Ruth Current Succeeds Jane McKimmon as State Home Demonstration Agent, 1937

“State Home Agent” in the March, 1937 issue of the Carolina Co-Operator

Miss Ruth Current has been named State Home Demonstration agent at State College to succeed Dr. Jane S. McKimmon, whose resignation was announced February 5.

The appointment was made by Dean I.O. Schaub, director of the State College extension service, who said she brings to her new position a wealth of experience and ability that well qualifies her to take charge of the home demonstration work.

Miss Current is a native of the Mt. Vernon community near Cleveland in Rowan County, and was reared on a farm. She attended high school at China Grove, went to Meredith College for a year, and graduated from Harrisonburg Teachers College, Harrisonburg, Virginia. She also attended Peabody College, Nashville, Tennessee.

In the spring of 1927 she became home agent in Iredell County, where she served until she was advanced to the position of southwestern district agent in 1930, with headquarters at State College.

During the last five years of her work as district agent she has acted as extension specialist in girls 4-H Club work and directed the farm women’s short courses of the Farm and Home Weeks held at State College each summer.

As specialist in girls’ club work she has developed a large number of outstanding 4-H Club girls who have made high records in State and national 4-H contests.

John R. Jones, Wilkes County, 1936

“Jones Is the Name” by Lula M. Weir in the March, 1936, issue of Carolina Co-Operator

Jones is the name, John R. Jones, to be exact, and he owns and operates one of the finest dairies in Northwest North Carolina.

Almost every city, town, and hamlet has its John Jones. But only Wilkes County has a John R. Jones.

So familiarly known is he, all over the country, that a letter simple addressed to “John R.” would probably arrive at its destination without delay. John R. is the only Republican solicitor in the State of North Carolina. He is serving his third term as solicitor in the 17^th judicial district, composed of the counties of Wilkes, Yadkin, Davie, Alexander, Avery, and Mitchell. He was unopposed in his candidacy in the last campaign and was supported by friends of both parties.

But it is not John R. Jones the prosecuting attorney whom we are attempting to introduce to the Co-operator family—the man who has brought more notorious criminals to justice and rounded up more murders, bandits, and major offenders of the law than any solicitor in the State, perhaps—but it is John R. Jones, dairy farmer and proprietor of the famous “Meadow Brook Dairy,” one of the outstanding Grade “A” dairies in Northwest North Carolina.

John R., when outside of the atmosphere of the courtroom, has his hobbies. Chief among them are his fondness for country life and pure-bred live stock. Perhaps this is due to the fact that he is a son of the soil, for he was born in the sticks of Stokes County, in the shadow of Old Pilot Mountain, the son of an obscure farmer.

Purchased a Farm

To satisfy his pet hobby, John R. deserted his town home in North Wilkesboro several years ago, purchased a 200-acre tract six miles out in the country on State Highway No. 18, built a beautiful eight-room residence of logs and stone, and equipped it with every modern convenience of the city home, such as electricity, hardwood floors, running water, etc. No Sovereign ever enjoyed his Royal Palace more than does John R. his “log cabin” as he insists upon calling it.

The surroundings of the home, the beautiful natural grove where many species of native mountain shrubs and trees, including dogwood, holly, maple, hemlock, pine, rhododendron, and azalea, make an ideal setting for the rustic structure.

From the home is afforded a marvelous view of the Blue Ridge Peaks of Wilkes and Alleghany. The family living room with its broad floor space, high ceilings, huge fireplace, and chimney of jagged stone, is most attractive and a spot where solid comfort is pictured. The sun-room and other room sof the home have the attractive, native stone fireplaces for the solicitor is partial to big open fireplaces where he can bask in the warmth and cheer of crackling log fires, chew his tobacco at will, and spit with convenience.

Meadow Brook Dairy Farm with its 200 acres of rolling land, 100 in a high state of cultivation, and with a one mile frontage on the highway, is located in a picturesque spot of the Wilkes County foothills, within easy view of Little Grandfather and Grandmother, Chestnut Mountain, Flat Top, and other beautiful peaks of the western hills. Solicitor Jones purchased the tract 10 years ago and two years later started a dairy in a small way with half a dozen grade cows. From this small beginning has grown one of the finest dairy farms in Western North Carolina, with a herd of 50 pure-bred Jersey cows, many of which are descendants of Gamboge, Sensational Fern, Oakwood’s De. Fox, Black Fox, and other noted strains.

Fertile Soil

Brought up to a high state of fertility through scientific cultivation, the farm produces such necessary food crops as lespedeza, corn, wheat, the different varieties of clover, blue grass, soy bean, and others for the daily ration of the dairy herd and other live stock.

The farm buildings are modern in every particular, the main dairy barn having been designed by the State Board of Agriculture. Equipped with concrete floors, steel staunchions, individual drinking receptacles for the cows, the barn is designed to house more than 100 tons of feed with a 100p-ton capacity silo. The milk house is equally modern, with washing, rinsing, and sterilizing equipment, modern coolers, fillers, bottlers, and capper. Every sanitary precaution is observed at Meadow Brook Farm where healthy, blood-tested, friendly, contented cows produce no less than six gallons each day. Concrete floors are thoroughly scrubbed each morning; the cows come into the milking barn only after careful grooming; the sacks are sterilized; milking is done with De Laval Blue Ribbon electrically-driven milkers. The milk is never touched by human hand.

After the milk has been run through the cooling system, reduced to a low temperature, and place in cold storage, it is delivered to the customer’s door on ice manufactured in the farm’s own refrigerator plant. Butter, eggs, and dressed poultry likewise are supplied upon order, to scores of city customers who have learned to appreciate the superior flavor of milk-fed fowls. Daily patrons include the leading hotels, cafes, and drugstores of the Wilkesboros. The city schools also are supplied with milk prepared with scientific care, in the interest of the health of the school children.

Self-Made Man

John R. is a striking example of the proverbial self-made man. It has been through pluck and hard work that he has climbed to the rung that he now occupies, and not by luck or “pull.” He worked his way through preparatory school and college by grabbing any job, however rough it might be, to earn his board and tuition.

The family live of the Jones’ is a striking example of the value of cooperation. It is to the constant cooperation, companionship, and sympathy of his wife, Mrs. Rosa McNeill Jones, who has stood by him through storm as well as sunshine, that John R. ascribes major credit for the success he has attained. Mrs. Jones has worked side by side with her husband, as his private secretary, in the office and in the home all of their married life. She draws his bills for the courts, she attends to the buying of supplies for the dairy, posts the books, supervises the paying and collecting of bills and attends to a thousand and one things that loom during the week. Having no children of their own, they have reared and educated several orphans and fitted them to make their way in the world. Hospitality permeates the atmosphere of the “Log Cabin” out at Meadow Brook Farm and the latchstring always hang outside the door.

Heroines on the Farm Front, in North Carolina and England, 1943

“Heroines on the Farm Front” by Sallie Hill in the March 1943 issue of The Progressive Farmer

In the matter of patriotism, farm folk yield to no group. All through the South, it is our blessed privilege to meet heroic farm men and women who go quietly about their commonplace everyday duties with no decorations and no bright uniforms. Right to the head of the class we would send Mrs. W.T. Phillips, Lauderdale County, Alabama, who has sent five sons into our armed services. This is by no means all, as Mrs. Phillips writes me:

“Last year I canned about 600 quarts of fruits, vegetables, and meats. I do my own housework; look after the chickens, cow, and hogs; work the garden, and help my husband on the far. I also find time to read farm magazines.”

Another letter—one from enterprising Mrs. Eva Weddington of Cabarrus County, North Carolina—relates that she is going to her local schoolhouse two nights a week to take a course in poultry raising, in order that she may do her part in meeting Secretary Wickard’s request for production of an additional 20,000,000 chickens.

As for the home health side of the picture, Mrs. F.D. Wade, Copiah County, Mississippi, reports that she’s fully rewarded for the time and effort she spent in taking a first aid course. “I have had two opportunities after accidents to stop blood by applying pressure,” she told me, “once for a woman who had been in an automobile accident, and again when a little boy was hurt with a rock.”

No less heroic are the hundreds of enthusiastic enrollees in The Progressive Farmer’s home nursing course.

Buying Bonds

Bond buying is going steadily ahead, too. In fact, Miss Connie Bonslagel, Arkansas State Demonstration Agent, in speaking to the Mississippi Bureau Federation on the importance of buying Bonds, stated that Arkansas home demonstration clubs have raised $31,000 through their community activities and have invested it in Series F Bonds.

“These women,” she explains, “reason thus: by the time the boys come marching home from war, their home communities will be pretty badly run down for want of materials and labor for repairs. Their homes will need to have their faces lifted, so to speak. The boys will be restless, too, unless they have something to do around the place to make them feel at home again, and to make them know they are needed there. This cash—four dollars for every three—will seem like a godsend then. It will help take care of unemployment, hold the interest of the boys in the home community, and furnish a better place for all to live.

This seems like sound post-war planning to us.

An English Visitor Talks

There are plenty of unsung heroines in England, too, according to Miss Mary Grigs, Home Editor of the Farmers’ Weekly in that country. While visiting our offices, she gave us a clear and succinct summary of their rationing situation now. Feed for poultry is so scarce there, she said, that families who are not actually raising poultry on a commercial basis are allowed to keep only one hen per person. Naturally poultry meat is rare, and eggs are rationed to the tune of one egg per person a month.

“How about other meat?” I asked.

“Each person is permitted about ¾ pounds per week, or about 25 cents’ worth of whatever meat the butcher may have. In addition, there is also the possibility of 2 or 3 thin slices of bacon. Other weekly allowances include 2 tablespoons of butter, 4 tablespoons margarine, and 2 tablespoons tea. Coffee, which English people drink very little, is not rationed. For the most part, milk is reserved for children.”

Since England is short of wheat, Miss Grigs thinks bread may be rationed by the time she returns to England.

Gardening is the chief indoor and well as outdoor “sport” in England now, this Britisher remarked, for every available window box and spot of ground is planted with vegetables. Public squares and parks are plowed up and allotted to those who wish additional gardens. She also lamented the pathetic scarcity of seed, which adds its toil to the gardening problem.

Speaking of the English Women’s Land Army, Miss Grigs told us how 60,000 girls and women have voluntarily enlisted to work on farms. Their clothing or uniform is provided by the government, and they are paid about like English soldiers. Many women prefer the land to working in defense plants.

In our country, we predict cheers for a food-saving army,  particularly if it is designed to relieve the overworked farmer’s wife during the summer months when food preservation is at its peak. Here is an opportunity, it seems to us, for volunteer home economics-trained women and girls to engage in a patriotic undertaking second to none, except combat duty. The question is open to readers.

Straws in the wind indicate for us 2 or 3 additional ration books before 1943 is gone—one for canned goods, possibly one for meat, and another for clothes and other items. What with daily increasing inroads on our food supply and the needs of our servicemen, allies, and civilians, farm people will fall into one of the two classes: the “haves” and the “have-nots.” In other words, it seems we shall either do more food-raising or do without.

A new realization of the real meaning of our food program to people in service, comes with this message from a Texan, Miss Ruth Cooper, in a U.S. Army base hospital unit in Egypt:

“We are so happy to get American food and are thoroughly enjoying it. You will be interested in some of our innovations—dehydrated potatoes, which are delicious, and dehydrated butter, which is wonderfully creamy and rich. We shall have more dehydrated products as our supplies arrive. This morning we had a tasty breakfast of bacon and scrambled dried eggs.”

New Hanover County Bulb Farms, 1936

“Carolina Bulb Farms” by Susan Iden, Carolina Co-operator, March, 1936

New Hanover County leads in number of commercial bulb farms with Beaufort second. The flowers have a ready sale in New York.

A little bit of Holland in tulip time has been transplanted to Eastern North Carolina. The fields have been all brilliant the past few weeks with patches of rose and pink, blue and yellow, varying hues of the tall nodding tulips, Dutch iris and jonquils. The flowers find a ready sale on the New York markets, gracing the tables of many homes in the metropolis the next afternoon after they are cut from the fields.

It is a pretty sight to drive through Eastern Carolina in springtime—the Coastal Plain Experiment Station at Willard, bright with its early flowering bulbs, and a little farther on the more extensive bulb fields of Castle Hayne where the flowers are grown commercially. Those at Willard are grown only for experiment, a part of the work of the station.

The little farms look like so many patchwork quilts spread out over the land, mostly green with orderly rows of lettuce, peas, strawberries, clean of weeds and grass, with thrifty things growing, the flowers adding splashes of brilliant color.

The Coastal Plain Experiment Station was established about 20 years ago and has done some notable work with the scuppernong and muscadine grape vines and the products of the grapes. When government restrictions were placed on imported bulbs some years ago there came opportunities for bulb culture that added experiments with narcissus, jonquils, daffodils, Dutch iris, and tulips to the work of the station. Under the direction of Dr. Charles Dearing, extensive experiments have been carried on at the station with a view to awakening Eastern Carolina farmers to the money-making opportunities at their doors.

Newberry, an early traveling florist, recognizing that the climate and soil of the Coastal Plain section were well adapted to bulb culture, several decades ago started the business around Magnolia, offering contract to farmers to produce bulbs. At one time the state was the sole source of supply of the tube roses of the world. With strong competition developing from Holland bulb growers, Newberry went out of the business but the bulb culture was continued in Eastern North Carolina by the Crooms.

About 20 years ago Hugh McRae of Wilmington developed a prosperous colony of farmers at Castle Hayne. He tried at first to get native farmers but later brought in Holland immigrants. They naturally turned to bulb growing, the great industry of their native country. The American-grown bulbs, it was found, came into bloom about two weeks earlier than the imported bulbs.

Tulips, jonquils, Dutch iris, and gladioli, when grown commercially on the bulb farms are planted in straight rows, making them easy to cut. The rows are about three feet apart, the bulbs planted about two to four inches apart in the rows and about four inches deep.

At the Experiment Station, Dr. Dearing has made some interesting experiments in naturalizing jonquil bulbs, planting them broadcast through the pine woods. They have adapted themselves to the experiment very well.

While some trade is carried on by the farmers in bulbs, it is largely from the sale of the flowers that they derive their profit. In the spring time Raleigh and other cities in the state enjoy the beauty of quantities of lovely yellow jonquils, daffodils, tulips, and Dutch iris that cut from the bulb fields flood the markets.

The flowers are shipped as far as New York, which handles as many of the flowers as the bulb growers can ship. Cut from the fields during the afternoon and packed immediately for shipment they are sold in New York the next afternoon.

Sorted and tied as soon as they are cut from the fields the tulips are left in water for a while until the stems are filled with water in which condition they stand the trip North in good shape. Dutch iris are shipped in the bud just before they are ready to burst open.

There are 26 commercial bulb growers in Eastern North Carolina, mostly in New Hanover County, two in Beaufort County. They grow 325 acres of narcissus, daffodils, Dutch iris, tulips, gladiolus, and peonies.

The growing of the bulb flowers for the market really became a commercial industry about 10 years ago and has expanded rapidly. Most of the growers by far are the Dutch, having had experience in bulb and flower culture in Holland.

Flowers from daffodil and iris bulbs used to be grown outdoors entirely, but in the past five years some are grown in beds under glass or matting causing the bloom buds to develop earlier, that is, from January 15^th to March 1^st. In the past three years, some growers have planted bulbs in heated glass houses, thus getting blooms in December and November. These bring high prices as they compete favorably with greenhouse forced daffodil and iris blooms grown in the North and East. Such blooms bring from 75 cents to $1.50 a dozen, whereas outdoor-grown blooms in March might bring from 10 to 20 cents a dozen delivered in New York.

Home Demonstration Clubs Supporting Rural Libraries, 1936

Carolina Co-operator, March 1936

It is interesting to see that home demonstration clubs are sponsoring small libraries in their rural communities. The Red Oak Library in Nash County is kept open at regular times by a librarian, and they have added many good books this year.

The Aventon Club in the same county has received 50 additional books, and the entire community seems to be much interested in circulating the books widely. In consequence people are reading more.

The Holly Grove Club has started a library with 60 books which were given them by the Mt. Pleasant Club, both in Nash County, has a circulating library which is sent from Raleigh. The Benvenue Club, too, has a book exchange.

Democracy vs. Politics, Editorial, 1938

Friday, March 25, 1938

The West Asheville News

Published every Friday by Walter A. Ward, 508 Haywood Road, West Asheville, Telephone 4817. Subscription rates by mail $2 per year.

This newspaper is dedicated to the upbuilding of Asheville and Buncombe County, protecting their citizenship and promoting their interests.

This newspaper is the authorized spokesman for Organized Labor in Asheville and vicinity. It champions the rights of the workers in fair and honorable manner, convinced that Asheville’s best interests can be served only through protection of the interests of the working masses.

editorial

DEMOCRACY vs. POLITICS

If Democracy breaks down in this country not the least cause will be an order of politics whose system of spoils and favoritism place efficiency and conscientious public service of secondary importance. The party or a faction within the party must first be served; only after that may the public benefit.

Such a system has been in vogue for a long time; it is still going on with increased viciousness.

What appears to be the latest example in point is what seems to be the forced resignation of Test Farm Superintendent S.C. Clapp by the State Agriculture Commissioner Scott.

From what we can learn, Mr. Clapp is doing a good job. Perhaps he is not; there may be warrant for his removal. But until more acceptable grounds are offered, the incident will smack of rank politics.

Favoritism, it might be said, does not always take heavy toll of efficient public service. For this reason perhaps the system of spoils is still able to exist. Mr. Clapp’s successor is doubtless worthy and capable. But politics alone does not justify a change in an office or job.

No successful private business would think of discharging an employee who is meeting his responsibilities well. Why, then should any unit of public business countenance it?

This does not preclude the oft necessity of a purge of incompetence, but neither does it mean that reform should be based on favoritism. Certainly competency should be retained.

Not only is the professional politician to be blamed for this condition, but also the attitude of a large part of the public which aids and abets by erroneously feeling that a public servant should not remain in office too long. Prudent and sound business enterprises look upon length of service as an asset. Strange the electorate, so far as its employees are concerned do not.

Europe has it over America in this regard. Tenure of office over there extends over a long period of time. Here performance of efficient service is oft subject to the caprice of the party in power. Should we be surprised if Democracy crumbles?

NC Farm Families Being Resettled, 1936

They’ve never had a chance—and there are many such children in the rural sections of North Carolina. Resettlement hopes to give these children and their fathers and mothers the chance they’ve never had.

“Our Forefathers Ate Too Much. . . Resettlement is the Doctor,” by N.K. Hart,  Carolina Co-operator, March 1936

More than 15,000 farmers in North Carolina are being helped to self-dependency by the RRA.

Dr. Carl C. Taylor, eminent rural sociologist and former Graduate School dean of North Carolina State College, who was called to Washington to become Assistant Administrator of the Resettlement Administration, uses a homely illustration to emphasize an acute agricultural problem.

“There were six boys in my family,” says Dr. Taylor, “and one of the first problems in mathematics that I learned was how to cut a pie into six equal pieces.”

“I recall that on one occasion my parents and part of the family drove to town one day to do their shopping, leaving one of my brothers and myself at home. This time it was not necessary to cut the pie into six pieces. We simple cut it into two pieces as a short cut to the quickest consumption of the whole.

“This reminds me of a short cut the pioneers took in settling the fertile farming lands on this continent. They divided the land into ‘two pieces,’ so to speak, in order to more quickly and ruthlessly strip it of forests and fertility in the wave of speculation and rapid expansion that occurred during the nation’s adolescent period of agricultural development.”

Dr. Taylor intimates that the experiment with the pie resulted in an old-fashioned stomach ache.

There is no question, he states, but that too rapid and speculative acquisition of farm lands prior to the turn of the century left this country with an agricultural ailment not dissimilar to the pains of a adolescent youth who has undertaken too large a portion of pumpkin pie.

Our National Stomach Ache

This apt illustration lays the basis for examining some of the problems which no longer could be neglected and for the correction of which the Resettlement Administration program was conceived. The backlash from the heedless agricultural development of the past which had no thought of the future but was concerned mainly with getting the largest number of acres into cultivation in the shortest period of time included hundreds of thousands of stranded farm families who had to go on federal relief when the full force of the depression hit the country.

In the land rush of the past 150 years, huge sections of the country were carelessly farmed by land hungry pioneers and speculators who took the cream of the soil and forest crops and pushed on farther west to repeat the process. In the wake of this rush inevitably were left stranded groups. Evenutally they were to become problem groups. As long as the frontiers were open and new lands remained to be settled, the problem was not so acute. The frontiers finally vanished, but the day of calamity was postponed by two factors, namely industrial expansion in the big cities, which provided an outlet for stranded farm folk, and, a little later, the World War which opened new world markets for agricultural products. It has been estimated that 50 million acres that never should have been in cultivation were put into crops during the World War boom.

Then the depression hit the country and hundreds of thousands of farmers trying to make a living on lands impossible to farm profitably, had to turn to Uncle Sam for aid. This deplorable situation constitutes an immediate and pressing problem which the Resettlement Administration is undertaking to solve through its rehabilitation and resettlement community activities. Resettlement is trying not only to bring about a readjustment of land use to conserve the land resources of the nation and to return poor farm land to uses to which it is better adapted, such as forests and recreational areas, but also is dealing with human resources in the rehabilitation of farm families that found themselves on relief through causes for which they were not altogether responsible, and the resettlement of families located on land which should be withdrawn from agriculture.

Victims of Depression

How Resettlement is helping rehabilitate the victims of our mistaken agricultural policies in the past is described by Administrator Rexford G. Tugwell:

“During the depression, low prices and foreclosures of mortgages took away from thousands of farmers the implements of their work. Of those who did not lose their farms, many found themselves without work animals, plows, fertilizer and seed. Many tenants were unable to rent good land. There are few tragedies in life that are worse than the gradual loss of producing power to a farmer. To see a cow go, then a faithful work horse, and finally to lose the land itself. This is really to be up against it. Your hands are willing; your arms are strong. But you are still helpless. You have been good in all the ways you know. Yet you are suffering terrific punishment.

“When a farmer has to go on relief, it is because he lacks some basic tool for production. Maybe he has lost it through bad luck, or maybe because he wasn’t a skillful manager. The Resettlement Administration tries to attack both these causes of tragedy. We help farmers get the tools to earn a living and we show them how it can best be done. Sometimes the problem is good land—the government can help him find a good farm to rent. More often a farmer needs tools, machinery, or fertilizer. In that case, Resettlement helps him with a small loan to make these purchases.

“One of our most important jobs, however, is a paradoxical one. We help farmers to help themselves so that relief or a loan is unnecessary. Many thousands of the farmers who have applied to the Resettlement Administration for loans or grants did not need them; they needed advice and guidance in managing their farms, and they got it from their county supervisors. I think myself that one of our best claims for support is just these people we have kept from borrowing money.”

Helping North Carolina Farmers

Uncle Sam is now extending rehabilitation aid to thousands of deserving farmers in North Carolina whose eligibility for help was established by careful investigation and the aid of an advisory committee in each applicant’s locality.

Families living on poor land being acquired by the Resettlement Administration for retirement from agricultural use will have first preference for Resettlement communities, provided they can meet eligibility requirements, and certain others of farm background who are able to establish qualifications also will be accepted. These communities vary in size and adaptability, depending on the nature of the area in which the Government is able to buy the land, but in all cases must be a good type of farm land on which Resettlement families with necessary financial and supervisory assistance will be able to make a living and eventually to acquire homes of their own by spreading the payments over a long period.

Lands unsuited to successful farming but capable of being developed for forestry, game, and recreation areas have been purchased or are in the process of being purchased in North Carolina totaling 103,000 acres. The land cost will amount to $765,975 and the development cost is expected to run $1,186,463. Men with picks, shovels, tractors, and trucks are already at work on three of these projects.

The Sandhills project, with headquarters at Hoffman, covers 60,000 acres. On this project will be developed one of the greatest long-leaf pine forests in the country, and recreational facilities will add to the prestige of North Carolina as one of the nation’s leading winter resort areas. The Jones, Salter, and Singletary Lakes project, with headquarters at Elizabethtown covers 30,000 acres. The Crabtree Creek project with headquarters in Raleigh covers 6,000 acres.

General reforestation, nurseries, truck trails and fire lanes, dams, lake and stream improvement, park sites, 4-H Club camps, and fish hatcheries constitute some of the job projects now materializing and which form a part of the government’s plan to demonstrate better uses of these areas.

Plans for Rural Resettlement projects involving approximately 60,000 acres of land and the construction of 1,180 farmsteads are included in the North Carolina program.

Penderlea Farms, a community project near Wilmington, inherited from Subsistence Homesteads Division of the Department of the Interior, is being completed by the Resettlement Administration.

A farm-tenant project recently approved provides for the purchase of 100 individual farms in this State for worthy farm tenants. Good farms are being purchased by the Resettlement Administration and provision made whereby tenants selected may acquire them on easy terms. This project is designed to demonstrate the desirability of home ownership by tenants.

15,000 Families

Resettlement Administration has a quota of more than 15,000 rehabilitation-in-place families in North Carolina, which are being helped to self-dependency by small loans and practical supervision. About 7,000 are already under this program and the State’s full quota of Rehabilitation cases is expected to be reached by May first.

Services of Resettlement’s Farm Debt Adjustment Unit are affecting compromises and saving the homes of farmers in danger of foreclosure.

Loans for community and cooperative services, another feature of the Resettlement program, are available for such enterprises as cooperative storage houses, canneries, threshing machines, hay balers, and the purchase of purebred sires. The Federated Cooperative Exchanges, Inc., of New Bern, involving an expenditure of $25,000, was the first such project approved in the State.

Goat's Milk Solves Digestive Problem, 1934

Carolina Co-operator, March 1936

Can’t Get Her Goat

Late in the fall of 1934, Mrs. Nora Hopkins, an active club member in Martin County and a tenant farmer’s wife, came to the home agent and told her of a bad stomach trouble from which she was suffering. She knew she should have milk to drink but without money to buy a cow or the feed for one, she said her only hope was to find a milk goat.

Miss Lora Sleeper, the home agent, started on a hunt to locate a milk goat and learned much about goats as a result of inquiries made. Letters were mailed to the State Extension office, Raleigh, and also to Virginia Extension office and soon goat breeders were heard from, one interested breeder calling at  the home agent’s office.

Mrs. Hopkins finally made a bargain with this goat breeder and secured a mother goat and kid, known as Togenburgs, for $5. This was a very low price for Togenburgs but the goats had roamed the woods and the mother was not producing heavily.

It was no easy matter for Mrs. Hopkins to tame the mother goat to get better milk production. The goat gave very little at first, approximately only one cupful in addition to what the kid used, but she was given good care and was petted and humored until now she objects to anyone else but her owner touching her.

Mrs. Hopkins’ stomach trouble improved steadily under her milk diet and she experimented with the milk in making butter. The product was a curiosity. In spite of the richness of goat’s milk, the butter like the milk was pure white, and the melting temperature was lower than that of ordinary butter fat.

Husbands Don't Attend Women's Meetings, But They Do Benefit From Them, 1936

Carolina Co-operator, March 1936

The Male Viewpoint from Iredell County

H.B. Moore of Stony Point in Iredell County says: “Although we husbands are not allowed to attend the meetings of the farm women’s clubs, we reap the full benefit of the plans they adopt when manual labor is involved.

“Last spring the Sharon Home Demonstration Club in Iredell County decided to carry out the project of making an outdoor living room. Of course, a potato house would have been much more practicable from a man’s point of view, but a woman’s orders must be obeyed, so in this case I helped put plans into action.

“In selecting a location for our out-of-doors living room, it seemed that a briar patch near the house was the only suitable place. Work was started to clear this spot and when it was completed it was such an improvement that we could hardly wait to continue the project. After laying off a plot about 200 square yards, turfing grass in spots, setting flowers and shrubs here and there, and laying a flag stone walk according to a plan, we were still more enthusiastic over our accomplishments.

“Out of scrap lumber and goods boxes we made furniture consisting of a settee, two chairs, a table, and a swing for the children. For a lily and fish pool we used an old discarded bath tub, placing rock and cement around the edge, and this completed the work for the first season. However, we hope to make further improvements during the next year.

“The total cost was $1.25, which was spent for paint, nails, and cement.

“After all, we husbands will have to admit that the farm women of our community are really doing a worthwhile work in that they are educating us in recreation and cultural lines and making us like it.”

Kitchen Improvements in Edgecombe County, 1936

Carolina Co-operator, March 1936

Edgecombe club women are interested in improving their kitchens for convenience and attractiveness. At each one of the January meetings the home agent has had requests for improving them. The club expects to have a tour in the early summer and visit all the kitchens which have been improved.

Mrs. L.D. Parks of the Woodland Club is quite happy over the improvements which have just been made in hers. A sink and hand pump have been moved from the back porch into the kitchen, and she is also enjoying a capacious cabinet which was built across one side of the room and made the right height for comfort while she is working. A part of the back porch has been converted into a cheerful breakfast room.

Hilda Goodwin Remembers Chicken Picking Time

“Chicken Picking Time” by Hilda Goodwin as published in Special Memories: A collection of stories by Chowan County Extension Homemakers

I grew up at a time when children were taught to help work at any job they were old enough to do. The one job I did not enjoy was the spring chicken picking.

The older chickens that layed eggs had to be sold to make room for baby chicks. We killed from 25 to 35 each time until all chickens were sold.

The night before we would take a flashlight and get the chickens off the roost as they slept and put them in a coop to kill the following morning.

The day started about 5 o’clock. Daddy would make a fire around the wash pot filled with water. While it was heating, the chickens’ head were cut off and put in a burlap bag until they were dead. Next they were dipped in scalding water to loosen the feathers so we could pick them off.

Each child old enough had to pick their share of the chickens before we went to school so Mama could finish cleaning them and get them ready for market. We rushed to do our job and hurry to get dressed to meet the school bus. All day long I remember the work I had done that morning because my hands smelled just like steaming chicken feathers. I dared not put my hands close to my nose much less let them get close to anyone else because they smelled so bad.

The good part came when the chickens were sold and we had money to buy a pair of shoes or something else needed. It was worth all we did to help make some money for the family.

Annie Lois Pike is Glad to Carry On Sewing Tradition, 1936

“Four Generations of Sewers” by Annie Lois Pike, Snow Camp, Alamance County, in Carolina Co-operator, March 1936

As far as I know there was no sewing equipment outside of needle, thimble, scissors, and thread in my great-grandmother’s day, and my grandmother, Lydia Allen Dixon, had her first sewing machine in her early married life. It was a hand machine turned with a crank and made a loop stitch. This machine did service for several years for a family of 10 children, and later my grandmother bought a Domestic, which was one of the first machines introduced in the neighborhood. Grandmother was very fortunate in having two older sisters to teach her the methods of the day; one was really a tailor and the other was a milliner.

Styles and methods changed considerably from my grandmother’s early days to my mother’s and today it is necessary for mothers to go away from home and take a course in making clothes, learning how to cut by the chart. In my mother’s day the waists were cut with nine seams and were lined with staves or while bone put in each seam to stiffen and make the waist fit without a wrinkle. The raw seams were all pressed open and bound or turned in and whipped. The skirts were cut in six and nine gores, and linens and seams were finished like the waist. A nine-inch width of Crinoline was stitched between the skirt and lining below the knee, and the bottom was either bound or faced. It took eight or nine yards of material to make a good dress in those days, and the material cost from $1 to $2 per yard.

Mother and her partner could make only three or four dresses a week, sewing all day long and half of the night. They sewed by lamp light, too, and every seam had to be basted and pressed. For all this work only $3 to $5 per dress was the price received.

Dresses were all close fitting and the measurements had to be accurate. They were cut by chart and the tracing wheel was used for all seams. The lining was cut first and the dress cut by that.

There is a vast difference in my mother’s, Clara Dixon Pike’s, younger days and mine. Today we have every modern convenience in sewing equipment and patterns, and we have also the blessing of good lights to sew by. Home Economics is taught in the public schools and any girl may learn to make her clothes in one-fourth the time it took her mother to make hers, and for one-third the amount it cost.

Last summer I went to town to get a crepe dress and I found that a good one cost from $10 to $15. I then went to the mill store and bought material to make one. The cost was:

                Four yards material, $1.99

                Buttons, 10 cents

                Thread, 10 cents

                Pattern, 15 cents

                                Total, $2.34

The dress I made at $2.34 was just as good as those costing five to six times as much, and I liked it much better because it fitted me well and I could choose the style.

Looking back to my great-grandmother’s day and her limited equipment, I find it pays me to do my own sewing with all the modern advantages 1936 offers.

Rural Women Recruited for 'Food for Freedom' Campaign, 1943

From the March, 1943, issue of Carolina Co-operator

Rural women of the Carolinas will be given an opportunity to sign pledges guaranteeing a plentiful supply of homegrown food for their families in 1943 during a roll call to be held March 1 to 20 in connection with the national “Food for Freedom” campaign.

Home Demonstration Club women, with the assistance of neighborhood leaders, will visit every family in the rural districts of North Carolina in furtherance of the roll call, according to Mrs. Estelle T. Smith, assistant home agent at N.C. State College.

The goal of the campaign is for every rural family to produce about a ton a year of the right kind of foods for every member of the family.

Joseph Sanderson's Record Corn Yield, 1939

From the editorial page of the March, 1939, Carolina Co-operator, Roy H. Park, editor

Somebody once said that the world will beat a path to the door of the man who perfects a superior mouse trap. A really foolproof mouse trap would be no small contribution to human progress, but a formula for raising 137.5 bushels of corn to the acre would, perhaps, get us along much faster. Last fall a 4-H Club member, Joseph Sanderson of Four Oaks, harvested his corn crop, counted out his yield, and found to his satisfaction it measured 137.5 bushels from one acre of his Wayne County loam. Others were interested in Joseph’s record yield, wanted to know how he had done it. Among them was L.R. Modlin of Kelford, who asked us to find out for him. We called on R.B. Harper, Wayne County’s assistant county agent, who contributes this information:

“The soil on which this corn was planted in Portsmouth sandy loam and was limed to bring the pH reading suitable for growing corn. Joseph cut the stalks, disked thoroughly, broke the ground with a two-horse plow, and smoothed it off with a second harrow. He ran his rows with a small middle-buster and applied 400 pounds of fertilizer before he planted.

“Because of the rainy weather it was impossible for him to run the section harrow across the corn when it came up, therefore, he gave his crop its first work-out with walking cultivation, similar to that used in growing cotton. Before his first cultivation, he applied 150 pounds of soda and before the last cultivation he applied 150 pounds more.

“The variety planted was Latham’s Double, which we find is giving a very outstanding yield in this county. The rows were four feet apart and approximately 10 inches in the drill. He broke the land about six inches deep and did not use barnlot manure before breaking.”

'What I Love to See', March 1943

Progressive Farmer also invited adults to write about country things they love. Here are two letters from North Carolinians printed in the magazine’s March 1943 issue.

Best of all I love to see lambs dotting the green hillside above the barn, bleating plaintively as they nibble the short, tender grass, and chasing each other with stiffened legs but exuberant spirits.

--Mrs. Charles M. Fortune Jr., Buncombe County

-=-

Of all our living nature, I love most to see green, health tobacco plants on long beds covered with white canvas. Seen in distant woods on a raw, cold day in March, they seem to be stretches of snow. And then some balmy spring day you take off the white canvas and carefully pick the venomous weeds from among the precious plants and so come into closer communion with God and nature. Tobacco plants may not seem poetical to you, but I assure you they are true poetry to a really progressive tobacco farmer.

--Mrs. E. Sharpe Newton, Wilson County

NC 4-H'ers Write About Favorite Projects, 1943

Progressive Farmer had young people write about their favorite project. First prize among girls’ letters, $5 in war stamps, went to Betty Peek of Macon County. Here is her winning letter along with others from North Carolina printed in the magazine’s March 1943 issue.

Last year when our 4-H club was organized, I chose gardening and food preservation as projects. Mother enlarged our garden to twice its original size and gave me half—100 x 40 feet. I grew 58 varieties of vegetables, including African squash and edible soybean. I saved seeds from many of the varieties grown and had a nice supply of squash, cabbage, and root crops for storing. I grew my garden to help the family food supply and for the local markets, thereby releasing commercial foods for our Army and allies. My total profits above all costs, and including the value of vegetables used at home, were $96.51.

  --Betty Peek, Macon County

-=-

One of Dad’s O.I.C. sows had 2 more pigs than she could care for, so being tins and trying to select our 4-H project, we decided to try raising the runts which weighed 1 ½ pounds each. Buttermilk and bread seemed to be a perfect diet for them. We have them every bite they could eat and a good bath each day, which made their coats as white as snow. It was fun to see our twin pigs grazing in our yard with red ribbons around their necks. When they were 5 months old we penned them up as they were so fat we were afraid they would get hurt. When they were 5 ½ months old, we sold them for over $50.

   --Martha and Margaret Whitmire, Transylvania County

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My best project is trying to help Uncle Sam win this war. I have gathered scrap tin, metal, keys, and bought War Stamps.

   --Ethel Pearce, Northampton County

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Wildlife conservation has been my favorite 4-H project. My brother began teaching me the names of trees before I started to school. I won a trip to the state wildlife conservation encampment. I have learned to identify a large number of shrubs, vines, wild flowers, and birds along with the insects, and this project may be the foundation for my career. During the winter days when I can’t be roaming the woods in search of specimens, I often read about trees, wildlife, birds, and insects. Money cannot buy these pleasures.

    --Laura Williamson, Wilson County

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My most interesting club project is a Jersey calf. I raised her and now my cow is giving 4 gallons a day. I also have 500 White Leghorns.

      --John Clyde Cook, Lee County

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Last year I was given a purebred female Tamworth pig for my 4-H project. I fed it scraps and milk at very little cost. In October I exhibited it at the Forsyth County Fair and won two $6 prizes and a $100 purebred registered calf. I will give one of my sow’s pigs to some other 4-H club boy. I also plan to exhibit the calf at Raleigh State Fair next fall.

    --Billy Ray Lasley, Chatham County

Bunn, Balance and Cobb Make Hogs Pay, 1943

Follow the Lead of Bunn, Ballance, and Cobb to Make Hogs Pay, 1943

“How Three Leaders Make Hogs Pay” by F.H. Jeter, Editor, State College Extension Service, The Progressive Farmer, March, 1943

Hogs are fast winning recognition as among the best money-makers on North Carolina farms and a necessary part of “Two-Armed Farming.” It’s a fine sign of the times that not only has North Carolina so many leading hog markets but that market pages of our dailies report hog prices on North Carolina markets along with cotton and tobacco prices. By following the practices of Bunn, Ballance, and Cobb many more farmers can make hogs pay year in and year out.

Last month we promised for this issue the story of C.S. Bunn, C.L. Ballance, and W.D. Cobb. Mr. Bunn is president of the North Carolina Swine Breeders’ Association, Mr. Ballance a director of that association and president of the State Association of Livestock Mutuals, while Mr. Cobb is a leading swine breeder I his section of North Carolina. There is much to learn from each of them.

Mr. C.S. Bunn of Spring Hope, Nash County, has been breeding Duroc-Jersey hogs for about 25 years. In fact, Mr. Bunn will have nothing but registered stock on his place whether it be chickens, corn, cows, or hogs. “Every animal from a purebred sire” is his platform. “I paid $100 for a new pig as a start and next fall I spent another for a bred gilt. From these two animals I began work with hogs,” he said. He also intimated that paying that $100 in cash for a hog was not very popular with his family at the time, but has paid him richly. Since that time, he has paid more than $100 on several occasions to get the right kind of breeding animal.

Stressing his faith in the “Two-Armed Farming” long advocated by The Progressive Farmer, Mr. Bunn declares, “I use all the waste stuff on my place for producing livestock, for without animals to balance my crop-growing I could not use my labor to best advantage. As for the best medicine for hogs, I would say healthful surroundings.” He uses a central farrowing house but the sows are carried to portable houses located on clean land where the pigs are grown out on self-feeders.

Provides for Plenty of Hay

Probably North Carolina’s leading breeder of Spotted Poland-China hogs is C.L. Balance of Rt. 2, St. P:aul. He has 1,192 acres in his home place with 664 acres of open or cultivated land. We found 325 head of animals on this farm including about 200 pigs of weaning age and under. Three things Mr. Balance is especially interested in are: an abundance of home-grown feed; good sanitation; and favorable marketing conditions.

As grain feed for his hogs Mr. Ballance seeds about 80 acres to oats, 80 acres to barley, and 25 acres to wheat each fall, along with 50 acres to green grazing crops (largely oats and rye) to provide clean pasture for the next crop of pigs. In addition, he plants 250 acres to yellow and white corn each year. Sweet potatoes and peanuts are additional feed crops, though Mr. Ballance is very careful about how he allows his hogs to clean up peanut fields. At least 75 acres of land are used as a range for the hogs and it is needless to say that few of the animals are invested with internal parasites. He uses the portable style farrowing house, carrying the brood sows to new land that has been cultivated since pigs were last farrowed there. Each of the 40 brood sows is handled in this way.

As president of the State Association of Livestock Mutuals, Mr. Ballance makes hog growing and breeding a business and is always available to aid in fighting for fair pork prices and shipping conditions.

In the case of Mr. W.D. Cobb, Rt. 2, LaGrange, three things that stand out are: a market-premium because his animals are exceptionally free of parasites; careful culling; and exceptionally large litters. On his 475-acre Greene County farm, Mr. Cobb usually keeps 12 brood sows of the Durock-Jersey breed and sells from 125 to 140 fat pigs each year on the nearby market. “I never allow my sows to farrow a second litter of pigs on the same land,” he says. “And on the last several lots of pigs I sold, a premium of ¼ cent a pound was gladly added because the animals were free of internal parasites such as kidney worms, intestinal worms, and liver worms.” (This is in marked contrast to results secured by most growers in Eastern Carolina; usually all their hog livers are condemned because of worms.) He has six large lots for farrowing purposes and uses them in rotation for every third farrow. The lots are planted in corn and soybeans, followed by a fall-seeded mixture of rye, crimson clover, barley, and rape for spring grazing. He believes in grazing crops and seeds lespedeza for late summer grazing.

235 Pounds at 6 Months

Mr. Cobb keeps his sows and pigs at the self-feeder from the time the pigs are 2 weeks old until they are weaned. Then the sows are removed and the pigs stay on the feeder until marketed. As a result, the pigs never let up in growing and, when 6 months old, tip the scales at 235 pounds, being marketed at that age. The sows come away from the litter in good shape and are soon ready for the next breeding. They lose no flesh, and, because of this, they wean an average of eight pigs to the littler. This is two pigs above the state average. “And these two extra pigs make my profit,” says Mr. Cobb.

He carefully selects the gilts to be used for the next crop of brood sows, taking them from the feedlot and feeding them by hand until they are ready for breeding. “I cull as I go,” he says. “If a sow does not good at the first breeding, I may try her again, but if she fails that time, into the feedlots she goes and is sold. I started in this hog business in 1914 and not only is it very interesting but it also has been profitable under our plan of operation.”

The 'Lord's Acre' Plan, 1943

“Lord’s Acre” Plan in 1,000 More Churches” by S.C. Clapp, Burke County assistant agricultural agent, in The Progressive Farmer, March, 1943

I was delighted to see in the February Progressive Farmer the article by Dr. James G.K. McClure on “the Lord’s Acre” work in the rural churches of western North Carolina. I have been over these western churches at various times and know church organizations of various denominations (it is non-denominational) that have been greatly helped by the Lord’s Acre Plan.

Just for example, one man with six children told me he could hardly buy shoes and books to keep his children in school and had almost quit going to church because he did not have money to contribute, and that he had hardly ever paid more than $3 per year. He decided to plant half an acre of Irish potatoes and turn over his church half the proceeds. He made $36 for his church, had plenty of potatoes for his family—and his children were still in school! This is typical of how many families have been helped in their church work.

I know of one place where a children’s Sunday school class set up a cooperative project with chickens and used the proceeds to buy hymn books for the church.

The Lord’s Acre Plan certainly helped and strengthened many rural churches in western North Carolina. I wish farmers in other sections would re-read what Dr. McClure said in last month’s Progressive Farmer and try the plan in a thousand more churches in 1943!

Editor’s Note—We are delighted to print this interesting testimony from Mr. Clapp, popular assistant county agent in Burke County, N.C. We again suggest that interested persons may well send 6 cents in stamps to Rev. Dumont Clarke, The Farmers Federation, Asheville, N.C., for an explanatory small pamphlet, “The Lord’s Care Plan at Work in the Country Church.”

Electricity Now Available to One in Four Farm Homes, 1939

“Farmers are Power-Minded” by Dudley Bagley, Chairman, North Carolina R.E.A., March, 1939, the Carolina Co-operator

A lineman here connects another farm home to a rural line.

Four years ago the number of North Carolina farms served by electric power lines totaled only 11,558. The number now electrified is 62,206, and a conservative estimate will boost this figure to 74,500 before another year has passed.

Electricity is now available, moreover, to one in every four of the 282,253 North Carolina farms with occupied dwellings (listed in the last census) or a total of 78,906.

The power companies have co-operated with the program and have invested $6,530,341 in building 6,876 miles of line since 1935. The Federal Rural Electrification Administration has loaned to co-operatives $3,744,450 to build 3,520 miles of line, and the various municipalities have spent $856,940 to build 1,165 miles of line into adjoining rural areas.

A careful survey of several North Carolina counties showed that one year after the completion of a rural power line, the average farmer-customer had invested $180 in wiring and electrical appliances. This indicates that, while the various agencies were spending $11,131,731 in building the lines, the farmers were spending a total of $10,675,120, or almost dollar for dollar. This brings to a total of $21,806,851 the amount invested in rural electrification in the State, 82 percent of which has been expended within the past four years.

The future of rural electrification in North Carolina depends upon what happens on the lines already built. It makes no difference whether the lines are built by government loans, towns, or the power companies; they should be part of a self-sustaining system.

During this year we may reasonably expect the power companies, Federal Rural Electrification Administration and various municipalities to spend about $3,000,000 in building 2,800 new miles of rural lines to serve an additional 12,300 customers. These figures, of course, are to be taken as estimates. Much will depend upon unpredictable factors and the actual progress made in 1939 may vary considerably in either direction.

What happens after this year is also difficult to foresee. Although electricity is now available to one in every four farm families in North Carolina, only one in every five is actually using it. This compares, however, to one in five for Virginia and one in seven for South Carolina. According to statistics gathered by Electrical World, North Carolina added more rural customers last year than any other state in the South and was exceeded by only five other states in the Union. But this curve of rapid progress during the past four years will definitely level off as future lines are built. Of the 282,000 occupied dwellings in North Carolina’s 310,000 farms, only 156,000 homes whose owners’ incomes are considerably above the average. Then, too, many homes of farm families fully able to subscribe to electric current are located in the more sparsely settled areas, and these will, other factors being equal, be the last to be electrified.

Rural electrification is not a fixed and unchangeable program, but develops gradually as farm people become more interested, and as newer and less costly methods of financing and construction are worked out. The program has been progressive and although the peak of construction has passed, power lines will gradually be extended into every community whenever and wherever farm families can use sufficient power to make the extension pay out in a reasonable length of time.

Home Demonstration News From Across N.C., March 1939

By Dr. Jane S. McKimmon, Assistant Director of State Extension, March, 1939, as published in the Carolina Co-operator

Water carrying, old methods of scouring and washing, and the lack of electrical energy and equipment causes most of the long hours of work and the consequent weariness and nerve strain which means that a woman can’t give her best thought and effort to the welfare of her husband and children. Household drudgery consumes too much of her time—she is left spiritless.

Perhaps running water is the greatest time saver, for every household task requires it. What we eat is washed before it is cooked and it is usually cooked in water. The dishes, pans, and all equipment need to be cleansed with it. The family laundry is done and from scrubbing the kitchen floor to scrubbing the children, water is needed in quantity.

Mrs. Sneed of Rockingham County, after many years of climbing 300 yards from the spring to the house with 10 to 16 buckets of water daily needed, now has a cement trough into which the spring empties. A bucket and pulley complete the circuit of dipping and lifting.

Mrs. J.L. Davis of Yancey County is also happy today because she had enough money to bring water to her house by putting a ram in the spring. Mr. and Mrs. Elbert Wilson of the same county built and equipped a bath room and have plenty of water.

Perhaps there is some plan you and your husband together can work out so that you, too, may have that great convenience—running water.

Books in Beaufort

Home Demonstration Club women of Beaufort County will have a chance to read at least one book a month in the future, reports Violet Alexander, home agent.

Through the co-operation of the WPA and the local public library, a book service has been made possible for the rural women. Volumes will be distributed at meetings of the various home demonstration clubs over the county. A trained librarian will attend each of the monthly meetings with the home agent to assist the women in selecting suitable books.

Martin Marmalade to Manchuria

Citrus fruit marmalade, made by Home Demonstration Club women in Martin County at a recent meeting, is now en route to faraway Manchuria. Mrs. Leonard, a visiting missionary, was in North Carolina when the club women were working on the project, and she tasted some of the marmalade. She said the flavor was so superior to that made by the English in Manchuria that she would like to take a supply back with her.

Long Trip

Mrs. J.L. Davis of Henderson, Route 4, has just completed a trip half-way around the world on foot. She saw no engaging sights on this trip as she was handicapped with a bucket of water in one hand and an empty pail in the other.

The journey ended abruptly last week when this Vance County farm woman installed a hydraulic ram that delivers 720 gallons of water a day to her kitchen.

Farm Agent J.W. Sanders estimated that Mrs. Davis’ daily trips between the spring and her kitchen over a period of years were equal to a distance half way around the world.

Swine Project for 4-H’ers

Six little pigs went not to market, but to Doris Norwood of the Jackson Club, Evelyn Brewer of the Marshville Club, Roxie Winchester and Amos Rogers of the Wesley Chapel Club, Homer Haigler of the Fairview Club, and William Crain of the Weddington Club.

A Monroe bank donated the six pigs to as many 4-H Club members, who will feed and care for them according to directions supplied by the farm agent.

When the pigs have their first littler, the owner will give back to the bank one of the new family. Then the bank will give this pig away to another club member, who will follow the same procedure.

'Cap' Eagles Elected President of N.C. Farm Bureau, 1946

“Carolina Farm Comment” by F.H. Jeter, Extension Editor, N.C. State College, Raleigh, as published in the March 11, 1946, issue of the Fayetteville Observer

William Wooten Eagles of Crisp is not only a distinguished citizen of Edgecombe County, but he is also a distinguished citizen of North Carolina. His elevation to the presidency of the North Carolina Farm Bureau at its 10^th annual convention in Winston-Salem was in fitting recognition of his interest in cooperative farm effort, of his success as a practical farmer, and of his wider interest in the business and financial affairs of the rural people about him. “Cap” Eagles, as he is more affectionately known by those who have been intimately associated with him, is a natural leader. Not that he demands or pushes or shouts, but through quiet, natural ability and sincere interest, he stimulates the best in those with whom he is associated.

I have known “Cap” for many years. I have visited him in his home and on his farm where I have seen the fine cooperative attitude which has been developed between him and the 17 or more white tenants and seven Negro tenants who have worked there for so many years. Mr. Eagles began farming back in 1908 on the same family-owned plantation, in the Crisp neighborhood, which had been farmed by his father and earlier kinsmen. He attended the first farmers meeting out of which grew the North Carolina Farm Bureau Federation. He has not missed a meeting of his Farm Bureau since, unless he was out of state.

HELPED SET UP COTTON GROWERS ASSOCIATON

Mr. Eagles also was one of the signers of the first note for $10,000 which set up the North Carolina Cooperative Cotton Growers Association. He served as vice president of that organization for many years and more lately has been president of the North Carolina Cooperative Farm Exchange. His belief in the value of these two organizations to the farmers of the state has led him to support both of them until they have become able to stand on their own merits. His interest in the welfare of his tenants is well known. His landlord-tenant program in which he has developed a spirit of cooperation and achievement is a model for other large plantation owners. It was my good fortune to attend one of his annual meetings a few years ago when he rewarded those tenants who had done unusually good jobs in that season. They were first served an old-fashioned barbecue and were then given cash prizes for improved farm and home practices. These prizes were awarded on the basis of a score card worked out by Brooks James, farm management specialist.

This landlord-tenant idea is to be pushed throughout eastern North Carolina, incidentally, as trained persons can be found to carry it along. In Edgecombe County, H.C. Scott and Miss Athlae Boone, the assistant farm and home agents, have been designated to give their full time to this work.

On the Eagles farm, there are tenants who have been on the place for 45 to 50 years. Most of them, of course, do not have the young labor that they had in other days, but the older ones still carry on and are doing good farming to the best of their ability. Much of this is due, of course, to the sympathetic attitude of the owner. As a matter of fact, Mr. Eagles got his nickname of “Cap” from the tenants on the place.

SUPPORTS LIVESTOCK ASSOCIATION

It is interesting to note that “Cap” supports the Edgecombe County Livestock Association, a going concern formed years ago by those who wanted to market their fat hogs, beef cattle, lambs, wool, and other livestock products cooperatively in pools.

Not only is Mr. Eagles a good farmers and a model landlord, but he also is known as a good businessman. He is president of the Farmers Bank of Macclesfield, the post office of his home community of Crisp. The bank there came through the great depression as sound as a new hickory nut. The state’s leading farmer also entered politics for a brief spell and served as a member of the General Assembly for four terms. As was natural, he was a member of the committee on agriculture and banking. He belongs to many orders and organizations, but is proudest of being chairman of the Soil Conservation District, comprising the counties of Edgecombe, Greene, Pitt, and Martin. Some excellent work in forest fire control and in drainage has been done in these counties under his direction. “Cap” believes that the soil is the basis of all of North Carolina’s farming future.

“Building the soil is the greatest thing that we can do,” he said recently. In this work with the Soil Conservation District, he and his associates in the four counties cooperate with the Extension Service, the REA, the FSA, the Land Bank of Columbia, and all state and governmental agencies formed to be of help to the farmer. Tom Buie, head of the Soil Conservation work in the Southeast, says this group headed by Mr. Eagles is doing an excellent job.

AT HOME

But Mr. Eagles also is concerned about the Christian and home life influences around him. He has been superintendent of the local Baptist Sunday School since 1919, and chairman of the Board of Deacons of the Crisp Baptist Church since 1922. He has an ardent supporter and partner in Mrs. Eagles, the former Miss Dairy McLean who is known throughout all that section for her ability as a homemaker and a gracious hostess. They have a modern farm home, completely equipped with all the conveniences. Mrs. Eagles sees that the home runs smoothly while Cap is out attending to his farm or is helping to look after the affairs of the farm organization with which he is connected.

All in all, if the Farm Bureau Federation continues to select its leaders as wisely as it did in selecting Jasper E. Winslow who served as president for the past years, and then as it did in getting its new leader, W.W. “Cap” Eagles, who is now president, the people of North Carolina will have cause to believe in and to support this organization to the fullest. It should serve our farming people with ability and success.