Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women - Wise Acres Yearbook (Ambler, PA)

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tion and a boy to help weed. My father has always spent two days a week with me and works on whatever seems most necessary. We have definitely given up the idea of employing help for the season. Naturally our profits are larger and we had more real satisfaction in the summer's work as a whole. From my own experience I think it takes time, perhaps two years, before one can learn what can be raised on her own particular soil and marketed with the most profit. Fortunately for me my father is in the market business in Boston (fifty miles distant), so that the lima and sieva beans I raise for market are sold there and also, in smaller quantities, such other vegetables of which I have a surplus. For these I have been able to obtain a good retail price. The preserves and pickles are also shipped to Boston each fall by freight and placed on sale there. Each jar shows a good profit over and above the cost. We have also sold berries and vegetables to summer people in our own town. A few berries we have sold in Boston, especially the everbearing strawberries, and we are planning on sending more this coming season. Perhaps if I had had the practical experience that is being given at Ambler, before I started in, I should not have had as many ups and downs, though I think the saying “Experience is the best teacher holds true equally well for farming as in other lines of work. The soil, location, climatic conditions, annual rainfall, etc., differ on every farm and it is only by experiments with different crops and fertilizers that a safe conclusion of the best crop or crops can be drawn. I have thoroughly enjoyed the work on the farm and am looking forward to next summer’s work, hoping in every way to improve on methods and results. M. C. 6

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and number and we are establishing grass walks with hardy borders as fast as we can and not neglect the other work. Last year was our banner year for flowers and they gave much pleasure to ourselves and friends from the first pansy ready to burst into bloom when we lifted off the mulch, the early part of April, until 1 left, the middle of November, when the hardy chrysanthemums were still showing color. In the matter of fertilizers we have been able to buy manure two different years. Except for that we have used commercial fertilizer, mixing our own after the first year. I believe thoroughly in the use of green manure crops and we are planning this coming summer to give up a certain section to the growing of clover, to be turned under in the spring, and by rotating, hope to be able to give the whole area we cultivate such a crop in the course of two or three years. No crop we raise matures early enough to ensure a good stand of clover on the same field before cold weather. After the second summer’s work in the garden, I was desirous of learning more about vegetable and flower growing, so that I could work more intelligently and with better success. Since I could not leave home and attend classes at an agricultural college, I decided to find out how much help a correspondence course would be to me. It seemed best to start with the fundamentals, as the Massachusetts Agricultural College advised, so I took a course on Soils and one on Manures and Fertilizers. It was an entirely new field of study for me, but I found it intensely interesting and was surprised I could derive so much help in this way. One cannot work long in a garden of any kind without making the acquaintance of a great many insects. In order that I might know more about their life histories and how best to fight them, I took a correspondence course in Entomology the following winter. It was a pleasure to learn that there were some beneficial insects. 1 also took a course in floriculture that winter. The following winter Simmons’ College in Boston was offering a short course in gardening—accompanied by greenhouse work, and I found this helpful and interesting. This year the Massachusetts Agricultural College is offering a correspondence course in small fruits for the first time. This is one part of a course of three parts, the other two are Apple Growing and Peach, Pear, Plum and Cherry Growing. I am taking the whole course. Besides these courses, I have read a great many books on the different subjects, Farmer's Bulletins from Washington and bulletins from different State experiment stations. As reference books in my work I use Watt’s “Vegetable Gardening,” “Garden Farming,” by Corbett, “Insect Pests of Farm, Garden and Orchard,” by Sanderson, and have this summer added Sear’s “Productive Orcharding.” Mrs. Ely’s books are helpful for flower growing and I have just finished reading two interesting little books on flowers, “Let’s Make a Flower Garden,” by Hanna Rion and “The Seasons in a Flower Garden,” by Louise Shelton. Every year we have employed a man for the season until last year when we decided to try it without. Securing competent help is one of the greatest problems, for it is next to impossible to persuade them to do the work in our way. After the spring preparation of the soil we did not employ help except for horse cultiva-

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Spring (Gossip Old Lime Kiln Road, Jarrettown. Peggy dear: Thee must guess once again if thee thinks I can be sitting here writing letters. Why, child, I haven't time, but just this once I am going to steal a few minutes for thee. You poor pcnned-up city people have no idea that spring is within sight. Out here where the air doesn't taste as if it had already had a busy day of it, one is atingle with the excitement of “budding plans.” Perhaps it is striking in a little harder than usual because, thee sees, I am fairly living in the School of Horticulture atmosphere these days. At this very minute, I am writing in my student’s room while she is sitting there at the table imbibing chemistry at a fearful rate. One window ledge is filled with the most intellectual looking books, the other with, what means more to just plain unintelligent me, our “conservatory” as we call it. Thee should see it! There are three of the dearest little red geraniums—I am told I must say “pelargonium,” however, and a lovely primrose—I mean “primula malacoi-dcs.” Thee sees what proximity to the P. S. of H. is already doing for my education. When one knows the flowers by their botanical names—is on really intimate terms with the proper cognomina—they do have an added dignity. Oh! thee is in for it. Thee asked me to write, and tell everything • that was interesting out here, so thee shall get it, for I am brimming over. Thee couldn’t help being if thee lived here, and spring was on its way. My student has prodded me so, that now a day is an eternity until she returns from school, and there is opportu- nity to plan again together. Thee who is hugging thy furs and filling thy calendar with concerts and teas—just listen to our schemes. Thee will say, the ground is as hard as a brick—so it is, a good bit of the time as yet, and there is a covey of busy little snow birds circling around the spirea bush—but for all that, the whole aspect of the country holds a hint of spring. The tang of the air isn’t like the sharp frostiness that lurked through the winter days, and there is a sort of mellowness at high noon that seems to reassure one with a kind of go-ahead-and-get-readiness spirit. The very hens show they feel it in the way they search out every spot as fast as it gets scratchable. And, speaking of chickens, touches the first real excitement. We are going to have a Brooder—a really truly Brooder, not any of your home-made, patched together affairs where the nails never did reach the spot intended, and the pieces just wouldn’t saw themselves into even lengths, and after hours and hours of honest toil the thing wabbled like a two-year-old. No, sir, we are going to have a real Brooder, a sent-away-for, shipped-to-you-complete Brooder. A Christmas doll was certainly never more of an event. We shall fill it with baby chicks, and every spare minute is being utilized now to get in readiness the curtain-front part of the poultry house, so that it may be started in there, where there will be partial protection from these uncertain winds, and yet give the babies the chance of a hardy, fresh-air start in life. That's one plan. Another is just a wee bit wavery in our 7