lamette Valley prunes are famed throughout America and Europe. Only one other state (California) produces more prunes than Oregon, the 1937 yield being 43,000 tons, valued at $1,414,000. Other principal fruit crops of the same year were apples, 3,763,000 bushels, valued at $3,010,000; pears, 3,621,000 bushels, valued at $2,350,000; cherries, 124,000 tons, valued at $1,525,000; grapes, 2,100 tons, valued at $69,300; and peaches, 241,000 bushels, valued at $2,892,000.
Strawberries, raspberries, currants, youngberries, loganberries, and evergreen blackberries thrive in various sections, though the best crops are prod-ired in the moist western valleys. Strawberries constitute the most important item in this list, the 1937 crop amounting to 1,050,000 crates, was raised on 14,000 acres (an average yield of 75 crates to the acre), and valued at $3,518,000. Cranberries have long grown wild, principally on peat-bog land along the coast, but are now profitably cultivated over a large acreage.
Nuts of various kinds, chiefly English walnuts, and filberts, are raised, especially on the sandy loams and "red hill" lands of the Willamette and Tualatin Valleys, one of the few regions of the world adapted to filbert culture. There are approximately 9,000 acres of filbert orchards in Oregon, or 85 per cent of the national total, and about 14,000 acres of bearing walnut trees.
Hops are among the principal agricultural products of the Willamette Valley. High green-hung hop trellises cover thousands of acres in Marion County. Although over-production in recent years has reduced the value of the crop, Oregon continues to produce more hops than any other state in the Union. The value of the 1937 crop exceeded $4,000,000.
Wild flax grew in Oregon before the first white men came, and has been grown there almost continually from the beginning of settlement, but not until recent years has a consistent effort been made to utilize the product commercially. In 1915 a flax plant was established at the state penitentiary; and recently the Federal Government, through the Works Progress Administration, assisted in constructing scutching plants and mills. In 1935, more than 2,000 acres were planted to flax. About 2,000,000 pounds of fiber are annually produced at the state plant.
Seed production provides the farmers of Oregon with some three million dollars of annual income. Nearly a million pounds of alsike clover seed, sown as a soil-restoring rotation crop in wheat growing areas, are marketed annually; and west of the mountains, vegetable seeds are produced on an extensive scale.
