All in the Day's Work

by Mrs. A.J. Wilder - Mansfield, Missouri

Just a Neighborly Visit with Folks at Rocky Ridge Farm

One hundred and seventeen thousand dollars was paid for poultry, eggs and cream, in the town of Mansfield during 1915. Of this amount $58,000 was paid for eggs alone, $39,000 for poultry and $20,000 for cream.

During the time of the turkey drives $10,000 in 10 days was paid for these farm products by the produce men of Mansfield.

A big turkey drive is quite a sight to see. There were several came to Mansfield just before the holidays. In one drive alone there were 650 turkeys, Six hundred and fifty Christmas dinners for somebody walked into town in a drove.

These figures on poultry products speak well for the industry and capability of the women in the section tributary to Mansfield for we all know who raises the poultry.

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I wonder if Missouri farm women realize the value in dollars and cents of the work they do from day to day in raising farm products for the market? How many persons when reading the astonishing amount received in a year for Missouri poultry and eggs think of the fact that it is practically all produced by the women, and as a sideline at that! For of course a woman's real business is the keeping of the house and caring for the family. Not only the care of the poultry, but the raising of garden products and small fruits is largely women's work; and in many instances the greater part of the labor of producing cream and butter. The fact is that while there has been a good deal of discussion for and against women in business, farm women have always been business women and I have never heard a protest.

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A friend of mine has a large tree in her back yard that she calls her turkey tree. Out of this tree every fall she gathers $100 worth of turkeys. If one could only have unlimited numbers of trees like that! But, unfortunately, there are a great many like another friend of mine who lost all the chicks she hatched last summer. The rats took them, sometimes a whole flock in a night. I raised 300 chicks myself by keeping the coops as far away from the buildings as possible. But every morning I wondered whether I should find them alive or stacked up in a pile somewhere.

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When one thinks of the difficulties under which poultry and eggs are brought to the market, the wonder is that the amount is one-tenth as great. There are all the diseases to which chicks are hair to be contended with and besides there is a hawk in every treetop and a rat in ever corner waiting for them as soon as they come out of the shell. I feel sure if Governor Major had ever tried to raise chickens on a farm he would not have vetoed that bill placing a bounty on hawks. And why not a bounty on rats? They are a perfect nuisance around the buildings and frightfully expensive to feed, besides the loss of the young chicks they kill. And I'm sure no one would say a word in their favor.

Learning how to build rat-proof buildings does not help much with the old buildings. We keep up a continual war on rats with traps and poison and cats. Once in a while we get the place well cleared, but soon they swarm in again. if everyone would take care of their own rats it would simplify matters. But they do not and so the rats increase and multiply and spread to other places, carrying disease and destruction.

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I find that it adds greatly to the interest of life to keep careful accounts of the business of housekeeping with its sidelines of poultry and small fruits.

Especially do the account books add a spice when the Man Of The Place gets angry because the hens get into the barn and scratch things around, or when the grain is getting low in the bins in the spring and he comes to you and says: Those durn hens are eating their heads off!"

Then, if you can bring you little account book and show him that the feed for the hens cost so much, and the eggs and poultry sold brought so much, leaving a good little profit besides the eggs and poultry used in the house, he will feel better about things in general and especially the hens.

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A woman I know kept for one year the accounts of the household and her own especial little extra work and surprised herself by finding that by her own efforts she had made a clear profit of $395 during the year, and this without neglecting in any way her household or home duties.

The total for household expenses and her own personal expense for the same time was $122.29. There is after all, you see, some excuse for the man who told a friend he was going to be married. "Be married!" the friend exclaimed, in surprise. "Why, you can't make a living for yourself!" To which the first man replied, sulkily: "Well, it's a pity if she can't help a little."

My friend proved that she could "help a little." Her books made such a good showing that her husband asked her to keep books for the farm and so she was promoted to the position of farm accountant (without salary).

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Considering the amount of time, labor and capital invested, the farm books did not balance out so well as her own and she became interested in hunting the reason why. So now she has become a sort of farm adviser with whom her husband consults on all matters of farm business.

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We are told that the life of a woman on a farm is narrow and that the monotony of it drives many farm women insane. That life on a farm as elsewhere is just what we make it, that much and no more, is being proved every day by women who, like this one, pick up a thread connecting farm life with the whole, great outside world.

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In the study of soils, of crops, their origin and proper cultivation and rotation; in the study of the livestock on the place, their proper selection and care; with the care of her house and poultry, always looking for a short cut in the work to gain time for some other interesting thing, there does not seem to be much chance for monotony to drive her insane.

That "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" is very true, I think. It is just as dull for Jill as it is for Jack and so they formed a "Neighborhood Crochet club" down in "Happy Hollow." The women met and learned the new crochet patterns and visited--? Well, they gossiped, then-- as the men do when they go to town on Saturday and have so much business (?) to attend to that they cannot get home until late chore time.

By the way, did you ever think that as much good can be done by the right kind of gossip as harm by the unkind sort? The Crochet club made a little play time mixed with the work all summer, until bad weather and the grippe interfered in the fall. Jill was not so dull and the plans are made for the club to meet again soon.

We do enjoy sitting around the fireplace in the evening and on stormy days in the winter.

When we planned our new house we determined that we would build the fireplace first and the rest of the house if we could afford it-- not a grate, but a good old-fashioned fireplace that will burn a stick of wood as large as a man can carry. We have seen to it besides that there is a wood lot left on the farm to provide those sticks. So far we have escaped having the grippe, while all the neighborhood has been suffering with it. We attribute our good fortune to this same big fireplace and the two open stairs in the house. The fresh air they furnish has been much cheaper as well as pleasanter to take than the doctor's medicine.

Some old fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat. In our mad rush for progress and modern improvements let's be sure we take along with us all the old-fashioned things worth while.

The magazines say that the spring fashions will return to the styles of our grandmothers, ruffles, pantalettes, ribbon armlets and all. It will surely be delightful to have women's clothes soft and fluffy again and we need not follow the freak styles, you know. There is a distinct advantage in choosing the rather moderate, quiet styles for the up-to-the-minute freaks soon go out and then they call attention to their out-of-dateness by their striking appearance, while others equally as good style but not so pronounced will be a pleasure for more than one season.

Mrs. A. J. Wilder. "All in the Day's Work." Missouri Ruralist (February 5, 1916): pages 20-21. This article included a photograph of turkeys, ducks, and other fowl, with horses and a man and woman on a farm. The caption read: "These aren't Rock Ridge Folks, But It's a Fine Suggestion of Partnership Between Man and Wife. We Need More Farm Partnerships."

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