
Plants live upon sunshine, and as the Yukon Territory has about one
third more sunlight than the United States in the same period of
summer, Nature puts on its seven-league boots and makes things grow
during our nights. Growth begins in April, when the crocuses come up
through the snow. Gardens are planted by the middle of May, and by the
latter part of June there are vegetables to eat. The chief summer month
is July, although the frosts do not come until the middle of September.
After that follows Indian summer, when the hills are ablaze with gold.
The country about Dawson is virgin land covered with trees, which are
usually stunted except in the river bottoms. There are meadows in the
south and the southwest, and also great areas that can be used for
grazing. Doctor Dawson, the man who first surveyed the territory, says
that there are thirty-eight million acres that can be utilized either
for crops or for grazing. He compares the Yukon with some of the inland
provinces of Russia where oats, rye, barley, flax, and hemp are raised
successfully.
Most of the farming is in small patches. There are gardens about the
miners’ cabins where potatoes and turnips, green peas and beets, and
carrots and celery are raised. Last year one man grew forty tons of
turnips upon a single acre, and from another acre the same man raised
five hundred and sixty-one bushels of potatoes. Another farmer brought
in to Dawson a cauliflower measuring ten inches in diameter, a turnip
weighing fourteen pounds, and six heads of cabbage that tipped the
scales at one hundred and thirty pounds.
Already a number of homesteads have been taken up in the territory, and
there are little farms here and there on the banks of the Yukon and on
the islands with which it is dotted. The soil is a sandy loam made up
of silt brought down by the river. The land is so thickly covered with
bushes and trees that it costs one hundred dollars and upward an acre
to clear it. Farm wages are high, although the demand for labour is
limited, and the market for potatoes and other vegetables is confined
to the small population in the mines and in Dawson. If the farms are
increased by many new homesteaders there may be a glut in the market
and the prices will fall.