Word: mintings
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...Newly mined U.S silver does not enter the free market. The U.S. Mint buys it at a subsidy price of 90.5? an ounce...
...last week the Chicago Tribune's Bertie McCormick flew to the alien East for a brief look at his new outpost, the Washington Times-Herald (circ. 278,000), and a visit with some old friends. Over mint juleps and charcoal-broiled beefsteaks at a party given by Nevada's Senator George Malone, Colonel McCormick casually dropped a nugget of news...
Onions & Potatoes. Wisconsin-born Bill Gehring became a scientific farmer through spare-time study. He moved to Indiana in 1929 after marrying a Hoosier, got into mint farming by way of potatoes. Jasper County had been a heavy onion grower. When that market slumped, Gehring bought 350 brush-covered acres at $60 an acre (now worth upwards of $375), turned the fields to potatoes, and gradually added to his holdings. "Potatoes," explains Gehring, "meant rotation. To get steady potato crops, I reached for more land. For a good rotation crop, I chose mint. Mint and potatoes meant irrigation and controlling...
Since Gehring never grows mint on one field more than two years in a row, he is still a big potato grower-in fact, Indiana's biggest. His potato crop this year will gross an estimated $700,000. All told, his 5,800-acre farm, run like a factory, is a big business, with an annual payroll of $250,000, 350 workers, two $35,000 mint distilleries, 54 tractors and 150 buses, trucks, jeeps and other engines that weekly burn, in peak season, over 9,000 gallons of gasoline...
Stalks & Stills. At harvest time, Gehring's tractors slash their sickle bars through the 30-inch mint stalks with machine-gun speed. At the "still," the workers tramp the leaves down, 1½ tons at a time, into the huge vats. Then steam is forced through them for 45 minutes to an hour. This boils out the essential mint oils, which are condensed through water-cooled coils and then drained off. The end result is a faintly yellowish-white fluid...