192 Our Farming. 



Medina, Ohio, for about $16.50 a hundred, in the flat, ready for 

 shipping, and all ready to nail together. You cannot make your- 

 self such a strong, nice light box as these machine-made. Some 

 of my neighbors found they made a great mistake trying. Many 

 thousands of these have been made and sold the country over as 

 " Terry's potato boxes," but I have no interest whatever in them, 

 only that I first brought them into use, and hope they may help 

 thousands of others as much as they have us. When we used to 

 draw to market early in the season we took them in these boxes 

 on spring wagon and left boxes with dealer until they were sold. 

 We made quite a nice thing of this. They readily brought more 

 money. Dug, say, in the afternoon and covered from the sun by 

 a piece of board just large enough for a cover, as fast as a box 

 was filled, and carefully put in as dug, as carefully as eggs would 

 be handled, and then loaded on a spring wagon in the early morn- 

 ing with a canvas cover over it to keep the sun off, they rode 

 twelve miles without a bruise. Before noon they were in the city 

 and the grocer set the boxes right into his light spring wagon and 

 they whirled around, a bushel in a place, to his customers, who 

 got them as nice and fresh as from their own garden. There was 

 no handling and bruising from our field to the consumer's cellar. 

 Here was good, big, honest measure, of choice varieties of potatoes, 

 properly grown and got to the consumer in prime condition. Do 

 you wonder I had it all my own way most? I very seldom caught 

 up to orders after once starting. A little judicious advertising, and 

 pushing, with good goods to back it, soon made " Terry's pota- 

 toes" a household name in many families, and dull markets and 

 hard times were over for me, but not hard work. I have been to 

 Akron twice in a day (forty-eight miles on the road) to keep up 

 with the demand. But this was a good while ago. 



We use the boxes in the field now about as follows : At night 

 I generally leave a load scattered down through the field by the 

 side of where I will dig in the morning. Always leave them, when 

 on the ground over night, bottom side up. The bottoms will not 

 swell and injure them then. In the morning I hitch onto digger 

 with two teams and dig, say, six rows, digging every other row 

 always. Then I stop, let one team stand with the digger and 

 take the other and go to barn and bring out a load of empty boxes 

 in wagon with side boards on so it will hold fifty or so. This wagon 

 I will tell about and show picture of it and of the boxes in Chap- 

 ter XXXI. I drive along down through field by the side of po- 

 tatoes and drop boxes off as I go. I manage to get to the lower 

 end just about as my men (who began picking when I began dig- 

 ging) do, and turning around pick up a load of potatoes as I go 

 back, my men following wagon and setting in boxes as I pile 

 them up, two, three or even four high. Then we go to barn and 

 unload. Next, take team off wagon and go to digging again, 

 while men pick up another load, etc., etc. Steady work like this 



