Fred Krquse and Sons ftre Partners 



They're Truck Growers, Good Ones Too, And Are For The AAA 



' 



I 



i 



J 



YOU would expect a corn and hog 

 producer to be for the corn-hog 

 program, and a wheat grower to 

 vote for any plan offering a chance to 

 maintain reasonable prices. But how 

 does a truck grower feel about the 

 AAA, especially a truck grower in L- 

 linois where there are no marketing 

 agreements nor crop control programs 

 in effect on vegetables or fruits? 



Is there anything in common be- 

 tween the truck grower and the live- 

 stock /producer, the corn and wheat 

 farmer and the dairyman? Fred 

 Krause and his two sons, Arthur and 

 Bill, who operate a thriving 120 acre 

 truck and fruit farm (they call it Hy- 

 land Farm) at the edge of Peoria can 

 throw light on this question. 



Fred was cultivating late potatoes 

 when we found him. It was a small 

 patch on a side hiU at one corner of 

 the farm. The sun beat down unmerci- 

 fully hot on this early August day. The 

 two horses, lathered and puffing, were 

 moving slowly. Fred, stooped over, 

 was carefully watching his work as the 

 shovels threw the dirt up around the 

 plants. He did not look up until the 

 row was finished. Then came a 

 cheery "hello" as he pulled off an old 

 felt hat to wipe his brow. 



It was a good-natured, deeply lined 

 face with twinkling eyes that greeted 

 us; a slender, wiry figure, muscular 

 and bent from a life of toil and close 

 contact with the soil such as only a 

 truck farmer knows. 



Fred Krause, now 62, is a truck 

 grower probably because his father 

 was before him. The elder Krause 

 came from Germany 65 ye'ars ago when 

 Peoria was just getting a good start as 

 a thriving river city. He worked out 

 a year on a truck farm. Then with the 

 money he had saved he started up for 

 himself. He bought seven acres of 

 ground for $500 an acre at what is now 

 Krause and Griswold streets in Peoria. 

 That plot, now ten acres, is still owned 

 by the family and continues to produce 

 vegetables for the Peoria market. 



"Father always said that a good truck 

 grower would make a successful gen- 

 eral farmer, but a good farmer might 

 not succeed as a truck grower," said 

 Fred. "There's a lot to this business. 

 You not only have to have the right 

 kind of soil but you have got to keep 

 studving all the time to get ahead of 

 the bugs and diseases. Then the mar- 



SEPTEMBER, 1935 V - v'. 



Bill, left, age 29, is production manager; 

 Art, center, 35, Is sales manager and Fred 62 is 

 general manager and "chairman of the board," 



keting end is a business all its own. 

 You have to learn what the public 

 wants and give it to them. And you've 

 got to grow a little better stuff than the 

 next fellow." 



How has the truck farmer fared dur- 

 ing the depression? 



"Lower prices for corn, oats, hogs 

 and milk hurt us like everything," said 

 Fred. "We had pretty good prices up 

 until three years ago. Tomatoes were 

 making money. The grain and live- 

 stock farmers around here weren't do- 

 ing so well. A lot of them started 

 growing tomatoes. The price got down 

 to 10 cents a bushel because there were 

 too many for the market. Another 

 thing, when people don't have jobs in 

 the city many of them start growing 

 their own gardens. That hurts too. So 

 it's a good thing to have fair prices for 

 grain and livestock. Then we all can 

 make some money." 



Fred Krause is one of many Farm 



Bureau members in Illinois who makes 

 good use of his membership. "When 

 we moved to this place 13 years ago," 

 he said, "it was about the poorest farm 

 around. It wouldn't grow hardly any- 

 thing. I would have sold the place for 

 a good chew of tobacco. 



"I got the farm adviser out and we 

 made about 200 soil tests. The whole 

 farm was acid. We started hauling 

 limestone from town. Some of the 

 neighbors laughed at us. They told us 

 we had better put it on the road — that 

 it would kill our land. The first few 

 years we spent getting the soil in bet- 

 ter condition. We plowed under green 

 cover crops, mostly oats in the fall be- 

 fore frost while it was still green. We 

 sowed clover and alfalfa. We hauled 

 straw and manure out of town all win- 

 ter long until we could grow 60 to 70 

 bushels of com to the acre and as high 

 as 90 bushels of oats." 



Name any vegetable or small fruit 

 and yjiu will probably find it growing 

 sonj^he^e, sometime during the year 

 . Farm. Intense cultivation 

 artd constant attention to soil rotation 

 and improvement to avoid the thou- 

 sand and one bugs and diseases that 

 continually dog the footsteps of the 

 truck farmer, are reasons why the 

 Krauses have made a success of this 

 highly specialized business. 



Fred and his boys have learned that 

 a yellow, well-packed soil, for example, 

 grows the best turnips. Turnips are 

 just so much cow feed to the average 



Each Family Has Its Own Modern Home, Flower Garden, and Flock of Poultry, and the Cask 

 Income Is Divided Equally Three Ways. 



