1915 girls club, tomato club booklet by Odessa Barber

Have read work

[1]

I desided to join the tomato club with nine other girls about my age.

We laid off the plat of ground 132 feet long and 33 feet wide on March 17, 1915. On March 18 hawled the manure and scattered it over the ground and on the 19 it was harrowed. On April 15 the ground was plowed, and on May 14 it was ridged up, and set. half of it in tomatoes, and desided to plant the other half in beans, but my agent came to see my patch and advised me to set

[2]

all of the patch in tomatoes. Later I set the remainder in tomatoes, which made my patch rather late.

My patch was plowed twice and only hoed once as I took sick and was not able to hoe it any more. I never got it staked or pruned either.

On July 14 I gathered off about two dozen of nice ripe tomatoes which we enjoyed so much for supper as we had company. Nearly every day I gathered off ripe tomatoes

[3]

which I marketed at 15 cents per dozen at first, then they came to 10 [?] cents and then to 8 cents. I began canning August 9 and we canned 3 days in a week, until the week of our meeting I did'nt can but one day and lots of my tomatoes went to loss.

I enjoyed canning days very much. Some of we girls would wash tomatoes, some blanch, some scald cans, some peel, some pack cans, and some solder. Then we would put the cans in the boiler and exhaust them five minutes, then take them out

[4]

and tip them, put them back in the canner and let them boil 22 minutes.

Our canner will hold 30 cans at one boiling, and we have canned as many as 300 cans in one day.

Odessa Barber.

Elon College, N. C.

R.1 Box #. 85