STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 97 



I have also corresponded with a lady in that town who has 

 an acre of raspberries, from which she has picked forty bushels. 

 Most of these were sold fresh, but she canned about six bushels 

 which she sold at 20 cents per pint or 33 1-3 cents per quart, 

 and the jars returned. 



Celery : In connection with berries celery is a profitable crop 

 to raise. With only help from a man to prepare the ground 

 a woman could raise hundreds of plants. One spring I raised 

 six hundred small plants in the house. These were set out in 

 solid beds, the plants about six inches apart each way. They 

 were the self-blanching varieties like White Plume and Golden 

 Self-blanching. The soil was very rich and moist, in fact it 

 was on a slope where it had received the wash from the barn- 

 yard. The plants grew so large and so closely together that 

 they required no blanching except boards around the outside. 



In the fall we lifted them carefully by the roots and set them 

 in shallow boxes, a dozen in a box, and sold them in our village 

 at seventy-five cents per box and thought that a good price. 

 But a friend of mine has done the same thing and found no 

 trouble in getting $1.25 per box. Families like to buy boxes 

 to keep in the cellar, and the stores also will buy it that way. 



III. POULTRY. 



For a steady, all the year round work and income. I know 

 of nothing better for a woman on the farm than poultry. 



Keeping poultry by the hundreds of course is a very dififerent 

 matter from keeping a dozen or so and letting them pick up 

 their own living. Women seem to be well adapted to managing 

 incubators and brooders, and these are almost indispensable 

 now in a large business. Hens are contrary things sometimes, 

 and they won't always set just when you want them to, and if 

 you want a nice lot of eggs to sell about this time, when it 

 looks as though there is no limit to the price in Boston, it is 

 quite necessary to have your pullets hatched pretty early in 

 April. There is a great advantage in having them all just 

 about the same age, as they can run together and have the same 

 feed. 



The methods now practiced in using dry feeds make the work 

 so much lighter that one woman can care for several hundred 

 hens. 



