558 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 15. 



get home with an empty wagon, or nearly so ; 

 then start out next morning with every thing 

 fresh, right from the garden. 



Well, after deciding not to run the garden 

 any more, but to grow stuff only for our lunch- 

 room, or dining-table rather (for the dinner- 

 table in the factory has not yet been given up ) , 

 we found a good many acres of ground under- 

 drained and heavily manured that was not go- 

 ing to be occupied. Mrs. Root suggested that 

 I should raise hay. A clover-field looks very 

 pretty, and it is not very much work, except 

 at haying time. In our market-gardening we 

 have cultivated something like twelve or fif- 

 teen acres. We have this year, perhaps, five 

 or six acres of potatoes, for I am still a potato- 

 man. What shall be done with the rest of the 

 six or eight acres? In order to get it into clo- 

 ver I decided to grow wheat a la Terry. We 

 accordingly prepared and fitted all our vacant 

 ground, after potatoes ,were dug last season, 

 for wheat, of which I proceeded to grow my 

 first crop. I was pretty sure I could grow 

 wheat, although I knew the consequence of 

 putting wheat on ground so heavily manured 

 for years past. Several good farmers suggest- 

 ed that, if I would use the right kind of phos- 

 phate, it would strengthen the straw and make 

 it stand up. But, was not my wheat hand- 

 some all last fall, all winter, and all this past 

 spring ? Men who had farmed all their lives 

 would frequently say, " Why, I never before 

 saw such a pretty piece of wheat in my life — 

 it is so rank and luxuriant ! There are no thin 

 spots anywhere." Well, I never believed in 

 " thin spots " in raising a crop of any kind. If 

 there was a piece of poor ground, there is 

 where I massed my artillery to make it come 

 up to or make it go ahead of the rest. 



Well, the wheat began to head out ; and 

 just about the time it was heading out, the 

 market price was "heading" somewhere to- 

 ward !?2.00 a bushel. Of course, there were 

 many shakes of the head from veteran tillers 

 of the soil. They said it would fall down in 

 spite of me. I used to remark, " If my wheat 

 and the price both keep up, it will be about 

 the best market-gardening I ever did." My 

 wheat stood up pretty well until the great long 

 heads began to get heavy with grain. They 

 then bent over and hung down gracefully ; 

 and the dry spell we were having seemed rath- 

 er to favor my wheat enterprise ; but when- 

 ever we had a rain, and the heads got wet, a 

 good many of them would go down. But you 

 know I am always hopeful, and the wheat 

 seenied to catch my spirit, for it would bend 

 down gracefully, and then get up again ; but 

 as the heads became heavier, and as we had a 

 thunder-storm or two with considerable of a 

 blow, the heavy grain pulled it down and held 

 down a^great part of it. 



Everybody inquired how I was going to 

 harvest it, and I inquired rather anxiously 

 myself. I finally heard of a certain man who 

 had a low-down Deering Pony binder, and he 

 said he had never seen a piece of wheat yet 

 that he could not cut. He was hopeful, like 

 myself; but when it took him, with an assist- 

 ant, two days and a half to harvest less than 

 ten acres, he rather admitted, or submitted, 



that it was the worst wheat to cut he had ever 

 come across. But, was there not a pile of 

 straw and grain to be shocked up .^ Why, the 

 shocks make one think of a little village 

 where the houses are so close together the 

 neighbors can shake hands out of the windows 

 all round. I do not know how many bushels 

 we are going to get to the acre. I will let you 

 know after thrashing. We managed to get it 

 shocked up a little before it was dry enough 

 to shell out, and we have not been bothered 

 by an}' storms. But I tell you there was lots 

 of hard work about it. We tried cutting 

 about an acre that was down the worst, by 

 hand; but I found it was going to cost me 

 about $.3.00 an acre to do the cutting and 

 binding. The man with the Pony binder says 

 he cuts wheat for oO cents an acre if a team is 

 furnished; but with the amount of grain on our 

 land, the twine, which must be purchased if 

 we use the machine, costs another 50 cents. 

 Then there were so many places where the 

 crop was so heavy that the binder could not 

 handle it all, it cost fully $1.50 to harvest it 

 and set it up, even with the machine. 



Unfortunately, the Pony binder was not in 

 the best kind of repair — that is, the revolving 

 aprons were not; and we had to stop the first 

 day and telephone for a new apron. They 

 did not send the right one, so we were obliged 

 to patch up the old one. Now, our experience 

 in this line illustrates a point in business that 

 I have tried to make plain a good many times. 

 The owner of the machine should have mea- 

 sured his apron, and described it so there 

 could be no mistake ; then he should have 

 gone to the telephone and either made his 

 order or listened while it was being made. 



You may say, " Why, can't you trust a reg- 

 ular business man to do business ? ' ' My ex- 

 perience has been a thousand times to the 

 effect that you can not trust an ordinary busi- 

 ness man to do business unless you watch him 

 and see he does it right. This may be a little 

 hard on some of our friends, but it is too often 

 true. If you are in a critical position, and 

 much depends upon there being no sort of 

 mistake or misunderstanding, keep your eye 

 and ear on every detail of the business, from 

 beginning to end. Let me give another bit of 

 experience in that wheatfield. 



When the owner decided he would have to 

 mend the old blanket, and go ahead the best 

 he could, I felt pretty sure I had better watch 

 him all the way through, although I was 

 needed very much in another direction. There 

 were two men, two boys, and three horses 

 that would soon be at a standstill. He 

 thought it would take twenty minutes. I 

 said it would take an hour. It took an hour 

 and ten minutes; and if I had not given it my 

 personal supervision I do not know how much 

 longer it might have taken. The owner of 

 the machine went up to the factor}^ and got 

 the material he needed. He wanted to fasten 

 the heavy canvas to some strips of wood. As 

 soon as I saw him driving the small-headed 

 wire nails through the canvas I told him the 

 heads would pull out quicker than he could 

 drive them in. I suggested that some strips 

 of leather be laid down first before driving the 



