Aroostook Federation of Farmers Fertilizer Plant Traditional Geocache
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Aroostook Federation of Farmers Fertilizer Plant
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Ammo can cache located across the road from the main office building, whick is still standing, of the Aroostook Federation of Farmers Fertilizer Plant. You will need to bring a pencil to sign the log as I forgot to put one in the cache.
The Aroostook Federation of Farmers Co-Op, once billed as the organization which had done the most for the county's farmers closed after 54 years in operation in 1973. In it's 54 years, the federation had returned more to its farmer members then what they invested. The federation grew from 500 members in 1919 to more than 2,000 and paid out more than $2.5 million in stock dividends to give members an average of 4 percent a year return on their investment. The federation was formed to help coordinate the 22 cooperatives which had been formed to sell potatoes. Stockholders hoed out a wide path for their new organization at the first meeting February 11, 1919. The purpose was to encourage all business agricultural associations in Maine to pool the buying and selling interestsof these associations. It was also to encourage better and more economical methods of production, to secure better results in grading, packing and marketing, advertising products of its members, to buy supplies in a cooperative way, to buy, build, own, sell and control such buildings and other Real or Personal property as may be needed in the conduct of its operations. To manufacture, buy and sell fertilizer and other merchandise, to operate grist mills, and buy and sell the products thereof, all farm products, farm machinery and livestock at wholesale and retail. To operate Starch Factories and buy and sell their products.
The federation got involved in fertilizer when they purchased 2 loads of potash from P. J. Sullivan, a chemist and saleman with the Lister Fertilizer Company, who could not sell the potash in southern New Englad. At the time, many local farmers had taken to mixing their own fertilizers on barn floors in order to get higher nitrogen contents, and lower cost. With the federation's entry into the business, there were some remarkable results: within a year or so the price of fertilizerdropped $10 a ton, down from a peak price of almost $100 a ton. The federation built a fertilizer plant that had a capacity of 20,000 tons and the distinction of being the only cooperative fertilizer factory in the country owned solely by farmers. In 1937, half of the plant burned to the ground. Within 3 months, the plants was back in operation. The federation prospered with profits of $30,000 to $60,000 a year until 1945 when the entire fertilizer plant was destroyed in another fire. The following year saw the federation expand with a fertilizer mixing plant in Fort Kent.
Please replace and hide cache back where you found it so other may enjoy finding it.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
n ebpx naq n uneq cynpr