and Concord…

chunk 101 · paragraph 133

s. He has over 1000 goats, mostly Angora, and 1500 sheep, grazing on the hills. He also has in the valley 600 bearing fruit trees, mostly apple, which yield fine fruit. He has 2500 grape vines, 600 of which will bear this year. The varieties are principally Isabella ( 9 ) and Concord. The Mission does not bear, being so early that the frost catches it, but it would probably produce on the hillsides. The orchard and vineyard are irrigated from the lake. Crops of beans and potatoes are grown in the orchard. The owner also has a great supply of beautiful flowers and shrubbery. In early days he made a business of selling garden stuff in Silver City, and sometimes gathered in $150 for a two horse load which he sold without driving farther than the Exchange corner. That was ten or twelve years ago, when there was no railroad and no competition. He was the first to import good Irish potatoes at $4 a pound, into Grant county, and sold the crop at fifty cents a pound. The army officers used to send an ambulance to get supplies and would trade him groceries at cost. The old gentleman says that if he had not given seed potatoes from his first crop to the public and had planted fifty acres the second year he could have sold the yield for $20,000.