NC Home Demonstration Club Work, December, 1938

“The Woman’s Touch or What Club Work Means to N.C. Farm Women” by Jane S. McKimmon, State Home Demonstration Agent and Assistant Director of Extension, as published in the December 1938 issue of the Carolina Co-operator

Women in Business

Mrs. L.D. Hatley of Cary, Wake County, gave her daughter a piano and paid for her lessons with money she made selling products at the market. She also bought a heatrola for the living room, a new cook stove, a refrigerator, a buffet, linoleum rugs for her kitchen and dining room, and turned part of the kitchen into a breakfast nook for which she bought furniture. She also had her milk house repaired and she bought a monument for her mother’s grave. After all this, Mrs. Hartley had $235 left to put in the bank.

The woman’s market in Franklin, Macon County, which started on a porch, now occupies suitable and adequate quarters in the new agricultural building and the sellers have voted to have uniform tables built and purchase a refrigerator.

They are also going to wear uniforms and have brought up their standards by wrapping cake in cellophane and grading eggs which they place in cartons.

Home Fashioned Furniture

Most farm homes need pieces of furniture to make the family comfortable to add to the looks of a room or to serve as storage space for things that must be used constantly.

Mrs. Grant Allen of Rutherford County enjoys a knife rack and rack for sauce pan tops that were copied all over the county.

Milk stools, bookcases, small seats to be placed in front of the fire and simple tables all found their way into the farm homes in Alexander County.

Removal of varnish revealed one of the most beautiful old highboys in Guilford County for which Mrs. E.T. Smith had paid only $7.50. Mrs. Cecil Moser of the same county did neat work by setting a wedge-shaped piece in a desk, putting a back on her bookcase and taking out the warp in a drop-leaf table she had refinished. Mrs. C.A. Hancock of Gethesemane Club, Guilford County, refinished a table, chair and stool, and Mrs. A.J. Summerfield has an attractive china closet made from an old walnut safe.

Home Management

The old saying that “man’s work is from sun to sun but woman’s work is never done” is attacked and defeated by good home management, says Miss Elizabeth Williams, Assistant Extension Specialist in Home Agricultural Extension. It has already been definitely proven in countless homes that woman’s home work can be shortened and her labor lightened by using the efficient household equipment which modern invention and manufacture has provided. No longer need women struggle with makeshifts when efficient household appliances are so cheaply obtainable. It is impossible to state how many expensive doctor and hospital bills have been caused by exhausting labor which would have been prevented by good management of time and work and the use of a few efficient household appliances.

But good home management does not alone consist of management of income, resources, time, and work. That is but incidental to the main purpose of modern family life. The home must be a little democracy in which freedom of informal discussion of the family problems by the family is encouraged. This intimate discussion of family affairs promotes good family relationships by a better understanding of each other’s problems. This insures a fine home life resulting in the production of fine mental and physical types of men and women of sound liberal character and high cultural ideals—the noblest products of good home management.

Whole Wheat Bread

Folks in Alexander have become “wheat conscious” and have learned that no better source of vitamin B which is so necessary for a child’s well being can be found than wheat. Sentiment is generally for white bread, but almost any family can be induced to eat really well-made brown bread. Mrs. George Lackey of the Sidelight community made whole wheat bread and muffins which brought forth such exclamations of pleasure from her husband and six boys that she is forced to make these favorites often.

Mrs. Lackey uses brown bread for school lunch sandwiches also and fills them with sausage or cheese. Mrs. Joe Harris found that putting walnuts in the bread pleased her children almost as well as cinnamon buns.

Keeping Up With Farm Women

Mrs. M.W. Mackie of Yadkinville, Yadkin County, who says that a variety of beautiful flowering plants afford a much needed diversion for the farm housewife, is making final preparations for planting a lily garden with a variety of types and colors . . . . A flock of 127 white leghorn hens paid Miss Leah Franck of Jacksonville, Route 1, Onslow County, $2.45 a hen for the past poultry year. Miss Franck kept accurate records on all feed costs and on the egg production of each hen . . . . The lawns of 22 farm homes in Onslow County have been definitely improved and beautified by seeding to white Dutch clover and rye grass this fall . . . . Mrs. Winston Strayhorn, Orange County, sold 60 cakes in one day recently on the women’s market . . . . Mrs. H.C. Smith, Dare County, produced 16 different vegetables in her garden this year . . . . Mrs. E.D. Sneed of Matrimony Community in Rockingham County is enjoying a remodeled and well-lighted kitchen after working for 40 years in a dark, dreary one . . . . Mrs. H. Tweed, Buncombe County; Mrs. Jack Clark, Mrs. W.P. Taylor, and Mrs. Dickens, all of Halifax County, are only a few of the sellers on farm women’s markets who have made outstanding records.