Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 182, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1910 — WOMAN AS FARMER [ARTICLE]

WOMAN AS FARMER

Makes Money on Land Neighbors Had Said Was Worthless. Graduate of Massachusetts Agricultural College Shows That Scientific Farming Is Much Better Than Stenography. Worcester, Mass. —Fersis Bartholomew, a graduate of the Massachusetts State Agricultural college at Amherst, is a scientific woman farmer. She manages Evergreen farm in Westboro, about fifteen miles from this city. Last year she cleared $650 on five acres of land which neighboring farmers Said was not worth turning over. She is 23 years old, was graduated from the agricultural college at Amherst in 1908, and picked out an abandoned farm in Westboro as the place to put her education into practise. She selected for its cheapness a farm that everybody said was too far gone to bother with, and this year expects to make S2OO an acre. She was not an agriculturist by inheritance, in fact, she knew not the slightest thing about farm life and never took an interest in agriculture until her health began to fail and she abandoned her original idea of becoming a stenographer to look for outdoor employment. Her home was in Melrose. Neither

she nor her parents had a penny to start her in the farming line. She came' to Worcester, where she rented Evergreen farm in Westboro from L. ,C. Midely, a grower of roses. She bori rowed money to pay the first month’s rent, and with her father and mother and two friends began her career as a soil tiller. The first year Miss Bartholomew devoted five of the twenty acres of land to small garden truck. To get the best results she mixed her own fertilizers and was criticised for it by the old time truck raisers in the neighborhood. She specialized in vegetables, selected her Worcester market and made her own contracts. She made daily trips to Worcester in the season, starting from the farm at 3:30 o’clock in the morning, reaching here at G o'clock and was back at work on her farm at 9 o’clock. She paid no attention to the hay land the first year, devoting her entire energy to the five acres of land which she developed along scientific lines and kept a set of books concerning every detail of the work, even charging her father and mother for everything taken from the farm for the tabler; — Her most profitable crop the first, year was tomatoes, but she raised a considerable crop of peas and corn. Her help consists of schoolboys, who \o to the farm before and after school in the season of pulling weeds and planting. She pays them 10 cents an hour. The boys average 15 years old. She says they do more work than men, and cost much less.