Caribou High School - Reflector Yearbook (Caribou, ME)

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THE REFLECTOR 15 AGRICULTURAL COURSE The agricultural course was introduced into Caribou High School in 1918, with Carroll Wilder of Washburn as the first teacher. A room in the old high school building was partly equipped with tools to be used in shop work by the boys taking the agricultural course. Daniel Green of Brewer succeeded him after a year, and in his two years' stay put the course on a firm basis. In the fall of 1921 Perley Harmon of Caribou took charge of the department and has been here ever since. The course of four years fits for the agricultural course at the University of Maine and gives an up-to-date knowledge of practical farming, and some work in manual training, It consists of text book work on various farm problems, practical training in farming and farm mechanics, and individual summer project work in which the knowledge obtained in school is put into actual use. Because raising potatoes is the chief means of obtaining a living in this part of the country, the course gives a thorough knowledge of fertilizers, bordeaux mixtures, selecting seed, seed treating, and roguing, and a practical knowledge of caring for the crop. But the farmer is not only a producer of agricultural commodities but also an unspecialized mechanic. The tendency toward better equipped farms with all sorts of labor-saving devices, such as gas- engines, tractors, auto-trucks, and automobiles, is putting new respon- sibilities upon the farmer. That future farmers may wisely select tools, implements, machinery, labor-saving devices, that they may have ability to use, care for, repair, and overhaul properly all this equipment, and to carry on efficiently all the other numerous mechani- cal activities farmers commonly engage in, the boys who are being trained for farming are given instruction in farm mechanics. They are taught to repair harnesses, diggers, planters, sprayer pumps, and engines and to use wood working tools. The class was subjected to great difficulties by the loss of the shop equipment when the old high school building burned. Tools brought in by the members of the class were used during the four years that the high school occupied the parochial building. But with the opening of the new high school building the town fully equipped one room with harness repairing outfits, wrenches, drills, and wood working tools. In this room the freshmen and sophomores work as one unit, and the juniors and seniors, as another, two forty-minute periods each day. When the agricultural graduate takes up farming as a business, he becomes more than a farm worker, and a producer of farm products. He becomes a farmer citizen.

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AGRICULTURAL CLASS

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