950 
Th*  RURAL.  NEW. YORKER 
July  14,  1923 
Hope  Farm  Notes 
At  73  1  have  had  a  Hope  Farm  vaca¬ 
tion.  Last  year  I  bought  1(H)  Howard 
No.  17  strawberry  plants,  kept  the  run¬ 
ners  off  and  the  weeds  out.  I  have  al¬ 
ready  picked  1,012  quarts  and  still  they 
are  coming.  I  want  to  carry  them  over 
another  year.  Shall  I  keep  the  runners 
picked  off  this  Fall?  Again,  shall  I  buy 
new  plants  next  Spring,  or  use  my  own? 
My  cow  won’t  touch  grain  unless  I  put 
salt  in  it.  Is  so  much  salt  good  for  her 
twice  a  day?  w.  I.  warren. 
Our  friend  refers  to  what  we  said 
about  an  ideal  vacation.  If  I  could  do 
just  as  I  pleased  I  would  take  a  good 
acreage  of  strawberries  and  keep  them 
clean  with  a  hoe.  I  should  enjoy  that  as 
a  Summer  job.  Of  course,  I  know  that 
such  an  occupation  would  seem  like  slav¬ 
ery  to  many  who  read  this.  I  am  not 
planning  any  Summer  vacation  for  others 
— that  is  what  'I  should  do  from  choice. 
One  man  says  he  would  play  golf. 
“Why,”  he  says,  “when  you  hit  the  ball 
just  right  and  see  it  go  soaring  up  in 
the  air  and  think  how’  close  it  will  come 
to  the  hole  you  get  a  thrill.  If  you  have 
never  experienced  it  you  hare  lost  half 
your  life!" 
Then  comes  another  man  who  says  that 
his  idea  of  a  vacation  is  to  go  tramping 
off  through  the  woods.  “W  hen  night 
comes  you  are  tired  out.  You  build  a  fire 
and  cook  your  fish  and  bacon,  then  light 
your  pipe  and  play  cards  by  the  firelight. 
If  you  have  never  had  that  experience 
you  hacc  lost  half  your  life!" 
Still  another  says  he  would  take  his  va¬ 
cation  at  the  race  track.  “You  sit  in  that 
great  crowd,  swaying  with  emotion,  and 
watch  the  horses  come  down  the  home 
stretch,  straining  to  the  limit  of  blood 
and  muscle;  well,  if  you  have  never  ex¬ 
perienced  that  thrill  “ you  hare  lost  half 
your  life!" 
1  have  a  friend  who  says  just  the  same 
thing  of  a  prize  fight.  Still  another  says 
his  idea  of  a  great  vacation  is  to  attend 
some  wonderful  religious  revival.  The 
great  volume  of  sound  rolls  out  over  the 
hills  as  the  crowd  sings  some  familiar 
hymn.  The  prayer,  the  sermon,  sways 
the  great  crowd  until  some  Divine 
spirit  sweeps  over  the  meeting.  You  can 
feel  it  passing.  It  is  more  tangible  than 
an  electric  shock,  ,and  Until  you  can  ex¬ 
perience  such  a  feeling  you  have  lost  half 
your  life! 
*  *  *  *  * 
Most  of  them  gave  me  that  expression 
— not  in  these  exact  words,  perhaps,  but 
that  is  what  they  mean.  They  can  see 
no  possible  thrill  in  hoeing  strawberries 
in  the  hot  sun.  It  seems  to  me  that  if 
you  lose  half  your  life  in  failing  to  ex¬ 
perience  those  thrills  one  must  have  more 
lives  than  a  cat  to  get  it  all.  I  was  think¬ 
ing  of  all  this  last  Saturday  as  I  worked 
in  that  patch  of  strawberries  near  the 
house.  We  stop  work  early  on  Saturday, 
but  I  do  not  call  my  job  work,  so  I  kept 
at  it.  The  boys  have  been  picking  cher¬ 
ries  all  day.  Now  they  tire  going  down 
to  the  millpond  for  a  swim  in  the  cold 
spring  water.  Thomas  will  take  the  last 
crates  of  cherries  wrhen  he  goes  home  for 
the  week.  The  hay  on  the  lower  field  is 
cocked  up  for  over  Sunday,  and  the  po¬ 
tatoes  have  been  cultivated.  Mother  is 
on  the  front  porch,  “visiting”  with  her 
company.  My  daughter  has  gone  to  New 
York  to  make  one  final  appeal  for  little 
Rose,  and  here  I  am,  lioe  in  hand,  clean¬ 
ing  up  these  berries.  This  is  the  fourth 
time  I  have  hoed  them  this  season,  and 
Broker  has  dragged  the  cultivator 
through  them  three  times.  But  w’hat 
share  of  life  am  I  losing  for  lack  of 
“thrills”?  When  I  cut  out  that  big  red 
root  or  swing  my  hoe  at  that  dock,  it 
seems  to  me  that  I  get  as  much  out  of  life 
as  the  man  who  swings  his  golf  stick. 
Surely  I  accomplish  more.  On  the  other 
side  of  the  rose  arbor  the  boys  are  play¬ 
ing  tennis;  they  are  back  from  their 
swim.  The  ball  comes  sailing  over  among 
the  strawberries.  I  can  knock  it  back 
and  thus  save  half  my  life.  As  for  camp¬ 
ing  in  the  woods.  1  can  hoe  out  a  full- 
appetite  here,  and  when  evening  comes 
the  baked  beans  and  strawberries  will  be 
very  suitable.  As  for  smoking  and  play¬ 
ing  cards  by  the  firelight,  well.,  I  am 
prepared  to  let  that  half  of  life  go.  In 
regard  to  horse  racing  and  prize  fighting, 
that  is  a  very  pretty  race  between  these 
two  kudzu  plants.  One  of  them  has 
climbed  the  rose  arbor  tind  the  other  is 
right  after  it.  Prize  fighting?  That  big 
plant  of  dock  has  nearly  knocked  out 
that  plant  of  Gandy,  while  the  crab 
grass  is  side  stepping  around  that  Big 
Joe,  watching  for  a  good  opening.  I’ll 
attend  to  them  with  a  straight  right  with 
the  hoe  and  a  left  hook  with  the  fingers. 
You  may  think  it  hard  to  develop  any 
religious  excitement  over  hoeing  straw¬ 
berries.  but  that  may  be  because  you  have 
saved  too  much  of  your  life  over  these 
other  things.  Just  see  the  glory  of  that 
rose  arbor.  It  is  a  mass  of  red  and  white 
and  green.  The  air  is  filled  with  its 
fragrance.  These  peach  trees  are  loaded 
with  fruit.  The  sky  is  dark  blue,  with 
fleecy  white  clouds  sailing  gently  about. 
Right  here  in  Northern  New  Jersey 
where  the  land  begins  to  slope  down  to 
the  ocean  we  get  that  most  glorious  com¬ 
bination  on  rare  occasions.  It  is  enough 
to  make  even  a  strawberry  man  lean  on 
his  hoe  and  watch  these  white  cloud 
ships  sailing  over  the  blue  sky.  And  here 
are  these  berry  plants.  They  have  had 
a  hard  life.  The  drought  caught  them 
and  they  wilted.  I  thought  they  were 
dead  at  one  time ;  some  of  them  have 
given  up,  but  we  have  brought  most  of 
them  along,  and  now  they  are  big  and 
strong — sending  out  a  great  army  of  run¬ 
ners  in  the  very  joy  of  living.  And  this 
soil.  I  can  well  remember  when  it  was 
tough  old  sod,  hard  and  dry  and  full  of 
grubs  and  roots.  We  have  tinctured  it 
with  lime,  filled  it  with  organic  matter, 
chopped  and  jdowed  and  worked  it  until 
now  it  is  like  a  garden.  “ Lost  half  your 
life?”  I  am  not  so  sure  of  that.  It 
seems  to  me  that  one  may,  if  he  will, 
climb  as  far  up  the  heights  with  a  hoe 
as  he  ever  can  with  a  golf  club  or  a  gun. 
***** 
But  we  have  drifted  away  from  those 
questions  from  Mr.  Warren.  When  a 
man  plants  100  Howard  strawberries, 
propagates  plants  from  them,  waves  his 
hoe  over  them  like  a  magic  wand,  and 
picks  1,012  quarts — with  more  to  follow 
—he  surely  does  something !  That  is  part 
of  the  real  joy  of  living  and  one  of  the 
rewards  of  such  a  vacation  as  I  would 
take.  No,  you  never  will  raise  such  ber¬ 
ries  with  a  golf  stick.  These  plants  are 
good  for  another  run  next  year.  We 
should  dig  out  about  half  this  year’s 
fruiting  plants,  start  new  runners  and 
keep  the  bed  fully  clean.  Let  a  fair 
number  of  runners  root  down'  and  then 
cut  off  the  rest  as  fast  as  they  form.  We 
should  not  buy  new  plants,  but  use  these 
runners  for  setting.  Why  not  put  some 
of  them  out  right  now — as  soon  as  they 
are  large  enough?  They  can  be  planted 
after  early  peas  or  put  in  early  sweet 
corn,  the  stalks  to  be  cut  out  later.  Such 
plants,  if  well  cared  for,  will  make  a  nice 
growth  and  give  a  small  crop  next  Spring 
—then  if  they  are  kept  clean  they  will 
give  a  bumper  crop  in  1925.  I  do  not 
need  to  tell  Mr.  Warren  how  to  cultivate 
such  plants.  His  crop  shows  that  he 
knows  more  than  I  do  about  that. 
***** 
As  for  the  cow  that  craves  salt,  I 
should  give  her  what  she  wants.  Some 
cows,  like  some  humans,  have  an  abnor¬ 
mal  craving  for  salt.  L  have  known  peo¬ 
ple  to  go  about  licking  a  lump  of  rock 
salt,  as  children  lick  rock  candy.  Of 
course,  we  know  of  people  who  use  salt 
freely  on  melons,  or  even  oranges  and 
bananas.  I  never  could  understand  why, 
but  the  fact  remains  that  many  people 
have  this  intense  craving  for  salt.  They 
are  uneasy  or  actually  out  of  sorts  if  the 
salt  supply  fails.  I  have  observed,  that 
this  craving  is  usually  found  among  peo¬ 
ple  who  live  in  the  interior,  far  from  salt 
water.  Those  who  live  on  the  seacoast 
are  not.  as  a  rule,  heavy  consumers  of 
salt.  The  general  belief  seems  to  be  that 
all  people,  regardless  of  race,  are  fond  of 
sugar.  That  theory  is  not  correct.  We 
are  told  that  many  people  who  live  in  the 
far  North  do  not  like  sugar.  They  have 
to  acquire  the  taste  before  they  develop 
what  is  known  as  a  “sweet  tooth.”  The 
same  seems  to  be  true  of  some  of  the 
other  things  which  we  consider  essential 
to  good  living.  Dr.  Orenfel  tells  of  a  case 
where  he  wanted  to  do  something  agree¬ 
able  for  some  native  boys  in  Labrador. 
So  he  made  cocoa,  sweetened  it  well  and 
gave  each  boy  a  cupful.  They  tasted  it, 
but  when  the  doctor’s  back  was  turned 
poured  it  out  on  the  ground  and  drank 
spring  water  from  choice.  There  is  a 
book  entitled  “Diet  and  Race”  in  which 
the  author  undertakes  to  prove  that  the 
consumption  of  salt  has  had  most  to  do 
with  determining  the  color  of  the  various 
races.  Most  of  us  would  be  likely  to  say 
that  our  modern  black  man  represents 
many  generations  of  sun  painting  on  the 
human  skin,  but  this  author  points  to  cer¬ 
tain  tribes  of  salt  eaters  in  Africa  who 
are  essentially  sunburnt  white  men.  I 
do  not  pretend  to  know  much  about  it. 
but  a  fair  amount  of  salt  seems  to  be 
more  essential  to  reasonable  health  than 
is  sugar.  I  imagine  that  the  difference  be¬ 
tween  the  salt  eaters  and  the  non-salt 
eaters  is  partially  due  to  bringing  up  and 
partly  to  difference  in  constitution.  The 
salt  eater  does  not  of  necessity  belong  to 
the  salt  of  the  earth  society.  I  have 
heard  people  say  that  this  fierce  demand 
for  salt  indicates  a  depraved  taste — much 
like  the  habit  of  chewing  pieces  of  tar  or 
slate  pencils.  To  my  mind  this  differ¬ 
ence  in  salt  craving  is  no  more  remark¬ 
able  than  these  ideas  about  spending  a 
vacation.  Those  who  prefer  golf  or  horse 
racing  to  hoeing  strawberries  have  my 
sympathy,  but  I  realize  that  they  may  be 
good  though  misguided  citizens.  But.  re¬ 
gardless  of  salt  or  vacations,  my  daughter 
has  just  ’phoned  that  she  expects  to  have 
little  Rose  once  more — in  a  few  days. 
We  hope  that  will  be  a  vacation  which 
we  can  salt  down  in  memory.  H.  w.  c. 
Practically 
Self- 
Operating 
Patented  auto  foot  frame  shift,  regulating  width  of 
furrow  when  plowing  on  side  hills  and  around  curves; 
automatic  shifting  hitch,  maintaining  correct  line  of 
draft;  automatic  horse  lift,  and  Syracuse  bottoms 
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This  is  an  ideal  plow  for  stony,  hilly  land.  It  is  equipped 
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across  the  field,  throwing  the  soil  all  one  way — a  special  ad¬ 
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