THE COUNTRY HOME [chapter 



is less than $8.00 per acre. Market gardening is, 

 therefore, one of the most profitable means of earn- 

 ing a living from the land. However, I am writ- 

 ing more specifically for those who are desirous of 

 surrounding themselves with home luxuries. A 

 good garden for this class is absolutely a necessity. 

 It will furnish half the food used, while the orchard 

 and fruit garden will go far toward furnishing the 

 other half. City dwellers can hardly comprehend 

 the assertion that our best country vegetables, 

 fresh from the ground, constitute the most delicious 

 food ever placed on the table. 



Most of the romance of old-time homes in the 

 country was associated with the vegetable and herb 

 garden. Lucky beans are still seen on watch 

 charms, and potatoes are carried in pockets to cure 

 rheumatism. They possibly do it quite as well as 

 drugs in the stomach. In leap-year it is said that 

 all the peas and beans grow the wrong way in the 

 pod — it being women's year, and " Women do con- 

 trarious." To sleep in a bean field was thought to 

 induce insanity. Bean soup removed freckles. 

 The Romans thought parsley good to stifle fumes 

 of wine. I remember an old woman who argued 

 that a beet flowering the first year from seed im- 



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