200 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



tion, Franklin county. Except during winter, when the farm is looked 

 after by a tenant, Mrs. Shewell and children spend their time there. 

 Mrs. Shewell is one of the most active advocates of good roads for child 

 welfare, and is an officer of the State organization of this branch of the 

 Mothers' Congress. How she chanced to become a woman farmer and 

 what she sees in the work is told, as follows : 



"When my own health and that of my eldest daughter demanded 

 we go into the country for rest, I tried to find comfortable board for our 

 family of seven. Finding this practically impossible I concluded I w^ould 

 buy a small place near St. Louis where we might spend all of our sum- 

 mers and be easily accessible to my husband's business and lifelong 

 friends. Finding a place of a hundred acres whose location on the 

 Meramec river and Frisco railroad, on the crest of a small hill which 

 gives us a wide outlook over the country, transportation facilities and the 

 pleasures a town affords, I purchased it, though much larger than I 

 needed and of no farming value. The first summer we spent contentedly, 

 purchasing our milk, vegetables and fruits from nearby farmers. This 

 being by no means satisfactory, as they raised barely enough for their own 

 use, the second year we had a cow and a small garden. Some few things 

 did well, but the land was so poor the corn was only about two feet 

 and a half high, with the ears coming out on the stalks only a few inches 

 above the ground. This drew my attention to the question of increasing 

 the fertility of my soil and giving some feed for stock. Last year I plant- 

 ed clover and cowpeas — used 250 pounds of commercial fertilizer on my 

 garden and had all the vegetables I used during the summer and plenty 

 to ship to St. Louis in sacks and cans to last us during th€ winter. The 

 second year I rented a small piece of bottom land on shares and received 

 my third of a crop of wheat, which I judged seven bushels to the acre. 

 Last year corn at thirty-four bushels to the acre was raised there, which, 

 with the fodder and a little bran and linseed meal, has sufficed to feed 

 my cow and two-year-old and yearling. I have only about twenty acres 

 cleared which now has been under clover one or two years, and will this 

 year be put early in corn to be sowed to cowpeas at the last cultivation 

 and then winter rye will follow. Having visited Columbia for Farmers' 

 Week I am now really going to do some farming, I hope, with profit. 

 I have a two-hundred tree apple orchard, and that will be planted in 

 melons and sweet and Irish potatoes, the former of which I have raised 

 very successfully. I have a fine three-hundred-plant asparagus bed from 

 which I will begin to cut this year, and from my 20 plum and 26 peach 

 trees hope to have a good crop if late freezes and hails miss us." 



