"Do they hoe on big farms?" asked Hal.
"Well, on some, yes. I'll take you children to a farm, perhaps before the Summer is over, and you can see how they do it. Instead of hoeing, though, where there is a big field of corn or potatoes, the farmer runs a cultivator through the rows. The cultivator is like a lot of hoes joined together, and it loosens the dirt, cuts down the weeds and piles the soft, brown soil around the roots of the plants just where it is most needed. But our garden is too small for a horse cultivator—that is one drawn by a horse. The one I shove along by hand is enough for me."
Of course Hal and Mab did not spend all their time in the garden. They sometimes wanted to play with their boy and girl chums. For though it was fun to watch the things growing, to help them by hoeing, by keeping away the weeds and the bugs and worms, yet there was work in all this. And Daddy Blake believed, as do many fathers, that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." So Hal and Mab had their play times.
One day Mrs. Blake asked Hal and Mab to pick as many of the ripe tomatoes they could find on the vines.
"Are we going to have another store and sell them?" asked Hal.
"No, I am going to can some, and make chili sauce of the others," answered his mother. "In that way we will have tomatoes to eat next Winter."
It was more fun for Hal and Mab to pick the ripe tomatoes than it was to hoe in the garden, and soon, with the help of Uncle Pennywait, they had gathered several baskets full of the red vegetables. Then Aunt Lolly and Mother Blake made themselves busy in the kitchen. They boiled and stewed and cooked on the stove and there floated out of the door and windows a sweet, spicy smell.
"Oh, isn't that good!" cried Mab.
"It will taste good next Winter!" laughed their uncle.
"And to think it comes out of our garden—the tomato part, I mean," spoke Mab.