STRAWBERRIES FOR THE FARMERS. I89 



idea that such work is nothing for the farmer, it is only some- 

 thing for the women folks to fool with. It is much more busi- 

 ness-like for men to run a four-horse team and raise fifty-cent 

 wheat. But let us compare results from a financial standpoint. 

 From those two small patches we had there, when we did not 

 know anything about strawberries except what little information 

 we had picked up here in this society and from the old folks that 

 engage in this line of work, just from that little knowledge, 

 gathered up here and there, out of those five rows of strawber- 

 ries — and we grew no strawberries to sell — after having a dozen 

 students from the school of agriculture (and you know what ap- 

 petites they have) we had to pick the next four days over thirty- 

 five quarts a day to keep them from rotting on the ground. 



In the face of difiiculties, for we did not always have the 

 same fine crop, I will let you see what we did. Last spring we 

 had a hail-storm, one that left three inches of hail on the ground, 

 when those two patches were in blossom, and yet we had all the 

 strawberries we could eat and all that any family could eat at 

 strawberry time. Now take it a little further : I did not do this 

 planting as a matter of business, but I could sell without doing 

 a word of advertising, I could sell strawberry plants by the 

 thousand in the spring. I could do more business right there 

 from that little patch than from all the rest of the farm put to- 

 gether, because my neighbors are beginning to find out how 

 good strawberries are, and they want some plants. I told them 

 I would give them the address of somebody they could get plants 

 from. They said, "Oh, yes, we know where we can get plants, 

 but those plants don't grow like yours do." 



I cannot give you all the facts, except about the eating, but I 

 would say to those of you who have never grown any strawber- 

 ry plants, make up your minds to set out a patch next spring. 

 Don't wait until the following year. You can fix it all up in a 

 week. You may not have all the conditions that I have men- 

 tioned, but do set out a patch of five varieties and set them out so 

 you can cultivate them with the horse ; then run the horse cultiva- 

 tor through them and keep them clean through the summer, and 

 go down and admire them every little while ; and then in the fall 

 cover them, and cover them deep. I said I like the wheat straw 

 better than the oat straw. It will not smother down so tightly 

 against the plants, it conforms more to a mulch, but cover them 

 deep, and in the spring as soon as the weather has a disposition 

 to get warm and stay warm rake it oi¥. I said put on a foot, but 

 don't rake it all ofif, leave enough on so the plants can come 



