Burke County Farmers Praised in Magazine, 1945

On April 10, 1945, the Morganton Herald, reprinted the following information from F.H. Jeter’s Carolina Farm Notes in Southern Planter magazine.

There was plenty of meat and bread in North Carolina this past winter because the folks who till the land worked hard, under difficulties, to produce needed feed, food, fiber and tobacco. There’s a little county of Burke, lying alongside the western mountains in the foothill country, where the farmers say they had a labor shortage, not enough machinery, a destructive hailstorm, a severe drought during the growing season, and some other farming troubles; yet, by working longer hours and harder than ever before, they produced one of the best crops in the history of that county.

For instance, they harvested 287,500 bushels of corn from 12,500 acres; 6,000 tons of hay from 6,500 acres; 75,000 bushels of wheat from 6,000 acres; 1,000 bales of cotton from 1,400 acres; 160,000 bushels of sweet and Irish potatoes from 1,500 acres; $300,000 worth of vegetables and truck crops from 3,000 acres; filled one million jars of canned food from these same acres; brooded 200,000 chicks from which 60,000 good pullets were selected; sold 1,500,000 gallons of milk from 4,000 cows; cured 1,500,000 pounds of pork from 6,000 hogs; and received $700,000 in new money from timber, pulpwood and the line harvested from Burke farms.