Read it Again: Week of April 25, 2002

80 years ago this week. Farmers in Washington and Paris townships of Stark County organized the Farmers’ Electric Line Construction company to build an electric line and for furnishing electric light and power along the line. Current will be supplied by Stark Electric Company and the new line will serve Paris and Freeburg. Homer Krabill is president; Norman Lutz, secretary; and George Stoffer, treasurer; Lloyd Blanchard, James Shearer and Leroy Stuckey are directors.

Miss Margaret Detwiler of Seville, Ohio, has been hired as home demonstration agent for Mahoning County. She is a graduate of Goshen College and did post graduate work at the University of Chicago.

50 years ago this week. Dale Williams, chairman of the Ohio Agricultural Mobilization Committee, said present indications are that Ohio farmers’ intentions to plant corn this year do not come up to the state goal. The 1952 goal is 6 percent above the 1951 plantings. The large numbers of livestock now on farms and the fact that people eat more, as well as there being more people to feed, require production of feed grains, particularly corn, be increased as much as possible. Farmers should put some acreage planned for oats into corn; fill the silo with a forage crop and harvest corn intended for the silo; bring as much idle land into corn production as possible; plant abandoned wheat acreage to corn; and use as much fertilizer as is available.

25 years ago this week. Congress has passed a law authorizing $100 million in drought assistance, including government subsidies for a water-swap program among farmers. The program will allow farmers short on water to make government-guaranteed purchases from other farmers for the current growing season. The sale would be handled though a water bank.

From April through November, farmers will be able to get updated agricultural weather reports twice daily from radio stations in their area. The forecasts will be available to newspaper through one of the press wire services and through the National Weather Service radio. An agricultural weather advisor is also being carried by nearly 50 Ohio radio stations twice daily. These advisories carry an interpretation of weather effects on current crop situations, field operations and livestock conditions, weather-disease effects and weather-insect relationships.