How May University Farm and the Minnesota State Horticultural Society be Mutually Helpful in Developing the Farms and Homes of the Northwest?
A. F. WOODS, DEAN AND DIRECTOR, DEPT. OF AGRI., UNIVERSITY OF MINN., ST. PAUL.
The farm without its windbreaks, shade trees, fruits, flowers and garden, if it can be called a home at all is certainly one that needs developing and improving. There are many abiding places in the Northwest, as in every other part of the United States, that lack some essential part of them. The first and most important step with a view to correcting these conditions is to bring together those interested in home improvement to talk over problems and difficulties and to plan how to correct them and to interest others in the movement. This is what this great society with its auxiliary societies has been and is now doing most successfully. It is true that your work has been more particularly from the horticultural view point, but, as I said in the beginning, fruits and flowers are civilizing and home making influences.
There should be more horticulturally interested people from the farms affiliated with this society. Each farmers' club should have a horticultural committee. There are now about nine hundred farmers' clubs in the state, and the number is increasing constantly. These clubs represent the communities in which the members live. They include men, women and children, farmers, preachers, teachers, every member of the community willing to cooperate. They start things in the community interest and follow them up. The Agricultural Extension Service of the University is in close touch with these clubs. The horticulturists of the service especially might help to arouse the interest of the clubs in this movement. This society might offer some prizes especially designed to interest the boys and girls of the farmers' clubs. Each club horticultural committee should have representation in this society. Some of the prizes might be memberships or trips to the annual meeting. Many members of this society are members of such clubs. They could take the lead in the movement. In this way the society would keep in touch with the homes and communities of the state, and all would grow together in horticultural grace—and the other graces that go with it.
A Minnesota farm home with handsome grounds and modern conveniences.
The gospel of better homes is like every other gospel. It must be taken to those who need it and who know it not or are not interested. The extension service of the University is organized to carry the message of better homes, better farms, better social and business relations to the people who need it. Farmers' institutes, short courses, lectures, demonstration, farm supervision, judging at county fairs, boys' and girls' club work, institute trains, county agent service, indicate some of the kinds of work in progress. The press is also a powerful factor in this work. The Minnesota Farmers' Library, which is made up of timely publications on all matters of rural interest, has a mailing list of fifty-five thousand farmers. From six to twelve of these publications are issued each year. "University Farm Press News" reaches regularly six hundred papers in the state. "Rural School Agriculture," containing material especially adapted to the needs of the consolidated and rural schools, reaches practically every rural and consolidated school in the state each month. "The Visitor" is a special publication prepared for the use of the teachers of agriculture in the high schools of the state. The "Farmers' Institute Annual" is a manual of three hundred pages published each year in editions of fifty thousand and contains material of interest to every farmer. Many special articles are prepared for farm papers. Every department of the extension service and college and station is in touch with the farm homes of the state through correspondence, and much valuable work is accomplished in this way. The aim is always to work from the home as the center, and from that to the group of homes constituting the community, the township, the county and the state, in an ever-enlarging circle.
A typical Minnesota consolidated school building.
The greatest opportunity for better homes and better farms and a better country life is in enlisting the children of the country in the movement. When I say the children of the country, I do not mean to exclude the children of the villages and towns whose tastes may lead them countryward. We should never stop or attempt to stop the free movement between the country and the city. It is good for both. The children of today will be the farmers and farm home makers and the business men and women of tomorrow. Are the children of the farmers looking forward with interest to farming as a business, and life in the country as attractive? The movement to the city in ever-increasing numbers is the answer, but it is the answer to what has been and now is, rather than to what is to be. A new day is dawning, in which the brightest minds and the choicest spirits will again choose to live in the open country and make there the ideal homes from which shall continue to come the life and vigor of the nation. But if it is to be so, the schools of the country must furnish real intelligent leadership and the country church must come again to spiritual leadership. We must all help to bring this about.
Minnesota has a plan to accomplish this, and it is working out even better than we dared hope. Experience has shown that by consolidation or the cooperation of several districts, good results may be secured at no greater cost than the same type of school costs in town. The small school of today is expensive because it is inefficient. The consolidated school is giving the children of the country the education that they need and is doing it better than it can be done anywhere else. The consolidated school is becoming the rural community center. An important feature which has been adopted by many of the consolidated districts is the building of a home for the teachers in connection with the school. This home may be made typical of what the modern home should be, not expensive but substantial, artistic, convenient and sanitary. The grounds should be suitably planted with trees, shrubs and flowers, and there should be a garden. The school building is also made to fit the needs of the community. The larger rooms may be used for entertainments, farmers' club meetings, lectures, etc. There should be facilities for testing milk and other agricultural products, examining soils, etc. There should be a shop for wood and iron work, or at least a work bench and an anvil. There should be a library of good reading and a place to cook and bake and sew. There should be a typewriter, a piano or an organ, and such other conveniences for teaching and social center work as the community may wish and be able to secure, and, best of all, teachers living at the school who know how to operate the plant in every detail and to make it useful to the community.
An ideal plan for consolidated school grounds.
There were nine of these schools five years ago in Minnesota. According to the last report of the Department of Public Instruction, there are 142 now, and the number is increasing constantly. The state as a state is behind the movement and is giving substantial aid, direction and supervision to these schools. When the forward movement was planned, plans were also made to train teachers and to give the teachers already in the service special work that would fit them to adjust themselves to the new needs.
The normal schools and the high schools teaching agriculture, manual training and home economics have adjusted their courses to meet this new demand. Six years ago the work had hardly begun. Today there are 214 high and graded schools teaching home economics, 177 teaching agriculture, 125 teaching manual training, and of these 121 are preparing teachers especially for the rural schools.
The College of Agriculture and Home Economics of the University of Minnesota is training the teachers in these subjects for the high schools and normal schools, and, in cooperation with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Department of Agriculture has been conducting a summer school for rural teachers, where those already teaching and those planning to teach can get the training required to meet the new conditions and demands. Similar summer schools have been conducted in cooperation with the agricultural schools at Crookston and Morris. All together each year there are between 1,800 and 2,000 teachers taking these special courses. Every effort is made to bring to these teachers the view point of the new country life movement.
This society and the members individually in their home communities should stand squarely behind this movement. They should become thoroughly informed regarding it. It is the cornerstone of the new country life.
Finally I wish to call your attention again to the great educational opportunity which you are missing. If you could come into vital contact each year with more than 4,000 young men and women who are seeking for everything that will help them to be more useful citizens, would you do it? You could exert in that way an exceedingly great influence on the homes and future welfare of this state and nation. You can do it if you will come out and live with us the year round at University Farm. We should have a building there suited to your needs that we could all use as a great horticultural center, open the year round. You have already taken steps in this direction. I hope that conditions will be such that we can join hands to get it very soon.
San Jose Scale Requires Prompt Action—Orchard Should Either Be Destroyed or Sprayed Before Buds Open.—There are a few orchards in Colorado that are found to be infested with the San Jose scale.
Owners of these orchards should determine upon one of two courses to pursue. The orchard should either be promptly cut down and destroyed, or the trees should be thoroughly treated with lime-sulphur solution or a good quality of miscible oil for the destruction of the scale before the buds open in the spring.
If lime-sulphur is determined upon, the home-made article may be used, or the commercial lime-sulphur solutions may be used, in which case they should be diluted with water, in the proportion of one gallon of the commercial lime-sulphur to not more than ten gallons of water. The application should be made thoroughly, so that every bit of the bark of trunk and limbs is covered with the spray.
If miscible oil is used, I would recommend using one gallon of the oil to each nineteen gallons of water. Hard or alkaline waters should be avoided, as sometimes the oil will not make a good emulsion with them. Use soft water, if possible.—C. P. Gillette, Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station.