There are also two schools for disabled ex-service men, one teaching poultry raising, the other the Braille alphabet, typewriting, rug and basket weaving and poultry raising to men with failing eyesight. These schools are located at Mountain Grove.
The chance for home building in Wright county is something of which I am particularly proud for nowhere can such healthful, comfortable and beautiful, farm homes be built with less trouble and expense. There are on our land all the materials for building, either with stone or timber, and the abundance of water in springs and wells and streams makes it possible to put running water in nearly every farmhouse.
We play as well as work in Wright county and do it with as much enthusiasm, having all the materials at hand for this also.
Our diversity is not confined to our agriculture and amusements, but extends to our people. From Wright county have gone many who have distinguished themselves in various ways. Among these are Cleveland Newton who was sent to Congress where he made good and from there went to his law office in St. Louis where he still is making good; William H. Hamby noted writer of books, magazine stories and photo plays; Rose Wilder Lane, writer and world traveler whose books and short stories are published in the United States and England and have been translated into foreign languages; and Carl Mays, famous pitcher for the Yankees who has been called the greatest pitcher in the world.
Not all of us can become famous, but nowhere are there better neighbors or truer friends. If misfortune, sickness or sorrow comes to one, the neighbors rally to help, with a whole hearted good fellowship that makes living worth while and dying easier.
If you have thoughtfully read this little story, you will know that I am proud of Wright county because of its healthful, pleasant climate and its natural features which make possible a happy combination of work and play; because of what has been accomplished and its promise for the future and because of the spirit of its people, which is the American, pioneer spirit of courage, jollity and neighborly helpfulness.
* * *
1. Although no author is given for this column, the assumption is that Mrs. Wilder wrote it.
2. From the poem “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant.
3. From William Shakespeare’s Hamlet 1.3.
4. A novel by Irving Bacheller (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1917).
1924
As a Farm Woman Thinks (25)
January 1, 1924
Standing on the shore with the waves of the Pacific rolling to my feet, I looked over the waters as far as my eyes could reach until the gray of the ocean merged with the gray of the horizon’s rim. One could not be distinguished from the other. Where, within my vision, the waters stopped and the skies began I could not tell so softly they blended one into the other. The waves rolled in regularly, beating a rythm of time, but the skies above them were unmeasured—so vast and far reaching that the mind of man could not comprehend it.
A symbol of time and of eternity—time spaced by our counting into years, breaking at our feet as the waves break on the shore, and eternity, unmeasurable as the skies above us—blending one into the other at the fartherest reach of our earthly vision.
As the New Year comes, seemingly with ever increasing swiftness, there is a feeling that life is too short to accomplish the things we must do. But there is all eternity blending with the end of time for the things that really are worth while.
We are so overwhelmed with things these days that our lives are all more or less cluttered. I believe it is this, rather than a shortness of time, that gives us that feeling of hurry and almost of helplessness in the face of them. Everyone is hurrying and usually just a little late. Notice the faces of the people who rush past on the streets or on our country roads! They nearly all have a strained, harassed look and any one you meet will tell you there is no time for anything any more.
Life is so complicated! The day of the woman whose only needed tool was a hairpin is long since passed. But we might learn something from her and her methods even yet, for life would be pleasanter with some of the strain removed—if it were no longer true, as some one has said, that “things are in the saddle and rule mankind.”
Here is a good New Year’s resolution for us all to make: To simplify our lives as much as possible, to overcome that feeling of haste by remembering that there are just as many hours in the day as ever, and that there is time enough for the things that matter if it is rightly used.
Then, having done the most we may here, when we reach the limit of time we will sail on over the horizon rim to new beauties and greater understanding.
As a Farm Woman Thinks (26)
January 15, 1924
In her late book, “Beginning Again at Ararat,” Mabel E. Elliot M. D., Near East Relief worker, says that among the refugees, in the tumble-down, crowded, filthy Turkish interior cities there “appeared once more that magic of the American woman’s home-making ability, surprisingly revealed by the war and the peace.
“American women are the only women in the world who, far from home, in primitive countries, without familiar materials, set to work with whatever they can lay hands upon and make a home. Somehow they curtain windows, create couches and tables and chairs from packing-cases, make leather cushions of sheep’s skins, table covers of peasant’s petticoats; then they set a flowering almond branch in a pottery jar—and there, triumphantly, is an American living-room, tasteful, charming, comfortable. In every language of Europe and Asia men marvel at this.”
This is the reputation of American home-makers. I had not realized how far our fame had traveled. But I long ago discovered that making a reputation is one thing and living up to it another story.
Are our living rooms “tasteful, charming and comfortable”? If not why not “set to work with whatever we can lay hands upon” and make them so?
BRIGHTENING UP
It is remarkable what an improvement a little paint will make used where paint should be applied. Varnish in its proper place makes all the world look brighter. An added window in a dark corner, letting the sunlight in, will change the whole character of a dull room making of it a cheerful place and helping to brighten our lives.
If there is too much of sameness and monotony in farm life, it is perhaps mostly our own fault. The same things in the same places, the same colors in the same rooms and exactly the same way of living become tiresome in time. A different arrangement of the furniture, a small moving from one room to another will bring to the house a newness and a freshness that will relieve tired nerves and restlessness almost as much as the seeing of new places.
What I think the greatest compliment that Rocky Ridge Farm house ever has received was given it by a neighbor who, seeing for the first time the interior of the house, stood where he could look it over and said, “I like your house—I do like your house! It is not so monotonous!”
The Fairs That Build Men
Where Citizens of Tomorrow Are Trained
January 15, 1924
We accept, without thinking about it, the fact that happy nations do not appear in history. But only lately I have realized that events of greatest importance are least noticed, even while they are occurring under our very eyes.
I realized this when I walked down the steps of the Hartville high school building, thinking of the fair I had just seen and comparing it with others I remembered. There was the unforgettable World’s Fair in San Francisco, the several great state fairs at Sedalia, the land congress fairs, county fairs, stock fairs, poultry fairs—all of them interesting and admirable. But this fair I had just seen, this small fair unknown outside Wright county, mentioned only in the Hartville papers, seemed to me more important than any of them.
The great World’s Fairs show what has been builded by nations; the small rural school fairs are building the nation itself, for the training which these children are getting in co-operation and honorable competition will make of them useful and possibly great citizens of the nation and the world. It means much to a child, in c
haracter building, to learn to be an honest winner or a good loser in whatever contest he takes part, whether it be a World War or a poultry show.
This fair was a fair of children, and—under guidance—by and for children. School children made nearly half of the record-breaking attendance of 2,500 who crowded the school building and grounds.
GIRLS COOK AND CAN
The children of the Hartville school cooking class served luncheon to them all, and were kept rather more than comfortably busy preparing the quantities of toothsome dishes. If it had been possible to use the food exhibited there would easily have been an abundant supply of the best quality. It made one’s mouth water to gaze on the quantities of beautiful canned fruit and rosy-cheeked apples, the nuts and grains and vegetables.
The growth, care and selection of all these exhibits must have made farm work, thru the year, intensely interesting to the pupils of the 24 schools represented.
There were 44 varieties of canned fruit exhibited by New Mountain Dale school. There were 15 varieties of grasses and 78 kinds of native woods shown by Rodgers School. There were 18 varieties of forest leaves collected by the Hall School. These exhibits were in addition to those of the regular school work, agricultural and manual training displays, among which was a special model of a milking stool designed by one of the Rodgers school class.
Little Creek School brought 27 varieties of forest leaves, 21 varied grains, 22 kinds of seeds, 14 species of insects, 10 noxious weeds, 70 kinds of native woods. Little Creek school by this astounding total won second prize for exhibits.
Pleasant Hill school carried off first prize with a large display of turnips, pumpkins, potatoes, melons, grains, grasses, weeds, knots, agricultural maps, general school work, fancy work, patchwork, potted flowers, 37 varieties of canned fruit, 11 varieties of apples, a roomful of chickens, and a calf, with an overflow into the school yard of two pens of hogs.
Blanchard School won third prize for exhibits.
Lone Star School, with 100 per cent attendance, accompanied by their entire school board, for the second time won the attendance prize.
The teachers of these schools, Emmett Jones, Pleasant Hill; J. M. Vestal, Little Creek; Homer Smith, Blanchard; and Mrs. James Shelby, Lone Star, certainly deserve honorable mention. And what a training all these rural teachers have been giving their pupils in observance of the world around them, in seeing and knowing leaf and weed and insect and all the varied, interesting things on the farm.
MANY OTHER FEATURES
Reading contests and singing contests were features of the last day of the fair. The song contest was won by Pleasant Hill School. Glenette McGowan, of Blanchard School carried off the prize in the reading contest.
Basket ball and other athletic games, played on the campus in a spirit of friendly rivalry and good temper, were a pleasure to witness.
Good speaking during the fair added much to the interest of the occasion. In the exhibits and school work, health, agriculture, poultry and dairy farming were emphasized and much interest was shown by farm folks attending, in the definite lessons presented on feeding dairy cows, poultry and hogs by Professor Hess’s vocational class and also in the soil exhibit showing methods of fertilization and testing for the need of lime, while the model poultry house and the model farm with its impressive lesson in the necessity of crop rotation to maintain soil fertility were much talked about.
All this can not fail in affecting for the better the farming methods of the county and being an education for parents as well as children.
The Wright County School Fair for 1923 was a remarkable success and much of the credit for this is due Professor Hess of the Hartville School, University Extension workers and County Superintendent Ray Wood, who with his hard working rural teachers, backed by the business and professional men of Hartville, worked together for that object.
Turkeys Bring $1,000 a Year
Where Secret of Success Is “Love Them”
February 1, 1924
It was late afternoon at the Wilson Farm and the coolness of the evening was very pleasant after the warmth of the spring day. The cows were lowing on their way to the barn and milking time. Among the other sounds of evening on the farm came a call with a hint of wildness in it—“Turrk! Turrk!” it said. The turkeys were coming up, followed by their little ones scurrying thru the grass, slipping from cover to cover like shadows, but following their mothers’ call—“Turrk! Turrk! Turrk!”
“The one that runs in the orchard isn’t there,” said Mrs. Wilson. “I must go hunt her. Make yourself comfortable until I get back,” she called, as she hurried away. But she did not find the stray in the orchard, and some others that ranged along the river did not appear, so down to the river went Mrs. Wilson hunting them. Brother-in-law Jim, riding the little pony, searched in the far meadow. The Airedale puppy broke from his imprisonment in the barn to join in the hunt, and I brought up the rear. I was slow and awkward, unable to keep up with the pup, not used to hunting turkeys, but I did help drive up the strays and feed and pen each flock in its small house. Such pretty, wild little things, and dozens and dozens of them! “Cheep, Cheep, Cheep!” they said, as they pecked at their supper of eggs and cheese spread on boards at the door of each house.
I saw them again just before Thanksgiving. It was noon, this time. “Oh, they’ll come whenever I call them,” Mrs. Wilson said, walking out into the yard with a basket of corn on her arm. She gave her turkey call, which I will not attempt to reproduce, and turkeys materialized where apparently no turkeys had been before. She kept calling, and the woods seemed alive with turkeys, all flying and running toward her. One hundred eighty-five, she said were there, and I know that, as we say in the vernacular, “the woods was full of ’em.” It was a pretty sight to see them gather around her, their beautiful bronze feathers glistening in the sun.
GIVES THEM ATTENTION
Mrs. Wilson’s turkeys know her so well that if they are frightened in the night her voice will quiet them; they will answer when she speaks, and will eat from her hand. And Mrs. Wilson loves her turkeys. When the time comes to kill them she runs and hides to cry while they are being butchered.
It takes time and patience, gentleness and tact, to be successful in raising turkeys. “They are very fond of attention,” said Mrs. Wilson, “and like to be talked to. It makes no difference what you say, just so your tone is quiet and your voice gentle.” Turkeys are nervous, shy, wild things by nature, and Mrs. Wilson treats them accordingly. Sometimes, however, when a turkey is very bad she is punished. I saw Mrs. Wilson switch a quarrelsome mother-turkey to make her stop fussing with her neighbor and go to her crying babies at her own house-door.
Mrs. Wilson began raising turkeys ten years ago with three hens and a tom. Not knowing anything about turkeys, she let them follow their own sweet wills. Consequently, not being worried by being followed about nesthunting, they nested in underbrush near the house. The three hens laid sixty eggs the first clutch, and, from these Mrs. Wilson raised 55 to maturity. She was so elated by this success that she confidently set the mark at 200 for the next season.
Eager to find all the eggs from which to raise the 200, she followed her best hen so closely at nesting time that the hen at last became seriously annoyed. The last Mrs. Wilson ever saw of her was when she rose with a spread of her strong wings and flew away into the woods.
Now difficulties multiplied. Crows and black snakes took the eggs; over-feeding killed the poults. At the end of the season Mrs. Wilson had only 35 turkeys, instead of the 200 she had confidently expected to raise. A lesser person would have quit the turkey business right there. But Mrs. Wilson has pluck and perseverance, and it is hard for anyone or any circumstances to beat her. Instead of quitting, she began to learn how to raise turkeys. She learned it well, for the flock I saw gave her $1,005 net profit for the year.
A DISASTROUS SEASON
She had a pen made, 20 60 feet, 7 feet high, and covered with poultry netting. By being quiet and gentle wit
h her turkeys she tamed them so that every morning they would follow her into this pen, listening to her voice as she talked to them and eating from her hands. Day after day, Mrs. Wilson enjoyed this early morning visit with her turkeys. Then she went to her other work, while they ranged the fields. At nesting-time she shut them into the pen for an hour every morning. The hen that had made her nest showed it by her uneasiness, and they were so accustomed to her presence that she could let the hen out and by following it cautiously could locate the nest. Thus one by one every turkey was watched until she betrayed her nesting place. Every year since then Mrs. Wilson has used this method of finding the nests. When a nest is found she does not go near until the hen has left it, and no hen is ever shut in the pen after her nest is found, for the less they are bothered the better. If they are made nervous they will change their nest place.
In the hen’s absence her eggs are carefully taken from the nest and given to common hens to hatch, in order to protect them from snakes and crows. The turkey hens are left setting on the nest with just enough eggs to keep them there until the poults are hatched, when they are given to their turkey mothers. Mrs. Wilson has learned from experience that 20 poults are as many as a turkey hen can properly hover after they are three or four weeks old, and that they must be well covered or they may drown if caught out in a hard rain.
HOW SHE FEEDS THEM
For their first feeding, 48 hours after hatching, Mrs. Wilson gives hardboiled eggs chopped very fine; for 20 poults and mother, one egg three times a day. After the first day of feeding, lettuce, dandelion, sow thistle or onion tops, finely chopped, are added to the egg. In fine weather, when the poults can run, she feeds the same amount daily for two weeks; if they are kept in the coops she adds a little bread, soaked in sweet milk until it crumbles. When they are two weeks old, and out on range, they are fed twice a day, two eggs at a feed for twenty poults and mother. After this age, Mrs. Wilson sometimes substitutes an equal amount of cottage cheese for the eggs, at one feeding a day, and they are always given plenty of milk. Green food and milk can be given at any time, but the rest of the ration is never exceeded, as there is danger in over-feeding.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist Page 39
