“After paying all expenses, I cleared $1,240 from my sheep last year,” reports a girl member of a sheep club organized in Fremont County, Wyoming. Several years ago she bought the first of a flock and she has handled her sheep so successfully that they number 108 ewes. In 1918 her flock produced seventy-nine lambs, seventy-six of which she raised. These, with seven orphan lambs abandoned by sheep herders, constituted the year’s increase. All the care the sheep require is given them by their girl owner. She next plans with part of her profits to buy twenty-five pure-bred Cotswold ewes in Nebraska and to use them to start a pure-bred flock.
A girl in Sheridan County, Wyoming, in 1918 cleared $928 with a flock of forty-eight ewes. During the coming season these two girls plan to throw their sheep together and to herd them themselves over the Big Horn Mountains. Orphan lambs discarded by other camps are also to be collected and cared for by the youthful herders. Members of the boys’ and girls’ sheep clubs in some of the western states find the salvaging of “bum” or stray lambs an economical way of obtaining a start in the sheep-club work.
PLAN No. 750. CHAMPION DRAWS 80 CENTS AN HOUR FOR GARDEN WORK
Eighty cents an hour for working in his garden is what a man of Fillmore County, Minnesota, earned in his one-tenth-acre plot. He was awarded the state championship in garden work in Minnesota last year, and in his report to the state club leader of the boys’ and girls’ club work, he says:
“For several seasons I had grown a garden with some success, and in 1919 I determined to secure even better results. I started my garden on three plots (all together comprising one-tenth-acre) differing widely in soil, slope and surroundings. Two had been, until the year before, waste land, and sprouted a healthy crop of bones and rusty cans in the wake of the plow. I made my plans according to conditions and adhered to them throughout the season to save time and confusion when there was real work to do. Desk-farming is one of the most interesting features of the work.
“Tomatoes, cabbages, eggplant, and everything that needed an early start were planted about the first of April in four hotbeds of ordinary size. All surplus plants were easily sold.
“In May, twelve dozen tomato plants were transplanted, and were coming along splendidly until one day I found a thrifty plant nearly cut off. This rather pleased me, as I had never seen a cutworm outside of a picture, and I was glad to make his acquaintance. When the seedlings fell, one by one, however, I decided I had seen enough of the pest. Happily, their depredations were stopped in time and there were plenty of plants to fill in.
“I raised about two-dozen kinds of vegetables to provide a variety for the table, and for marketing, large crops of tomatoes, peas, cucumbers and celery were planted.
“Canning was a big factor in making the garden a success. What we couldn’t eat I sold, what I couldn’t sell we canned; and what we couldn’t can, I fed to the chickens, so none were wasted. Our summer kitchen was our cannery and the wash boiler our canner. For nearly everything we used the one-period, cold-pack method and followed the directions sent out by the government, with excellent results. We put up 221 quarts of tomatoes, beans, peas, carrots, beets, chard, sweet pickles, kohlrabi, tomato jelly and sauce, carrot conserve, dill pickles, limes, cabbages, tomato jam, mincemeat, eggplant, celery and others. Since we desired a pleasing variety we canned thirty-seven kinds from our garden and purchased some others.
“In all my work with the plants I kept this in mind—that the earliness, quality and quantity of the product is dependent on the seed, environment (including weather, fertility, and shade) and the care given them. So I purchased the best seed obtainable, planted it when natural conditions were best, and cared for each kind as its peculiarity required. Where there is a deficiency in any of these requirements, it can in part be made up in the others.