A grocer’s wife, with only a few square feet in the back yard of a city lot, cultivated a rhubarb bed that paid for itself hundreds of times over, and required but little care from the time it was started.
She obtained several pieces of old root stock from a variety she knew to be of the very best, and in the spring had the ground spaded up and pulverized until it was almost like powder, then she added some good fertilizer, and set out the roots in hills four feet apart each way, leaving the top or eye an inch or so below the level of the ground. These began to grow at once, and during the dry season were kept well watered, being frequently hoed to kill all the weeds.
A considerable number of edible stalks were pulled the first season, great care being taken to let none of them go to seed, by snapping off the seed stems as fast as they appeared.
The second season the growth began early and was remarkably rapid so that before any one else had rhubarb, she had a good display of it in her husband’s store where it sold readily at a very high price.
Ever since then this small rhubarb bed has kept her in pin money, and all the care it has required was to keep it free from weeds and to water it occasionally.
PLAN No. 318. PUREBRED POULTRY
An Eastern Washington farmer, who had raised scrub poultry for years, without ever being able to decide whether or not they were really worth their keep, finally decided to raise pure-breds, and now feels justified in making the change, as the returns from his high-grade fowls have been large.
He simply selected the breed he liked best, and gave them the care to which birds of high degree are entitled, and they have repaid him many times over for his efforts.
He now finds he can get more for a single pure-bred fowl than twenty of the common or barn-yard variety would bring, while their cost to raise is considerably less—bird for bird. Another thing: A single setting of eggs from a pedigreed hen brings him more than he could ever hope to receive for all the eggs an ordinary hen would lay in an entire season, and he is not only much better off financially, but feels that the satisfaction of having a breed that everybody else wants is worth a good deal to him.