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Charles E. Paine is one of the extensive
chicken raisers of the Boise valley and is also meeting
success as a horticulturist. His home is in the Roswell
district, two miles west of the town of Roswell, and he is
there successfully conducting his business interests, which
are of an important character. Mr. Paine is a native son of
Minnesota. He was born in Watonwan county on the 6th of
February, 1873, and acquired a common school education while
spending his boyhood days in the home of his parents, Emerson
and Abby (Robinson) Paine, who were natives of Maine. The
father was a master mechanic and lived in Minnesota till the
time of his death in 1879. The mother passed away in
Minnesota.
Charles E. Paine was reared in Minnesota and in 1897,
when a young man of twenty-four years, came to Idaho. Making
his way to Roswell, he purchased forty acres of land, which he
cultivated for a period of four years and then rented the
property, taking charge of the John Steel orchards, of which
he was manager through the succeeding twelve years. At the end
of that time he sold his forty-acre tract of land and bought
forty-five acres where he now resides, two miles west of
Roswell. Thirty acres of this land is in fruit, ten acres
being planted to prunes and, twenty acres to apples. The other
fifteen-acre tract is devoted to the raising of White Leghorn
and Ancona chickens. At the present writing he has six hundred
and fifty fine chickens upon his place and during March, 1919,
he sold eggs to the value of nearly four hundred dollars. He
expects to engage in the chicken business on a much more
extensive scale and within the next two years will have
increased the number to two thousand. At present he gathers
about four hundred eggs per day. He has seven incubators with
a combined capacity of two thousand eggs and on one day alone
he sold as high as eight hundred one-day-old chicks. His
breeding pens, in which he has about two hundred breeders,
cover half an acre. In this pen there is not one hen that does
not lay two hundred or more eggs each year. In his laying pens
he has about three hundred hens and selects his breeders from
^these. He has paid as high as two dollars each for his Ancona
eggs and is testing this breed, so that if they prove as good
as he anticipates, he will specialize on them exclusively. He
has been engaged in chicken raising in this way for ten years
and is fast gaining a wide reputation in this connection. Mr.
Paine was also fruit inspector for the North Pacific Fruit
Distributors, who had five hundred orchards. He traveled
inspecting these orchards most of the time, averaging one
hundred miles a day by- automobile, and one month he traveled
over four thousand miles. He has had a very wide experience in
connection with the fruit industry, including planting,
growing, packing and shipping, and there is no one in the
state who better understands fruit raising than he. His broad
experience and his close study of horticultural magazines and
books enable him to speak with authority upon the question. He
was also a director of the Boise-Payette project for nine
years and Mr. Paine, J. H. Lowell and Sylvester Hill were sent
as delegates to Nampa to meet the secretary of the interior,
who came to Idaho as a representative of the government, and
show him over the project with the idea of inducing the
government to take up this reclamation work. Mr. Paine also
assisted in developing the Roswell Fruit Park Tract, where he
now resides, and he likewise owns some city property in
Caldwell.
In 1895 Mr. Paine was united in marriage to Miss Jessie
M. Day, of Blue Earth county, Minnesota. They are widely and
favorably known in this section of the state and the
hospitality of their own home is greatly enjoyed by their many
friends. Fraternally Mr. Paine is connected with the Modern
Woodmen of America. All who know him, and he has a wide
acquaintance, esteem him highly as a man of genuine worth,
loyal and progressive in citizenship, alert and enterprising
in business. There are few men who have so fully demonstrated
the possibilities for horticultural development in Idaho and
none who have labored more diligently and effectively in
advancing the breed of poultry raised in this section of the
country. His work has been of real worth and value to his
fellow townsmen, showing what can be accomplished along these
lines and serving as a stimulus to the efforts of others. |
