220 ABC OF STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 



way of the horses and plows. They were turning the berries 

 under in order to get in another crop without letting the expen- 

 sive land lie idle. Friend Stebbins says he has seen berries 

 turned under when there were enough to make the red juice 

 follow the plow as it crushed them in the furrow. Three of 

 his family went out the evening before, and in three hours they 

 gathered 70 quarts in one of these deserted fields. 



One gardener whom we called on (Mr. Henry Norfleet) had 

 about half an acre of -Lady Thompsons. There had been scarce- 

 ly any berries picked from the field when the price went down. 

 I do not know that I ever saw more ripe berries on a given area 

 at one time. Some of them were really overripe large and 

 luscious. Nobody wanted them as a free gift. We had been 

 eating berries all day at least I had but we felt so sorry to 

 see these wasting that we ate a good many more. The Lady 

 Thompson is certainly a very fine berry in the South. It is 

 hard for the growers, it is true ; but yet it certainly is a great 

 blessing to a community to have berries so cheap that all can 

 have all they want, morning, noon, and night. I asked some 

 of the growers if they proposed to keep right on raising straw- 

 berries They said there was no other way to do, and that they 

 frequently had to make the best of a glut in the market in al- 

 most all kinds of produce ; but the man who keeps right on 

 growing good crops is pretty sure, sooner or later, to have some- 

 thing to sell when the price is good and everybody wants it. 



I had just one chance to see strawberry-picking going on 

 in the regular business way. Mr. Trotman had received intel- 

 ligence from Boston that berries were up to 12 cents, and, in 

 fact, I believe he had kept picking right along. You see when 

 the fields are once abandoned they can not very well start again, 

 because rotten or overripe berries would get among the good 

 ones in spite of the pickers; therefore the proprietor of a straw- 

 berry-field must keep the pickers going till he decides to stop, 

 and then he must stop for good. When I saw the pickers in 

 the field I said to -friend Stebbins, " There must be very nearly 

 a hundred people who are gathering berries." I have been so 

 much in the habit of estimating the number of hives in an api- 

 ary by simply a casual glance that I thought I could guess pret- 

 ty nearly at the number of people scattered through the patch. 

 Friend Stebbins counted them, and reported 104. There were 

 all sorts of people big and little, old and young, black and 

 white ; but for all that, every thing seemed to go on very har- 

 moniously and quietly. Little colored boys, who seemed hard- 

 ly big enough to carry a quart of berries, would march in with 



