thing more of the farm than can be gathered from the proceedings of the board or the auditor's report, I take the liberty to make a statement of my doings during the year 1882 as such committee. On account of the invoice of January 1, 1882, having been mislaid, I am not able to give any showing as to stock or grain on hand at that time, except that there were nineteen hogs only on the farm, ninety-six head having died of cholera. There have been during the year from seventeen to twenty-one inmates, making, with the family and help, twenty-five persons during the summer months. There were raised on this farm this year 108 bushels of wheat, 170 bushels of oats, sixty acres of corn—all fed except 900 bushels on hand—eleven calves and sixty shoats. There have been sold or butchered for use, seventeen head of fat cattle, and forty-six head of hogs. Butter has been sold to the amount of $72.00, and other property to the value of $22.00; aggregating, with the stock and grain on hand, and sold during the year, $3,331.81.
There has been paid for stock and improvements during the year, for one two-horse wagon, $65.00; one new double harness, $40.00; one large cook stove, $32.50; lumber and carpenter work for cell, cow shed and picket fence, $136.13; for 290 rods of open ditch twenty-eight inches deep, four feet at the top and two feet at the bottom at twenty-five cents per rod; 185 rods of tile ditching at seventy cents per rod; rebuilding chimneys torn down by the cyclone; breaking fourteen acres of prairie; the purchase of forty head of hogs, one bull, and thirty tons of coal at $2.62½ per ton; the whole aggregating $926.76; leaving a balance above the expenditure for improvements of $2,405.15.
We invite any of Story County's citizens to go and see the farm at any time, and observe the able manner in which it is conducted by J. S. Horst and wife. R. W. BALLARD.
(February 14, 1883.)
The patent poultry freezing apparatus, or general refrigerator, in the Boardman building is an interesting arrangement. It consists of a basement room fifteen by twenty feet with twelve feet ceiling. On two opposite sides of this room are ranged thirty galvanized iron pipes, fifteen on each side. These pipes are about ten inches in diameter, and reach from the floor below to trap doors in the floor above. When a freezing temperature is required the trap doors are lifted and the pipes filled with ice and salt. The water which is produced by the melting ice is conducted away by drainage pipes. The room is simply an ordinary freezer on a large scale. It is finely adapted to the preservation and storage of poultry and butter during the warm portions of the year.—(February 28, 1883.)
Maxwell Times: D. SHOPE shipped four car loads of stock, all raised by himself.—( Dec. 29, 1882.)
Frank Curtis, the first of the week, sold to a Mr. Campbell, of Tama City, forty-two head of steers at an average price of four