fairs a farmer exhibited 109 varieties of fruits, vegetables, and
cereals. These included the best qualities of Yellow Nansemond sweet
potatoes, mammoth melons of all varieties, eggplant, sorghum and syrup
cane, broom-corn, tobacco, grapes, cotton, peanuts, and many other
things, some of which do not attain to so high a degree of excellence
elsewhere farther north than the Carolinas. Peaches, apples, and prunes
of superior quality delighted the eye. Peaches had been marketed
continuously, from, the same orchards, from the 15th of July to the
15th of October. There were hanging in the pavilion diplomas awarded at
the New Orleans Exposition to citizens in this valley for exhibits of
the best qualities and greatest varieties of corn, wheat, oats, barley,
and hops.

The advantage to the farmer of rainless harvesting months is obvious. The
wheat is all harvested by headers, leaving the straw on the ground for its
enrichment. Thus binding, hauling, and sacking are largely dispensed with.
The grain, when threshed, is piled on the ground in jute sacks, saving the
expense of granaries and hauling to and from them. These jute sacks cost
for each bushel of grain about 3 cents, which is far less than farmers
elsewhere are subjected to in hauling their grain to and from granaries
and through a system of elevators until it reaches shipboard.

Here, as well as in Western Washington, most vegetables grow to an
enormous size, and are of superior quality when compared with the same
varieties grown in the East. Those kinds that require much heat, as
melons, tobacco, peppers, egg-plants, etc., grow to great perfection. The
root crops--beets, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, turnips, etc.--yield
prodigiously on the fertile bottom-land soils, without much care besides
ordinary cultivation. The table beet soon gets too large for the
dinner-pot. It is nothing unusual for a garden beet to weigh ten pounds,