Effect of Frequency of Picking Cucumbers 



nn Tnrnmf* 



on Income 



HARRY C. WOODWORTH* 



Introduction 



ONE OF THE major problems confronting every rural area is the use of 

 its available resources to the greatest advantage. Hundreds of families 

 in New Hampshire reside on small part-time farms, own a few acres of 

 unused land, and have family labor available for light work in the summer 

 months. Often the father has employment off the farm, but the mother and 

 older children have time to assist in increasing the family income if the 

 opportunity for work existed. Due to location of the home, the older children 

 may have difficulty in finding off-the-farm employment that is in line with 

 their strength and experience. Sometimes semi-retired couples have a few 

 acres associated with their rural residences, need additional income, and 

 are happy to do a limited amount of work if it is not too taxing on their 

 physical abilities. Thus, resources in the form of very small tillage areas 

 and, more important, available family labor are often not now well employed. 

 Numerous families have found ways and means of adding to their 

 off-the-farm incomes by intensive production on small acreage of their non- 

 commercial type farms. Other rural families are operating dairy or poultry 

 farms which are too small to use all the available family labor productively. 



An Opportunity with Cucumbers 



In the spring of 1948. a pickling and processing firm made contracts 

 with a few New Hampshire growers to purchase cucumbers grown on a 

 definite acreage. The crop seemed to fit into the economy of the small part- 

 time farm with under-employed labor. Investment in specialized equipment 

 Avas not needed. An acre of land was expected to furnish employment for 

 two people for about six weeks in mid-summer. The contract guaranteed 

 a market for total production at a definite price for each grade. Since many 

 part-time farmers usually employ a neighbor to plow and fit their garden 

 plots, the growing of the new crop would seem to require merely an ex- 

 pansion in the usual activities on these farms. 



Such an opportunity as growing a limited acreage of cucumbers for 

 processing may be the answer to under-employment for many families. 

 Since the picking of the cucumbers demands by far the greatest amount 

 of labor in the production of the crop, this bulletin has been prepared to 

 show farm families the methods of deciding fl) how much labor to use 

 in the picking of their crop, or (2) if a definite amount of labor is avail- 

 able, the amount of acreage to plant. 



* Mr. Woodworth, Professor of Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Economist 

 in the Agricultural Experiment Station, died on September 18, 1953. a few months 

 after preparing the manuscript for this bulletin. Most of the field work, including 

 the picking on experimental plots, was carried on by Adam Goodrum. at that time 

 a sophomore major in Agricultural Economics. This bulletin was completed by George 

 Rogers, formerly Assistant Research Economist in the Agricultural Experiment Station. 



