Big Onion Crop in South Noble County (1905)

Columbia City Commercial Mail ~ Friday, August 25, 1905

Rufus Barcus who resides near Big lake in Noble county was in this city Tuesday and made this paper a pleasant call. Mr. Barcus is an onion farmer and has a field of four and one-half acres of this valuable plant growing this year. He reports the crop in fine condition and says experienced onion raisers have told him that he will have a yield of at least eight hundred bushels per acre. Mr. Barcus reports the onion crop looking well in south Noble county.

Among the extensive onion raisers in that section are: Green Cole, Chas. Herron, Bruff Cole, Otho Quinn, John Fruchey, John Quinn and John Berry. These men have all the way from four to twenty acres of onions each. Green Cole having a twenty acre field. Blight is reported in only a few instances and for the most part it cannot be said that there is any blight at all this year. A few patches of onions are drying up but in many of these cases the cause is not from blight but is the result of using too much fertilizer or a poor quality of fertilizer or a poor quality of fertilizer. Take it all in all, the onion crops of southern Noble county this year will be a good one and the yield more than an average crop. True, some patches drowned out but this will affect the aggregate yield but little.