boosts.html

The Klickitat County Agriculturist, Goldendale, WA., March 27, 1909, page 8
Includes photograph

LYLE - "BOOSTS!"

We send in an article on fruit raising in the Lyle country. We can raise apples, peaches, plums, prunes, pears, grapes, and apricots to perfection, without water, and all kinds of small fruits, but they should have water, to insure a paying crop. We think that nuts will do all right here also, as a J.R. Whitcomb has a walnut that bears every year.
To prove what I say I will give what H.J. Clark done last year from 60 trees. He sold $415 in apples, besides making 50 gallons of cider, and having all be apples that three families could use, and the seeds were fed to the hogs. These trees are about 25 years old, and were thought to be no good. Mr. Clark has brought these trees to this state of bearing in the last four years by cultivation and not by irrigation as he cannot irrigate any part of his orchard. He has set out about 2000 more apple trees and they are just coming in bearing. This shows what can be done in Lyle country in apples, by any one that will get in and work; and this has to be done anywhere. In a year or two Mr. Clark will have all of the fruit he can handle from his new apple orchard.
What we need is for a few fruit men to come in and buy some land and show us how to handle fruit. We want men that can handle, and have the means to handle the fruit. If they did they would be independent in a few years, as we can come up with any place in the apple line. And in a year or two we will show to the world what can be done in all kinds of fruit in the Lyle country.
T.R. Coon sold $445 from one acre of strawberries. That shows what can be done in the Lyle country, with strawberries and water. Loury Armstrong down well with his three acres of strawberries, but he was new in the work and gave them too much work in the spring. He will do better this year. They also expect to do better this year. R. Hood have peaches 8 1-2 around on trees the second year from setting. This cannot be beaten anywhere that we know of. We can raise apples, peaches, plums, prunes, grapes, cherries, strawberries, loganberries, and dew berries, here to perfection and equal to any grown in any other place, and we believe that with the right kind of cultivation we can raise anything that can be raised anywhere in this county. And we raised our apples, peaches, plums, prunes, grapes and pears without water, which is not done in very many other places.
If we can get some practical fruit man to buy in the Lyle country, we will show the world what can be done here in the fruit business, as well as any other places have done. I will say we can raise just as good and as fine apples, as any place in the United States. That is the kind that are raised in the northern states. If anyone thinks this is only talk call on the parties named in the article and see what they say about the prospects of fruit here. Now this was done in the year of 1908 and the parties expect to go ahead of this in the year 1909. You might say that Thomas M. Whitcomb, father of the writer, was the pioneer of the fruit business in the Lyle country. He set out the first orchard of any size in 1880, on what is known as the Pine Hill, and the people said, "what is that fool going to do here! Is he going to graft apples on pine trees! Them fruit trees will never grow there, not alone raise fruit. This land is only good for stock." And yet the Pine Hill has some fruit, and we know that if a fruitman had it, you would see some fine fruit on the old Pine Hill ranch. All we need is someone that knows the fruit business and raising of today, and has the pluck to go ahead, and is not afraid to work and cultivate the land as it should be. As we all know that fruit raising is not play as there is a great amount of hard work about it; we also know that yet has to be done.
A.M. Lock shipped about $200 worth of apples last fall, besides 50 gallons of cider, and give away two or three hundred boxes to others to eat and make into cider. So we know that we can raise fruit with any other place in Washington or Oregon. So come one, come all, and see the Lyle country before you buy anywhere else.
This is written by one of the old pioneers of Lyle, Washington.

Thomas J. Whitcomb.