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1915–2017 · USDA Farmers' Bulletins 694 (1915) and 761 (1916); USDA county profiles; WNIT; Congressional Record, 30 Jul 2008
The test, put plainly: did Union Township share the muck-soil specialty farming — mint, onions, celery — documented for parts of northern Indiana and for this county? Chapman's "miry and mucky" ground around the lakes is descriptive prose, not a soil-survey classification and not evidence of commercial muck farming; Howard's township soil is "heavily timbered clay and marsh." The published record places drained muck soils elsewhere in the county — SSURGO examples reached name mucks in Portage, Olive and Greene townships; every example reached is in a northern or western township; none is in Union Township. The regional system is real and prints at regional class: Farmers' Bulletin 761 (1916) counts about 3,750,000 acres of swamp land, largely muck, across Indiana and Michigan, worked in four types — celery, onion, peppermint, and grain-and-stock — from 140 muck farms visited. Farmers' Bulletin 694 (1915) carries the mint culture of drained marsh muck — and a name trap this section prints to prevent error: the bulletin's first United States peppermint plantation of 1835 stood in St. Joseph County, Michigan, not this county.
County mint is real; its named historical seat is not here. WNIT's "Our Town — Mishawaka" and the Congressional Record of 30 July 2008 both state that in the late nineteenth century Mishawaka became known as the "Peppermint Capital of the World" for the mint its rich black loam produced; USDA's 2017 county profile still lists "mint for oil" among the county's leading crops, its acreage withheld as (D). The association of the county's mint country with the North Liberty / Walkerton ground — carried in this build's own working papers — was not confirmed by any carrier reached, and Union Township's share is unproved. Truck crops, one by one for the township: onions, celery, cucumbers — not named for Union Township in any carrier searched; potatoes — present only inside the county's combined sales category. The test result prints at its strength: muck soils proved at county strength, township extent unproved; mint proved at county strength with its seat at Mishawaka; no truck crop named for the township — a negative at online-search strength, not a proof no Union farmer ever grew them. Settlers: a Web Soil Survey pull for the township; the published soil-survey sheets; county extension reports.