Sunday, January 11, 2009

Barley and Mustard

Fulton Journal: December 1, 1903
FULTON ELEVATOR BUSINESS
Over Half Million Bushels of Barley Cleaned Annually--2,000 Bushels of Mustard Seed Marketed

On the river bank just north of the foot of Cherry street and adjoining J.C. Snyder's warehouse is the Fulton elevator, which is owned by E.A. Brown of Luverne, Minn., and operated by him under the supervision of George W. Damon, as manager.
There are not many people in Fulton, who know about the enormous quantity of barley that is handled in this elevator during the year.
In the past season there were over one-half million bushels of this grain shipped from northern Iowa and southern Minnesota, to this elevator where it was cleaned by being run through a screener and mills twice and again reloaded onto the cars and shipped to eastern markets.
In the process of cleaning last year over 2,000 bushels of mustard seed were taken from the grain. This seed finds ready market in Chicago at seventy cents per bushel. During the year the only large quantitites of mustard seed that was received on the Chicago market came from Fulton.
The month just closed. Monday has been a very busy month at this establishment, over 150 cars of barley having been cleaned, reloaded onto the cars and shipped to the east. Each car will average over 1,000 bushels of grain. This makes a total of nearly 160,000 bushels of grain handled twice.