American Agriculturist, August 23, 1924 
Selling Farm Produce by Letter 
(Continued Jrovi page llj) 
out and pick up your own apples. I’ll sell stimulated by the use of letters to good 
you apples from the ground, somewhat customers in towns within easy motor- 
bruised, but good cooking apples at 25 cents i n g distance.— Frank Farrington, New 
f__ Violf-kucViel UnaVpt full. Ynu furnish YORK 
119 
for a half-bushel basket full. You furnish 
your own bag or basket. Yours truly, 
Henry Mable. 
Selling Late Apples 
Here is another apple letter for use. in 
selling the fall and winter apples, which 
are a different proposition. 
Dear Madam:—No apples have a better 
flavor than those grown right around here. 
These apples will keep better too for winter 
use than apples joggled over a thousand 
miles of railroad. 
Apples will keep a long time if handled 
with care and kept in a cool, moist atmos¬ 
phere. 
I’ve made a sort of specialty of my apples 
for years, and I don’t believe any nicer 
Northern Spys are to be had anywhere. 
And Greenings and Baldwins too. For 
early winter use I have some Tompkins 
Kings that are the best baking apple you 
ever saw. 
How many apples do you want for fall 
and winter? Have you a cool cellar where 
they will keep? If you have, you’d.better 
buy two or three barrels. If you can’t keep 
them, buy a couple of bushels at a time. 
All my apples are carefully hand picked 
and delivered with just as little jolting and 
handling as possible. 
$4 a barrel, $1.50 a bushel right now. 
A good combination for a single barrel is 
one with a bushel of Spys in the bottom, a 
bushel of Baldwins on top of them, and a 
bushel of Kings on the very top. 
I will sort up a barrel any way you say 
and bring you as many or as few as you 
want. Send me a card or telephone me on 
the Farmers’ Line. 
Yours truly, Peter Black. 
Change to Fit Your Needs 
It is not expected that any of these 
letters will exactly fit any farmer’s need. 
It will be necessary to change them to 
make them fit. But in the main they are 
adapted to general use, and a wise farmer, 
if he does not keep a file of these papers, 
will clip out the letters at least, and lay 
them in his desk where he can find them 
when he wants them. 
The more letters a man writes, the 
easier it is to write them, and the more 
effective letters he can write. It is easily 
possible for a farmer to get into the way 
of selling his products by the help of such 
letters, and he will gradually accumulate 
a good list of people who have bought 
from him. He must, of course, use the 
same care a merchant does, to treat his 
customers well and give them satisfactory 
products and make good anything they 
think is not right. It is less convenient 
for housewives to buy from the farmer, 
and he must offset the inconvenience 
by making it as easy as possible and 
by giving superior products when he 
can. 
Letters Help Roadside Markets 
The farmer who maintains a roadside 
stand can stimulate sales by the.use of 
letters which tell people where he is, how 
to get there, and what his prices are. He 
may not deliver at all. It is possible for 
a farmer going into the roadside-stand 
business on a larger scale than some to 
get up a little card with a map on it show¬ 
ing the roads leading out his way. He 
can take pains to treat all comers hospi¬ 
tably. Showing 
them around the 
place if they will 
stop, offering them 
a drink of good 
spring water, send¬ 
ing them away 
believing that he 
is an up-to-date, 
intelligent grower 
and producer 
whom’they Jwill like 
to patronize. 
Just how far this 
roadside trade is 
going it is hard to 
say, but it is cer¬ 
tainly true that 
such selling can be 
This Sign Sells the Farm Prod¬ 
ucts on the Gwin Farm 
W ITH road-building going on at a 
rapid rate in the Corn Belt, roadside 
advertising along the State highways has 
taken a start. 
Pioneers in this in their neighborhood 
are Mr. and Mrs. James Gwin of Gotham, 
Wisconsin. Mr. Gwin is one of the 
prominent beekeepers of his State. Mrs, 
Gwin is specializing in White Leghorns. 
Recently they put up a big sign at the 
farm gate, big so that the letters could 
be large and well-spaced on it, so that the 
motorist could take it in at a glance as he 
sped by. The photograph on page 114 
shows the sign. 
“We sold 70 pounds of honey the day 
after we put up the sign,” says Mr. Gwin. 
A motor touring party from Illinois drove 
by, saw the sign and turned in the gate. 
The result as Mrs. Gwin give-- it was the 
sale of a fine bunch of her fancy cockerels. 
There have been many other sales since 
which Mr. and Mrs. Gwin credit the sign 
with. 
They believe that with the increasing 
volume of motor-touring traffic, western 
farmers are going to discover that road¬ 
side advertising pays, as New England 
and other eastern farmers have found. 
Mr. Gwin puts it this way: “Too often 
we see a fine-looking farm, with excellent 
buildings, but no means of identifying 
them with their product or owner. The 
farmer allows fence manufacturers to 
ornament his fence with signs; cream 
separator concerns to put up posters on 
the farm, giving the information that such 
and such a machine is used there, while 
big posters advertise cigarettes, patent 
medicines and hundreds of products, but 
you can go for miles anywhere in the 
Middle West without finding a farmer’s 
advertisement.”—F. L. Clark. 
An Inexpensive Roadside Stand 
ANYONE who wishes a distinctive 
LA stand along the highway from which 
to sell produce, especially sweet cider, 
homemade vinegar, grape juice or cold 
drinks, will do well to copy the “Barrel 
Inn,” illustrated on page 114. Altho 
there are literally scores of fruit and 
food-selling stands along the road where 
this one was built about a year ago, 
it is rapidly drawing the trade. Every 
passer-by remembers it, and so many are 
stopping to patronize it that a real lunch¬ 
room had to be added recently to accom¬ 
modate the comers. 
Probably it is much less expensive 
than an ordinarily constructed house 
would be. The roof is of old boards 
covered with tarred paper and wide 
boards formed the walls. Both the con¬ 
structing and painting were done by the 
enterprising young merchants them¬ 
selves who had but a very small capital 
and this one bright idea for their stock 
in trade to open business. 
The lights effectively placed around the 
upper rim of the 
Barrel make it 
a beacon along 
the highway all 
through the night, 
and bright-colored 
signs attract atten¬ 
tion during the day. 
Some still more 
distinctive and al¬ 
luring advertising 
is being planned by 
these young men, 
but they refuse to 
divulge it until 
completed. They 
deserve watching 
—and copying. 
—Lee McCrae. 
“Hello, Joe, who’re you workin’ 
for, now?” 
“Same bunch—wife an’ five kids!” 
—Toronto Goblin. 
Ever make an - -<• 
experiment like this? 
The Bushels 
That Made Me Money 
You should read this inter * 
esting story before you 
plant your winter wheat 
Your copy will be sent free 
of all cost. Simply ask for 
booklet, “ The BusheLs 
That Made Me Money. ” 
But do it now! 
James S. Morse, of Cayuga County, 
New York, made an experiment on his 
farm. He wanted to see whether a fer¬ 
tilizer with a higher percentage of potash 
than he had customarily used would pay. 
He found out! 
He applied a 3-8-6 (6% potash) mixture 
to one plot and put on a half a ton to the acre 
— 1000 pound application. Morse's soil is a 
deep clay loam. Then he fertilized another plot 
with 3-8-0, same mixture without the potash; also 
1000 pounds to the acre. 
The field which received the potash fertilizer 
yielded 45 bushels per acre. The other field gave 
but 39 bushels. The increased yield of six bush¬ 
els per acre, even at $1.10 per bushel is worth 
$6.60—and if wheat goes higher, of course the six 
bushels are worth even more. But even at $6.60 
he paid for the 6% of potash $3.00 in 1000 pounds 
of fertilizers and had $3.60 per acre clear profit 
left over. Multiply this by a hundred acres and 
you’ll see that $360 extra money, with no more 
seed, no more labor, no extra output except the 
slight additional threshing charge is worth work¬ 
ing for. 
Ever make an experiment like this ? You 
ought to try it. Ask your dealer for a fertilizer 
that has plenty of potash Make a test- Perhaps 
your soil is one that will give splendid results 
with more than 6% potash. Potash pays—but 
many farmers do not use enough. The extra per¬ 
centage costs very little. Why not use plenty this 
year, and get better yields from the same effort? 
German 
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