The Farm's The Best 



And Farm and Home Bureaus 

 Help Make \i Better^ Says 

 This Shelby County Couple 



V/^^ HE chap who said that the cities 

 ^^""/^ have for generations skimmed 



%^ our farms of the cream of 

 rural youth didn't know Marion and 

 Geneva Fry of Shelby county. City life 

 has never appealed to them and it never 

 will. In the 11 years since they were 

 married they have achieved a comfortable 

 standard of living that can't be equaled 

 in town. 



Like thousands of other young Illinois 

 farmers, Marion Fry rents the land he 

 farms, 130 acres, from his father. All 

 the comforts Marion and his wife and 

 their sons, Eugene, aged 8, and Donald, 

 aged 7, enjoy, they have earned. 



Their home is a small white two-story 

 frame house on an 80-acre farm. Un- 

 pretentious though it is, it offers op- 

 portunities for a heap of living. 



Since March 1937, the Frys have had 

 electric power. It pumps the water, 

 washes clothes, lights the house and barn, 

 runs the radio and, in the summer, it 

 cooks meals. Marion says that without 

 the cooperation of a neighbor who bore a 

 fair share of the expense of building the 

 extension from the high line, they 

 couldn't have had these things. 



Marion is a cooperator from 'way back. 



He sold his cream to the Producers 

 Creamery of Champaign every week since 

 it started. He likes the twice-a-week 

 pick-up service and finds that the two 

 small checks each week come in handy. 

 And he knows that the weights and 

 tests are honest. 



He believes in organization. 



"Every other industry is organized for 

 its own good and farmers must be, too. 

 The Farm Bureau gives the fellows who 

 didn't study scientific farming all the 

 information through the farm adviser." 



Marion uses all the Farm Bureau ser- 

 vices. His car is insured in the Illinois 

 Agricultural Mutual Insurance Company. 

 He is a Country Life policyholder and 

 buys his fuels and lubricants from the 

 Shelby-Effingham Service Company. All 

 buildings are painted with Soyoil. 



Farming is easier now than it was 1 1 

 years ago, Marion declares. Farm ma- 

 chinery, such as the general purpose trac- 

 tor and the combine, has helped change 

 it. He farms the 80 on which he lives 

 plus 30 acres on the home place and 20 

 acres south of Shelbyville. 



Soil conservation and improved seed 

 have made the Fry farms more produc- 



GENEVA FHY 

 Wants her sons to iarm. 



tive. Some of the hybrid com yielded 

 90 bushels last fall, a record for the 

 farm. 



Marion is an ardent conservationist 

 having served on the Ridge township 

 conservation committee since the begin- 

 ning. He believes that the proper way 

 to get a stand of alfalfa is to sow it in 

 the late summer without a nurse crop and 

 would follow that practice if he were 

 farming for himself. 



Mrs. Fry, a Home Bureau member, 

 thinks that farming is just as honorable 

 a profession as medicine or law and that 

 farmers can no longer be accurately 

 called hicks. She hopes that Buddie and 

 Donald will be farmers when they grow 

 up — and they probably will. 



If all young farm families looked at 

 farming as the Frys do the cities would 

 not be as large which might be a good 

 thing. 



THE FRY HOME 

 "An opportunity ior a lull liie on the form.' 



MARION FRY 

 An 100 per cent Fann Bureau Cooperator. 



lUNE. 1938 \ 



23 



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