74 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Mr. M. A. Thayer: I have had a little experience in this line of work 

 at the farmer's institute. I am in charge now of one of the corps of 

 workers in Wisconsin. Since the commencement ot that work we have 

 had in every institute a long session or talk on horticulture. Not one 

 has been omitted, and we found very much interest taken in them. As 

 suggested by my friend, Mr. Gregg, I think one of the strongest ways of 

 presenting horticulture or any other culture is by illustration. Now, 

 these maps I have here to-day were not manufactured for this meeting. 

 I left home on my way to an institute the last of the week, and these are 

 drawings that I use in presenting horticultural work to our farmers. I 

 find it to be one of the most successful ways of presenting those topics to 

 our people. 



After each discussion I tell them that if they will give me their 

 names I will send them a little pamphlet giving all the Illustrations 

 represented by those maps, giving them cuts of the different varieties 

 of fruit, giving them the sketches of the farmer's model fruit garden, 

 which I have made, and recommending exactly what they want to set 

 out in that garden. At the meeting last Friday when I made that 

 announcement, more than fifty came forward and requested that book. 

 They became interested in it at once. 



If I say to them that I produced three hundred bushels of black- 

 berries from a single acre, as I did last season, if I tell them 

 what I sold that product for, if I show to them that from a quarter 

 of an acre of strawberries I received so much, if I say to them 

 as I have in many^ cases, "I can produce a crate of ripe delicious 

 berries ready for your family as easily as you can produce and deliver to 

 me one bushel of wheat," it means something to them. Thev sell their 

 wheat for sixty cents a bushel and come to me and pav me $3.00 a bushel 

 for my fruit, and that means something to them. If I tell them that I 

 am producing five or six or seven or eight or even nine hundred dollars' 

 worth of fruit from a single acre, it sets them to thinking. If I explain 

 to them that they have just as good land at their very door, and that 

 with the same culture they can produce the same results, it sets them to 

 thinking. 



Of course, I never advise them to go into it for commercial 

 purposes, but I say this: that I can grow berries ready to pick at two cents 

 a box,and any intelligent farmer can produce them at a cost of three cents 

 a box. Well, they begin to think of those things If I tell them that the 

 expense of small fruit growing is not in growing the fruit, but in the 

 picking, the boxes and the cases, in the express charges, and in the losses, 

 they begin to see that they can begin to produce their berries at first cost, 

 and have the most delicious fruit on earth ready at their own door. 



Now, the true way to reach them, as I said before, is through illustration. 

 We often have two or three different talks on horticulture, and we give one 

 to the children. I give practically to the children of our state in the even- 

 ing session very much the same talk I have given this afternoon. I give 

 another one to the farmers in the afternoon, and so in two or three ses. 

 sions we talk horticulture to our farmers; and I expect to follow that out 

 as long as I am an institute worker. 



Mr. Gregg: I do not want to leave the impression before this society 

 that when I referred to our friend William Somerville and the person- 

 ality that impressed itself so favorably upon farmers, that that was his 



