Thrift

Thrift

Readers of the Era who some years ago enjoyed the Voice of the Intangible, that gripping southern Utah story, by Albert R. Lyman, will be interested to know that Mr. Lyman is now the editor of a new paper which has just been established at Bland- ing, Utah, the San Juan County Blade. San Juan county, by the by, according to Mr. Lyman, contains over four million acres of land, is about five times as large as the state of Rhode Island, and more than three times as large as Delaware, fourteen hun- dred square miles greater in area than Connecticut, and six-sev- enths the size of the state of New Jersey. He says further that the county has two million one hundred thousand acres of ar- able land upon which the best wheat in the world may be grown. The paper is full of bristling, live notes on the ad- vantages of San Juan county for those who desire to handle cattle or learn the art of farming. Besides much land, they have courageous people in that district. Here's a little story printed in a September issue of his paper concerning Mrs. Sadie Oliver, a plucky little widow who has two small children, and who is engaged in redeeming a dry-farm in that district, located three miles from neighbors and two miles from water! We quote from the Blade: "Yes, I get lonesome," she admitted, "but I always have plenty to keep me busy. There's the weeding, and the horses to look after, and we haul our water two miles." "If I can get this place fenced," she continued, "I have no doubt about making a living here. I hardly know whether I would try to cut posts, still I've tried almost everything, and I guess I could do that. "You see my brothers were with me when I took this place up, but they got discouraged. I was afraid at first that I couldn't handle it alone, but we don't know what we can do till we try. If we try we can do a lot." "If I plow this fall, I can raise a crop. I expect to do my fall plow- — ing Oh, I can do it," she affirmed, seeing or imagining a doubt, but the doubt was dispelled. Hers is the grit that can do anything. Her homestead of 160 acres, is six miles south of Blanding, and she expects to prove up next spring. She has twenty acres of broken land, off of most of which she has cleared the brush with an ax. It is growing corn, beans, squash, and a few melons. She has harrowed it and hoed the weeds out of it several times since May. She expects to exhibit samples of her crop this fall; and so far as the Blade is concerned, they deserve the prize right now; not that they are larger than any others, but the con- ditions under which they grew have never been duplicated in San Juan. Of her two children, aged six and eight years, the older one is a boy, and a manly little fellow. "I go all over this mesa hunting the horses," he said, "and I ain't afraid of coyotes or nuthin'." The girl, with a heavy coat of tan, sang as she flew back and forth in a swing in front of the tent, as happy in her wilderness home as the children among the orchards in town. The Blade claims no place among the prophets, vet it predicts that Mrs. Oliver will come out triumphant. And when men become discouraged with drouth, frosts, worms, bugs, and blight, she will be marching straight — onward without complaint towards success. E. H. A.