Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1919 — SURPLUS FRUITS ANU VEGETABLES [ARTICLE]

SURPLUS FRUITS ANU VEGETABLES

Much Canning Done by Volunteer Women Workers of the Department of Agriculture. CREDIT GIVEN MRS. HOUSTON Wife of Secretary Planned That Products Be Utilized in New and Patriotic Manner —Donated to Walter Reed Hospital. Twenty-two hundred and fifty quarts of canned vegetables, preserves and Jellies to tempt the appetites of our wounded- boys in the Walter Reed hospital in Washington, as well as hundreds of bushels of fresh fruit and vegetables, is the result of a summer of unceasing activity by women of the department of agriculture interested in this work. At the Arlington farm, where is carried on governmental experimentation with fruits and vegetables, there has been necessarily much waste product in previous years. In order that accurate observations during their entire season might be made by the plant specialists a large share of the fruits and vegetables grown there had to be allowed to come to full maturity on the plants. Thus to a large extent the farm’s products were too ripe to be marketed when their value to the entist Was at air end. - ■~* < . . ' How Project Started. To Mrs. David F. Houston, wife of the secretary of agriculture, is due the credit for these products being utilized in a new and-patriotic-way -this year. The Walter Reed hospital, filled with bur wounded from pvejcseas, was to be, if it could be managed, the recipient of all the surplus fruit and vegetables of the Arlington farm. Mrs. Houston planned that all of the products which were In prime condition and which could be. used at once by the commissary department of the hospital should be sent there directly. The surplus was to be made by volunteers into ,home dainties for the boys. When it is realized that the lieutenant in charge of the commissary must provide food for each soldier, wounded or sick, at a maximum cost of 50 cents a day, the exceeding value of these preserves and jellies to the diet of the invalids there may be better appreciated. Perhaps no other one thing which has been done for the hospital has been so much appreciated by the boys themselves as this food, which, as they said, “tasted like home and mother,” sent through the untiring work of these women connected with the department of agriculture.— Girls Picked Ripe Products. All the work was done through efficient •committees. One of tbeßg_gag, composed of girl workers from the departtneht, who went out after work to the farms and did the picking whenever their chairman was notified that the “harvest was ready.” As is quite usual with crops, those grown by the government did not accommodate themselves to a regular schedule but fluctuated from none on some days to an amount that taxed every recruit to the utmost at other times. The War Relief association of the department Tis agriculture supplied help in the kitchen and for cans or supplies. However, a large part of the cans and spices were donated by those interested in -the work. L' The recipes used were all home ones, although the work,. especially The latter part of the summer, had to be done >n a commercial scale because of the quantity of fruit vegetables avatl•ble. Mrs. Houston and Miss Florence slJrtesrtelatitms service..hairman -of the committee, little * - ’ F » r» , ' . •

dreamed, when the work was first planned, of the scope It would assume before autumn. There is probably not a state In the Union which is not represented at. the Walter Reed by at least one son whose heart has been made glad by the delicacies provided by the forethought and hard work of these women. The Arlington farm has been owned many years by the people of the United States and much valuable knowledge been given to them from the experiments carried on there, but this is the first time that a direct return of its products has been made to the people. No better or more fitting use, it is believed, could have been made of these farm products than to give Them' to our boys who have fought and been wounded “over there.”