Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1919 — RAISED OWN CORN [ARTICLE]

RAISED OWN CORN

How American Boys in France Got Delicacy. Turned From the Trenches to Truck Farming and Were as Successful on the Field as at the Front You should have seen the soldiers raising garden truck for Christmas. The climate of France was strange to them, as was the soil, and some of the vegetables that please the French palate, according to Sterling Heilig in an exchange. But the American buddies took up winter trucking with a will. Nobody ever raised green corn down there in winter. “Nor in summer, very much, either,” answered the buddles. A few natives used to raise It to sgll to Americans of Paris, but they had never tried to eat it. though they raised much yellow corn for meal and fodder. Last summer the doughboys In certain hospital truck farm districts resolved to have the real thing. At Bordeaux, where they were particularly successful, roasting ears were furpished to the private car of Secretary Baker when he made his- trip to France. And it was from the secretary of war’s recommendations, they say that the great American truck farm movement in France quit Red Cross swaddling clothes and became generalized from fighting front to resting rear. ~ In the south of France winter is a good deal like summer, and they raise almost anything. Heroes of St. MiJiieLwere betting that they would have green corn for Christmas —and the French natives bet against them. Most of the gardeners were convalescents, wounded at St. Mihiel, and hungry for the fresh green things they expected to eat presently. Only those who have been deprived of green stuff so long that they shy at the sight of a tin can are able to appreciate the value of these real war gardens. For, the fighting over, eating goes on, and, when rutabagas that father used to feed to the cows cost 40 cents a pound, the food problem is clearly stated to every man Th the army. The surgeons say the convalescent heroes of Chateau Thierry and St. Mihlel need the garden work as much as they need the garden truck. Get the man out, even for half a day, in the light work of truck farming, and you get him out of himself —and away from sitting around hospitals, listening to wounds being dressed and troubles talked over. High British and Australian neurosis authorities agree, absolutely, that working the soil will work more cures than any other treatment. In the army farming in France many see-a forerunner of what will happen when Uncle Sam gives little government farms to his veterans on their return. “We find that the American truck farmer,” says a worker, “after he has talked a little with French truckers and has the lay of the land, turns out better than the Frenchman —by up-to-date methods. Side by side, the little American truck farms in France are superior to truck farms under French gardeners in the suburbs of French cities. It is absolutely demonstrated.”