STRAWBERRIES FOR HOME USE. 101 



line naturally. He took it from his boys, and took about all 

 they had. 



Mr. C. S. Harrison: I used to call them in the morning to 

 get up. They would say by and by, and they are getting up 

 now, and they are going to get up by and by, and I hope they 

 take after me. 



PREsroENT Christy: This is one of the things that leads us 

 from the making of dollars and cents in life, and I think we 

 ought to do it more. 



STRAWBERRIES FOR HOME USE. 



BY G. S. CHRISTY, JOHNSON 



The year 1904 has been one to greatly encourage the plant- 

 ing of smaU beds of berries for home use. 



The commercial grower has been blessed with too much rain 

 this season and was forced to let the berries go unpicked too 

 long, so that much of the fruit on the market was too ripe and 

 soft to command good prices. The man who depended on buy- 

 ing had to take these low grade berries, possibly cheap, but 

 not at all satisfactory. 



Not so with the family that had their own berry bed, for 

 while the boys were taking a forced vacation after the last rain 

 the^berry beds would not suffer from too many over-ripe ber- 

 ries. Then, too, the matter of ownership enters largely into 

 the'subject. and adds flavor to your berries and cream. 



Have you ever noticed how much better "my shorthorn cattle 

 are than neighbor Jones'?" Or have you ever seen a hog ad- 

 vertisement that did not announce the "the best lot of pigs I 

 ever raised?" Or that baby "that never had an equal" in the 

 estimation of its parents? So if you would get the full enjoy- 

 ment out of a strawberry shortcake, grow the berries yourself. 



The size of your berry bed of course will depend on the num- 

 ber of people you expect to feed; 300 to 500 plants should pro- 

 duce ten to twenty bushels of berries, and wiU sometimes exceed 

 that amount and sometimes faU far below it. 



