THE STRAWBERRY 



A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS 

 OF STRAWBERRY PRODUCTION IN ALL ITS BRANCHES 



Volume I No. 11 



Three Rivers, Mich., November, 1906 



$1.00 a Year 



day! I'm aiwaj's sorry now, when apple time comes and I 

 can't make out to eat more than one or two at the most. And 

 then the stomach of a heahhy boy becomes chief of the things 

 I envy. 



But do you know what calls up the most blissful remem- 

 brances of all those youthful days — and it seems to me those 

 look into the changing and picturesque figures, which nothing coals over on that side of the fire are just now reproducing the 

 else makes to such perfection as hickory coals, with their won- scene as a human artist might do it? Well, sir, its that straw- 

 drous brilliancy. And while we look and wonder at the kalei- berry patch that lay just between the house and the vegetable 

 doscopic transformation scenes, memory recalls visions of other garden. You remember it, don't you? Just a little to one 

 days in the old homestead, where another great hearth gave off side of the old well, with its long sweep always pointing off to 



(^VEMBLR'S winds are blowing out of the 

 north, and the bleak landscape tells of winter's 

 approach. In the light of the blazing hearth, 

 with the music of the crackling hickory logs, 

 winter seems a delightful season of the year. 

 Stir up the fire and make it merrier, and let us 



its comfort and its 

 cheer, and made us 

 boys and girls long 

 for evening and the 

 family circle gath- 

 ered in its warm and 

 generous radiance. 

 Ah! those days and 

 those nights of filial 

 and fraternal com- 

 panionship — how 

 the thought of them 

 causes the incidents 

 and scenes of those 

 long days of youth 

 and their myriad 

 tender associations 

 to limn themselves 

 anew, and in the 

 glowing coals we 

 may fancy the "or- 

 chard, the meadow 



-you'll find a patch of strawberries the rallying place for all the members of the family." 



the northwest. ^Ve 

 boys liked the or- 

 chard, and the barn, 

 and to visit with 

 Old Kit and Fanny, 

 the best team you 

 ever saw in all your 

 life, if they couldn't 

 make a mile in Dan 

 Patch's time. And 

 you haven't forgot- 

 ten little Jerse\-, 

 have you, that used 

 to give such quan- 

 tities of cream at 

 one milking that I 

 daren't give \()u the 

 figures forfearyou'd 

 doubt my truthful- 

 ness. I can taste the 

 cream vet. But that 



the deep-tangled wildwood, and all the strawberry patch — it was the one place that every member of the 



loved spots ' that made youth and home and the old farm family took an interest in, and we boys never growled any when 



sources of never-ending delight. time came to work there. I guess I was the one that "took'.' 



There was that immense hay mow in the barn that Father to the work more naturally than the others, but Dick and Lucy 



built in the year of the big fire. Don't you remember how we were always ready to help, because there was recompense for 



used to climb up there when tl'.e October rains were falling, every minute spent in that patch. Remember the Wilsons, 



and lie in the sweet-scented hay and listen to the patter-patter and the Crescents, and that old juicy Jociuida.' — makes a fel- 



of the drops upon its great broad roof? What hours for day- low's mouth water to just to think of them! And when I recall 



dreams and plans that never went beyond the dreaming, "^'et what that patch yielded in the way of the most delicious fruit 



ihere were plans made then that did materialize, and what v\'e ever grown — fruit that must have charmed the gods themselves 



are today and what we actually are doing relate themselves di- if ever there were any of those mythological chaps around having 



rectly to those hours spent in quiet reflection or in optimistic a respectable man's appetite for good things, 

 converse beneath the generous shelter of the old barn! Surely Don't suppose yoti e\'er knew how I paid my way through 



"the child is father to the man." college did you? Well, sir, that little patch did the business; 



Then there was the orchard, "where good digestion waits on or, I might say that I did the business with that little patch, 



appetite, and health on both." And how we used to test our How big was it? I can't exactly say — used to look pretty big 



digestive powers when the Rhode Island Greenings and the sometimes when I had to go over it with the hand cultivator 



Northern Spies were a-gathering. Say, you wouldn't dare to and the hoe. But I suppose it was about two hundred feet 



tell how many of those great big juicy fellows you ate in one long and from one hundred to one hundred and fifty teet wide. 



