528 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE, 



"Yes, but it takes a lot of hard work, backed up by good sense to get good 

 fruit." This is true, but the possibilities that nature has offered you 

 will be of no avail whatever unless the fruits are planted and then taken 

 care of. The whole thing is bound up in the statement that you must 

 plant and then take care of the fruit. Now this brings the responsibility 

 direct to you, for nature has done her part. Now, then, will we do our 

 part? If we are to realize the possibilities that nature has offered us we 

 must do our part. There are not many in this room, but I wonder how 

 many of the few that are in this room have all the .fruit that they can 

 use from the time that berries begin to ripen until the last winter apples 

 are gone. I wonder how many have taken steps to provide themselves 

 and their families with an abundance of good fruit the year through. We 

 can do it. Will we do it? Do we do it? I am sorry to say that I don't 

 believe that all here do it. I will leave this question with you and you can 

 answer it eacli one for himself or herself. But I have never found a 

 neighborhood yet where the people have half provided themselves with 

 the fruits that they might have had and could have used, and if I should 

 ask the question "Why?" I don't believe anybody could tell. Perhaps 

 it is not laziness, but perhaps that has something to do with it, but it is 

 a sort of inattention to business, inattention to our duty that we owe 

 to ourselves and to each other, and if I should leave any impression upon 

 this audience it would be this fact. I wish you would carry this out. 

 Begin next spring, if you don't begin sooner, to have all kinds of fruit. 

 It will pay you in dollars and cents. We may love hog and hominy, but 

 you could live a great deal better if you will have an abundance of fruit 

 for your diet. What is nicer when springtime comes than an abundance 

 of good strawberries, and there is not a piece of land in all this country 

 that will not raise good berries. AVherever you can grow corn you cau 

 grow strawberries. You can grow all kinds of berries— blackberries, rasp- 

 berries, and all the catalogue of berries that are cultivated by the nursery- 

 man, and there is no good reasonable excuse why anyone of you, even 

 though you live on a town lot, may not have a little piece of ground on 

 which you can plant fruit. We have quite a strawberry patch in our 

 back yard, and when we lived on the farm we had all we could use, and 

 we now feel the privation. There is a great satisfaction in eating fruit 

 that you have grown yourself. There are lots of things money will not buy. 

 It cannot buy the privilege to go out and pick berries. I want to be right 

 up to date. Even when you live in town lots you can have a small garden 

 at your command. Now it is surprising how much can be grown on a 

 small space of ground. Even on a space no larger than this room we 

 might grow half as many strawberries as a family would use, a few 

 grapes, and have a few apple trees or pear trees. This could be done in 

 a space not larger than this room. And haven't every one of you that 

 much or more space to spare? How many farmers are thei'e that never 

 sit down to home-grown berries? Very likely there are some right here. 



