A MARKET GARDENER'S DAY, 
Preparing a Load for the Street Market. 
Not every one, perhaps, knows much of the truck 
gardener’s preparation for street market. This market 
is held in Dunkirk, on Tuesday and Friday of each 
week, and Mondays and Thursdays find every member 
of the family busy. No hired man is kept on the 30- 
acre farm, but help is engaged by the day. The man so 
engaged is always required to be present to help with 
these bi-weekly preparations. Five o’clock 
finds the family aroused and started on 
their day’s work. Out of doors, the horse 
must be fed and watered, the cow brought 
from the pasture and milked, and the pigs 
fed. While this is being done outside, 
breakfast is preparing indoors. After 
breakfast the horse must be curried and 
brushed. By the time all of this is done 
it is seven o’clock, and the hired man 
comes. He is usually set to work at dig¬ 
ging potatoes, as every load contains 10 oi¬ 
ls bushels. The farmer busies himself by 
picking from 15 to 20 dozen ears of early 
sweet corn, cutting cabbage-heads and 
doing other odd jobs about the place. 
Often, if time permits, he harnesses the 
horse to the cultivator and cultivates 
some of the crops for an hour or two be¬ 
fore dinner. 
The dinner hour comes and a hearty 
farmer’s dinner is disposed of. After din¬ 
ner is over the hired man returns to his 
potato digging, the women do up the din¬ 
ner work, while the farmer takes himself 
to the fields with the wheelbarrow. When 
he returns the vehicle is loaded with an 
assortment of beets, carrots and two sizes 
of onions, large ones for cooking and 
small ones for eating uncooked. Then 
comes the work of the women, for all 
these must be washed and tied in bunches. 
The load is emptied in some convenient 
spot in the shade, and the work begins in 
earnest. The women come armed with a 
pail of water, a large dishpan, a small, 
sharp knife and several bunches of string 
of different lengths. One thoroughly 
washes the beets and carrots, while the 
other ties them in bunches, four beets in a 
bunch, and from four to six carrots, much 
depending on the size. After the beets 
and carrots come the more odoriferous 
onions, which must have the roots and 
outside skin removed with the knife before 
being washed. The large ones are tied 
three in a bunch and the small ones from 
six to ten. These are tied in two places, 
once near the bottom and again about six 
inches above; the tops are then cut off 
evenly about two inches above the second 
string. After this is finished one of the 
women, basket in hand, goes to pick the 
wax beans, while the other goes to pick 
the Summer squashes, then the large sweet 
peppers, and lastly the tomatoes. The tomatoes are all 
wiped clean with a soft cloth, then packed snugly in 
baskets holding about 20 pounds each. 
During this time the farmer has been picking up the 
potatoes, and then with horse and stone-boat hauls the 
potatoes to the barn. If there is any extra time it is 
spent in hoeing. After supper, again come the chores, 
then the wagon has to be loaded for an early start the 
next morning. This is no easy task, for it takes con¬ 
siderable ingenuity successfully to store away in one 
common-sized wagon 10 or 12 bushels of potatoes, 10 
or 15 dozen ears of sweet corn, a bushel of wax beans, 
about two bushels of cabbage, two or three bushels of 
tomatoes, a dozen squashes, a half bushel of peppers, a 
dozen bunches of small onions, 10 or 12 dozen bunches 
of large ones, 10 to 15 bunches each of beets and carrots, 
beside other extras, such as a bushel of apples or a few 
quarts of berries. At last the day’s work is finished, and 
the farmer after reading his daily newspaper a short 
time retires to rest, for he knows he must get an early 
start for his six-mile drive to Dunkirk. Earlier in the 
season this programme might have varied somewhat, and 
later eggplant, Fima beans and cauliflower will be added. 
New York. myrel e. sharp. 
A Maryland Trucker’s View. 
It began early; at 2 A. M. the alarm sang its cheerful 
tune, and more asleep than awake I get into into my 
clothes and stumble down to the kitchen, and after 
dumping a few kerosene soaked chips into the stove 
for a quick fire I go down to the stable to feed the 
horse and put the harness on him. By the time I come 
up to the house the steam is coming out of the kettle, 
and shortly a cup of coffee and a bowl of some one 
of the patent ready-to-eat breakfast foods is stowed 
away to keep me company on my drive to market six 
miles away, and I may add that I feel a whole heap 
better than if I had filled up on fried pork and a lot of 
other indigestible stuff, and at the same time I have the 
satisfaction of knowing that the good wife has not had 
to get out of bed at that unearthly hour and go to cook¬ 
ing. But early as it is, before I start I hear a neighbor's 
wagon on the pike, and if it happens to be a moonlight 
morning, as it was not this morning, a long procession 
of wagons all hurrying on to town may 
be seen all loaded with some one or other 
of all kinds of fruit or vegetables that are 
grown in Maryland, and every other road 
leading into town has the same proces¬ 
sion. On the. river or moored at the 
wharf is a fleet of steamers laden down 
until their decks are almost awash. 
Verily it is no small job to feed a great 
city, and verily if you are helping to do it 
you have to get up soon in the morning! 
I got in about half-past four, and hailed 
a market man. He came out to the 
wagon and asked what I wanted for my 
tomatoes. “Thirty-five cents a basket.” 
I would take 30, but a market man always 
wants the farmer to knock off a few cents. 
“I’ll give you 30,” he says, after asking me 
if they are packed “straight,” and being 
told that they are. I promptly tell him I 
will take his offer and unload my load on 
the pavement, and the last basket is no 
sooner on the street than his hand goes 
into his pocket, and the cash comes into 
mine. Trucking is certainly the cashest 
business there is. When you cut wheat it 
must still be thrashed; hay must be dried; 
corn must be husked, but truck—you 
gather it from the field to-day and to¬ 
morrow the cash is in your pocket. This 
year is my first year at the business, and 
when I started in on tomatoes I made it 
a rule not only to pack my tomatoes 
“straight,” but also to put the extra large 
ones on the bottom as well as the top. I 
did it without any particular motive, but 
I find it has paid me in dollars. Anyone 
whom I have ever sold to is ready to buy 
of me again, and at a good price, and 
it certainly does give you a comfortable 
feeling when you see a chap digging down 
in a basket of your tomatoes to know he 
is going to find just as good if not better 
the farther he goes down. 
I go back to my day; it is not yet day¬ 
light, however. I have a few baskets of 
“culls” left which give me more trouble 
to sell than my whole load of good toma¬ 
toes, but they are finally sold, and I start 
for home and get there just as the family 
■ are ready to eat breakfast. I sit down 
with them and after another good square 
meal I am ready to start the day again. 
There ought to be another load of toma¬ 
toes ready tor to-morrow; but there isn’t; 
it is a bad season for them, so the hired man takes 
another horse and cultivates the late cabbage while 
I put on poison to kill the worms. About 10 o’clock 
I have finished, and about the same time I miss 
the three hours of sleep I have lost, and forthwith 
find a cool spot, and many a millionaire would give a 
good-sized check to be able to sleep as I do for the next 
two hours. 
After dinner a load of hay is to be taken to a neigh¬ 
bor’s. Out of respect to the years of my hired man (he 
is 70 or more) I let him get on the wagon and I get in 
the mow. Harvest time I think the horse fork is a 
PREPARING THE MARKET GARDENER’S LOAD. Fig. 197. 
THE HOAD READY FOR SHIPMENT. Fig. 198. 
