Despite the handicap caused by the loss of an arm, Mr. Williams last season grew thirty-one varieties of vegetables in his home garden of slightly less than one-fifth of an acre. He sold in his neighborhood vegetables worth $326, in addition to those used by his family of four persons.
Despite the success in this instance, the Department of Agriculture does not advise home-gardeners to strive for a great variety of crops, but to concentrate their efforts on a few.
Did you find it hard to get ahead last year? If so, perhaps your back yard will put your effort on the profit side.
PLAN No. 706. WHAT A GIRL NEARLY BLIND DID
Of all the stories of girls’ efforts that have come to the United States Department of Agriculture, none tells of more devoted work than that of a Berkshire County, Massachusetts, girl, who is blind in one eye and losing the sight of the other.
She raised a pig when the government called for more meat, and when the army called for fruit pits to make gas-masks, the number of stones she gathered was the second largest individual number in the country. And she cultivated a garden successfully when the government told the necessity for more food production.
“I was very much interested in club work this year, and I was very happy while working in my garden,” wrote this girl in her story. “I knew that all the time I was working in my garden I was helping Uncle Sam.”
Except a few furrows turned by her father, where the land was particularly rough, all the work in her garden was done by the girl, and in addition she helped her father in his food plot. Between the lines in her report may be read some of her difficulties.
“The greatest delight my pig had,” she wrote, “was jumping the fence and rooting in my garden.”
But nothing daunted her, and the surplus products of her work, stored for the family’s winter use, made a fine showing.