Helped Plant 1,500 Fruit Trees
“I was born and raised in Salt Lake City. When I was eight years old my father moved to his farm in Pleasant Green near Utah Copper Mills and Garfield Smelter, Salt Lake County, Utah. It was covered with sage brush and rock, which had to me removed.
“The following spring we cleared a part of the land and planted 1,500 fruit trees. We also engaged in truck farming that season. I, the oldest girl of a very large family, assisted my father in every way I could. He always enjoyed instructing me, and he explained every little question I asked him. He taught me how to plant small seeds by mixing them with sand, scattering it along the trench and covering with a hoe. Also he taught me how to plant vegetables and how to cultivate. We raised an abundance of tomatoes, cabbages, cauliflower, peppers, egg plant, and also 1,600 bushels of carrots and 200 bushels of potatoes.
“The next year I assisted again, and the following year—I was then eleven years old—he gave me a small space of my own, which he plowed for me. He made me plant everything myself, also do the weeding and hoeing. I raised an amount of garden truck and took it to town and sold it. The next year—at the age of twelve—I was attending school in Hunter when they started a boys’ and girls’ club. When I joined, my father said I would have to learn to plow, so he bought me an 8-inch plow. I plowed about half an acre; then he allowed me to drive three horses with a sulky plow. I plowed twenty acres for him that year and mowed thirty-three acres of alfalfa hay. My sister raked it, and we all bunched it and I helped stack it. I raised nine different kinds of tomatoes, six different kinds of peppers, cauliflower, cabbages, and peanuts, and seventy-two different kinds of flowers. I took first prize at the grade school and first prize at the high school and second prize at the state fair.”