Page:The Cowlitz Farm Journal, 1847-51.djvu/12

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Wednesday 22nd. Beautiful weather. Stopped the thrashing to clean wheat for seed. Sowed 16 Bus wheat which finishes field No 5—125½ Bus in all—ploughmen doing good work, days long, land in good order for the plough. Barometer has been falling gradually.

Thursday 23rd. A M threatening; P M heavy rain. 5 harrow teams & the 8 ploughs agoing. Began also to sow before the ploughs so as to get the grain quickly in that it may have the benefit of these early growing rains. The wheat first sown in field No 5 is already up. Sowed 43 Bushels of Wheat at 1¼ Bus pr acre.

The boys working at the well struck the sand to day at the depth of 45 feet. We now make sure of water at 50 feet.

Friday 24th. Heavy rain last night-day occasional showers with gleams of sunshine—fine growing weather. As it is so highly necessary to have the seed wheat perfectly clean, the thrashing mill people have been employed in passing it thro and thro' the fannery. Sowed 45 Bus Wheat—22 Bus were ploughed in & I believe it to be the better plan when the sowings are made early in the season and the land dry. Great injury is often done, when the seed is merely harrowed in by heavy rains in the falling; washing away the earth from the slightly covered grain. The Well is now 50 feet deep & no water yet. Sent a parcel containing hames &c to Nisqually for McPhails'[1] brother in law.

    in charge of the Company warehouses, built to store the Cowlitz Farm wheat crop, according to the WPA Historical Records Survey, Inventory of County Archives of Washington, No. 8, Cowlitz County (mimeo., Seattle, 1942), 10. Edward Huggins discusses Joseph Teabo and Louis Thibeault in letters to Eva Emery Dye, January 24 and February 8, 1904. There was a Thibeault working at Nisqually in 1849 (WHQ, X:206ff). George T. Allan, another ex-Hudson's Bay Company employee living at Cathlamet, mentions in his recollections in the April 12, 1888, Portland Pacific Express, a Jean Thibault, a French-Canadian ex-trapper also living at Cathlamet.

  1. ↑ John McPhail was shepherd at Fort Vancouver. See E. E. Rich, ed., John McLoughlin's Fort Vancouver Letters, Third Series, 1844-46, HBRS VII (London, 1944), 318; OHQ, XVII (March, 1916), 52-54; Nisqually Journal, WHQ, XI, XII, XIII and XIV. McPhail married Marie Therese Cascades in 1846; she died in 1848. See Catholic Missions index, OHS, St. James mission.

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