The Guernsey Breed 23 



To a visitor, perhaps the grape crop is the most interest- 

 ing of all the crops grown. Once in two or three years the 

 grapes can be forced unusually early, and they often then 

 command a price as high as $1.25 per pound, or even more. 

 One of the growers told me that in a single season he sold 

 $13,000 worth of grapes from four houses. The usual price, 

 however, ranges from 25 to 50c per pound. The best of these 

 grapes are so much better than any other grapes I have tasted 

 that there is no comparison. The varieties mostly grown 

 are the Tokays and Muscats, though I think the best of any 

 I have tasted is the Canon Hall. 



In the early spring months the amount of flowers shipped 

 daily to England is incredible. On the Thursday preceding 

 Easter in 1907 I went down to the wharf at 6 a. m. and found 

 that the work of transferring flowers from the wagons to the 

 boat had proceeded since 4:30 a. m. Still there was a stream 

 of wagons a mile long waiting to unload, and it was after 10 

 o'clock before the last of the flowers were safely on board. 

 The shipment that day amounted to over 17,000 cases, most 

 of which were three to five feet long, a foot wide, and eight 

 inches high. 



When the flowers are grown out of doors the fields in 

 bloom make a beautiful sight, indeed. I remember a field of 

 jonquils that I used to pass every day on my way to the 

 country, and as we went out in the morning we saw a force 

 of a dozen men, women and girls start picking on one edge 

 of the field. When we came back for luncheon at 1 o'clock 

 they were half way across the field, and where they had begun 

 to pick the yellow was beginning to show again. By night 

 the workers had finished, but on the side where they had 

 begun the field was almost as yellow as it was in the morning. 

 The picking went on day after day, and later, when the flower 

 season was over and the plants had died down, the field 

 would be planted to vetches and oats, either to be fed as a 

 soiling crop or more often to be grazed ofif by cows tethered 

 there. Still later the field might grow a crop of turnips. This 

 succession of crops may go on for two or three years, when, 

 after the last crop, the field would be spaded over by hand 

 and an enormous quantity of bulbs harvested, many of the 

 best of them going to the bulb dealers of New York, Phila- 

 delphia and Chicago. 



Many of the crops grown in the houses are planted in 



pots, and when the crop is matured the pots are carried out, 



and some other plants that have been started in pots are 

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