172 PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



provide her husband with sufficient energy-producing food for the 

 heavy muscular activity of his day's work. Then she must provide the 

 body-building food necessary for her children, who are sitting quietly 

 in school, but are growing all the while, then the baby needs his food 

 prepared and administered with clock-like precision. It is necessary 

 that she plan her own diet, and have regular hours for her meals. Then, 

 if she provides the means for the farm hands, she must study history 

 and know how to cook the national dishes of her husband's employees. 

 And this is only the foundation of her problem. Cooking for the 

 climate is a most important part of her work. This means pork and 

 beans for cold days and cool salads for hot days. It means shifting 

 the meat dishes to the breakfast meal in the picking season and the 

 substitution of nuts and macaroni for the dinner meat in the idle 

 rainy season. It means hot, appetizing heavy suppers from June to 

 October and simple bread and milk suppers before the open fire from 

 December to March. 



Cooking for one's ancestors is more important than is at first appar- 

 ent. Suppose a young Massachusetts farmer comes to California to 

 raise apples and eventually marries one of the daughters of old Spain. 

 Is it not certain there must be some adjustment between his ancestral 

 love of pie for breakfast and her desire for enchiladas? 



Enough sleep is not a matter of the number of hours we may spend 

 in bed. The purpose of sleep is to provide complete cessation of 

 activity, so that the body may be repaired for the work of the next day. 

 The individual who makes a business of sleeping and who sleeps in the 

 open air will get his sleeping done in much less time than the one who 

 cultivates the habit of reviewing the day's events and making out a 

 trouble schedule for the next day before he gets to sleep. 



Play is but another form of rest for the adult. Play serves many 

 purposes for the child, but it is a necessary thing for the father and 

 mother as well as for the child. The parents who are too old or too 

 busy to play with their children will find their influence over those 

 children steadily slipping away. It is real economy for the mother to 

 take the girls to the best theater plays and to hear good music. It pays 

 for the father to go with his boys to see the city, and to show them 

 what is safe and what is unsafe in its varied amusements. It is a good 

 investment to take the family to the high Sierras or along the coast in 

 the summer. The telephone is not a luxury. It is important for the 

 tired mother to have her recreation, and the relaxation of a daily visit 

 with her distant neighbors on a ten-party line is part of the family 

 play. The current magazines and a good phonograph or pianola with 

 well selected music yield big returns on the purchase price. 



It pays to grow flowers and to use them in the decoration of the 

 house. The box of candy one occasionally buys for his wife is not 

 foolish sentiment. These are the things that make the home, as dis- 

 tinct from the house. Anything will serve for a house, provided it 

 be dry and light and airy. By this I do not mean that a modern, 

 well arranged house is not desirable. A convenient kitchen and the 

 various labor-saving household devices are worth all they cost. But 

 the most sanitary and convenient farmhouse that can be built will soon 

 degenerate in the course of a generation into a ' ' chuck house ' ' for hired 

 men unless the atmosphere of the home be created. This requires study 



