News From Farm Women Across N.C., 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, N.C. State College, in the July, 1938, issue of Carolina Co-operator

What the Farm Family Eats

Sixty percent of the home demonstration club members in Granville County have filled in survey sheets designed to let them know just what the farm was producing toward supply the family’s food needs.

Records showed that 25 percent had year-‘round gardens and all families reported showed a variety of 11 fruits, 11 vegetables, and 8 root vegetables, such as turnips, beets, carrots, etc.

One and nine-tenths cows per family were owned by families, averaging 4.2 persons, and oatmeal and cornmeal were the most consistently used whole grain products. However, only 27 percent of the families used wholewheat products, though 60 percent of them raised some wheat.

One woman said she had no idea that whole-grain products were so necessary and she had never realized before that she had been throwing away food by having all of her wheat ground into white flour.

Information learned in Alamance County is that on many farms food production is so nearly adequate that little else than pepper, salt, sugar, coffee, tea, a few cereals, and fresh fruit in the winter is bought.

On the whole, the rural woman buys more green peas than any canned vegetable, and more pineapple than any canned fruit. She buys grits by the pound and vanilla by the pint, and purchases a large portion of her lard or other fat.

Canned milk is bought in spite of the cow population, and few families grow enough Irish potatoes to carry them through the year, but a large percent of farmers in Alamance grow enough wheat for home consumption.

Swain Roadside Market

Swain County farm women have found a new source of cash income in selling homemade products such as wood carvings, hand-woven baskets, and fabrics, hooked rugs, tufted chair covers, and window curtains dyed with red clay, and locally-mined copperas, buckeye dolls, socks knit from homegrown wool, cookies, cakes, homemade candy, jams, jellies, marmalades, and relishes to tourists who stop at their roadside market.

The market, establishment of which was sponsored by Mrs. Geraldine P. Hyatt, Home Demonstration Agent of the State College Extension Service, and Daisy Caldwell of the Farm Security Administration, is located on Highway No. 19 near the junction with Highway No. 107, both of which are well traveled by tourists visiting Western North Carolina, the Cherokee Indian reservation, and the Great Smoky Mountains. Sales at first were comparatively light but have been rising with the increase in tourist travel.

Jackson County

The women of Jackson County are going to sell gourds. And why not? Tourists are attracted by the lovely shaped and colored large and small ornamental gourds which are used for table decorations and for the variegated strings which hang from shelves or mantles, and the hard-shell varieties are used for bird houses, bowls, tumblers, candlesticks, and in other ingenious ways.

Fly Traps

There are always flies to annoy us when we try to sit outside our screened homes in the summer and perhaps a determination to live out of doors will make us ingenious enough to catch them.

It can be done, you know, and with easily made fly traps. These can be fashioned from wire netting and any old boards to be found around the lot, and if you will make and set these traps on the porch or other places, you can get rid of the main objection to living out of doors.

Planting Club House Grounds

Plans have been drawn for planting the Middleburg Community House Grounds. Walks and drives will be made during the summer and planting done in the fall.

The home demonstration club house at Middleburg is perhaps the largest and most complete one in the state and deserves a setting of beautiful greenery to bring out its beauty.

Keeping Up With Farm Women

Louise Bunn, 18, Edgecombe County 4-H girl who has made an outstanding record in club work, recently spoke over the National Farm and Home Hour broadcast from Washington.

In Vance County, 350 women have started flower gardens, 75 shrub propagation beds have been started, 75 lawns have been improved, and 620 shrubs have been set out.

From 127 baby chicks bought last January to be fed out as a broiler project, Lucille Johnson, a 4-H Club girl of the Smithfield section of Johnston County, has made a net profit of $20.02, reports Assistant County Agent M.E. Aycock.

Mrs. J.W. Bradshaw, Route 1, Kinston, won a first prize of $20 in a contest for proficiency in growing gardens. She was the highest scoring by an individual in the state. Second prize of $12.50 went to Mrs. Earl McCollum, Reidsville; third prize of $7.50 to Mrs. B.D. Jenkins, Route 2, Rocky Mount; and fourth prize of $5 to Mrs. Lloyd Price, Route 2, Matthews.

The husband of Mrs. B.H. Jessup of Stokes County recently installed a hydraulic ram that supplies 27 gallons of fresh spring water to their home every hour of the day.