Pickle Factory Paid Farmers over $10,000 (1905)

Columbia City Commercial Mail ~ Friday, September 29, 1905

The Reid Murdoch & Co., pickle factory in this city was closed down Thursday, the last pickles being taken in Wednesday afternoon and the season is now over. Eighteen thousand bushels of pickles were taken in this season, more than all three previous years and about $10,000 was paid out by the company to pickle raisers in this county and a large amount of money was also paid to employees. The Columbia City plant was third in yield of all the pickle factories owned by Reid Murdoch & Co. The total yield of all the plants was 125,000 bushels.

The season was an excellent one for pickles and the farmers are all satisfied and the majority are ready to take out contracts for next year. The raisers were paid every two weeks at the First National bank. Saturday, Sept. 223rd, is the next pay day and Saturday, Oct. 7th, is the last.

The factory put up 362 casks of dill pickles this year and used 160,000 lbs. of salt. S. E. Gable of near Collins was one of the most successful of the pickle raisers this year, one acre of pickles bringing him in over $175.

Ben Raich, of Pierceton, who has charge of the entire canning and pickle industry for the firm was in the city Thursday and helped to settle up the affairs of the company shutting down the factory. E. H. Pierce, superintendent of the local plant, and wife left Thursday evening for their home at Elgin, Illinois.

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.