“I am going to take the first prize in gardening away from the boys at the Utah State Fair in 1919,” is the challenge of a 15-year-old girl member of a boys’ and girls’ club in Salt Lake County, Utah, conducted under the direction of the United States Department of Agriculture and the state agricultural college. It looks as if her prediction may come true, for already this industrious girl has made a rather remarkable record. She began at the age of 11, and in the first year her exhibits took first prize at the grade school, first prize at the high school, and second prize at the state fair. When she finishes her course at the high school she is going to enter the Utah agricultural college.
In addition to plowing, harrowing, and leveling sixty acres of land and helping her father with other farm operations—doing for him all that a boy of her age could do and much more than many boys would be willing to do—this young food producer this year raised and sold an abundance of garden produce; put up 600 quarts of fruit and vegetables, besides drying a quantity of them; raised 100 chickens, knitted socks for soldier relatives overseas, and bought Liberty Bonds to back them up. But let her tell her own story:
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.”
Plowed Sixty Acres Herself
“Last year I plowed, leveled and harrowed thirty acres and cut all father’s hay, put up 300 quarts of fruit and vegetables and had a war garden. This year I plowed sixty acres all myself, harrowed and leveled it—wheat, alfalfa and beets—and helped father plant and cut and irrigate. I have put up fruit and vegetables—600 quarts—besides drying fruit and vegetables, and have baked the bread, and on Saturday and after school I have to plow until the ground freezes up, and finish in the spring, 1919. I am going to take the first prize away from the boys in gardening, in the Utah state fair.
“I attend the Cypress High School. When I finish there I am going to go to the Utah Agricultural College.”