W21327 Winter- Boys Playing Fort in the Snow

Did you ever have snow enough to build a fine fort? Some children never have snow nor sleds nor skates nor snowshoes. Do you know where those children live? What kind of winter do they have?

These boys have all worked hard to build this fort. Now they have divided themselves into two armies. Some are defending the fort. The others are attacking it. The defenders are protected and they have their ammunition ready. Do you see the snowballs on the walls of the fort?

The attacking army is getting close. They are using their snowshoes as shields. They have no ammunition ready. They must make their snowballs as they need them. Which side will win, the defenders or the attacking army? Then what will they do?

Copyright The Keystone View Co.

16659 Tomatoes Growing in a Home Garden

Here we see some fine tomato plants. These plants grew from tiny seeds. The seeds were first planted in a hot bed. Have you ever seen a hot bed? It is a large box. It is covered with glass. In this box the tiny plants have a chance to grow while the frost is still in the ground outside.

When the warm spring sun drives the frost out of the ground, the plants are taken out of the hot bed. They are planted in rows in the garden. That is how these plants got their start.

All summer Bob and his two sisters took care of their garden. They pulled out all of the weeds. Weeds take the food and water out of the ground. They keep plants from growing strong.

Early in summer the tomato plants began to blossom. The blossoms faded. The summer sun helped to make the tomatoes. At first they were only small green things that grew where the blossoms dropped off. The children are going to take some of their first tomatoes to the school garden show. Perhaps they will win a prize.

Something to Think About.

1. What do plants need in order to grow?
2. Why are there so many stakes in this garden?
3. What kind of work did each child do?

Something to Do.

1. Make pictures to show how the tomato plants grew and how they looked in early spring, later in spring, early in summer and later.

Copyright The Keystone View Co.

6715 Harvesting Onions on Truck Farm Near Buffalo, N.Y.

What do you suppose will ever be done with so many onions? These farmers who raise them do not worry about that. They know that all over our country there are people who like onions. Some like them fried, some like them baked and some like onion soup. Your mother will tell you that she uses onions to flavor many things.

Italians and Spaniards are very fond of onions. In Spain onion sellers sometimes go about the streets carrying a string of onions. They are braided together by the tops. It would take many such braids to use all the onions in this field. They will be sold by the bushel and not by the braid.

Onions are bulbs and these grew from little seeds. In the spring the ground must be worked and made rich. When the green sprouts are up they must be thinned and weeded carefully. At the end of the summer the tops will die down. Then it is time to pull the onion bulbs. These you see must be cleaned before they are sold. This means the tops must be pulled off. Think what a job that will be. They must be ripened, too, so they will keep well all winter.

It is hard work to be a truck farmer. But good crops like this are worth much money.

Copyright The Keystone View Co.

6716 Potato Field on A Truck Farm

There is much work to do on a truck farm. The farmer raises fresh vegetables to sell at the market. Can you name some of the vegetables which a truck farmer raises?

One morning Mr. Brown said, “Dick can help me in the potato patch today. I want to get a load ready to take to the city to sell.”

They took some bushel baskets to the potato patch. The potatoes had been planted in long rows. The ground was heaped up around each plant like a hill. The plants were withered and dry, but under the ground were ripe potatoes. Mr. Brown started on the first row. He turned up the ground with his hoe. Can you see the potatoes that he uncovered?

Dick followed his father down the row. He picked up the potatoes and put them into the basket. There were eight or ten potatoes in each hill. Mary watched Dick and her father for a while. Then she began to help, too.

Early in the summer Mary and Dick had helped to pick the potato bugs from the plants. The bugs would have eaten the leaves from the plants. Then the plants would have died.

“We have a potato for every bug we killed,” said Dick. We have a fine crop of potatoes,” Said Mr. Brown. “I am glad you killed the bugs. Tomorrow you may both go to the city with me to sell potatoes.”

Copyright The Keystone View Co.

11624 Wheat Field, Washington

The wheat which we see in this large field may help to feed hungry children in far-away lands. In our country every boy and girl needs almost five bushels of wheat a year. But so much wheat is grown that we can send a great deal to other lands.

Some of the wheat must be saved for seed to be planted the next year. In many places in our country the ground is so good for wheat that the farmers do not raise anything else.

Early in spring, the ground is plowed. Then all the lumps are broken up by a harrow. A large machine is used to plant the wheat in this great field. The warm spring rain makes the seeds sprout. The wheat looks like tiny blades of grass when it first comes up. It grows taller and taller. In a few months it is tall enough to reach the hips of a man.

At the top of each stem the kernels burst out. Some stems have thirty kernels. They are soft and milky at first. But as the wheat gets ripe they grow hard.

The large machine in the picture can do many kinds of work. It cuts the wheat and threshes it. It drops the grain into bags. The bags full of grain are left on the field. Later a wagons to pick them up. Then the wheat is sent by train to places where there are large flour mills.

Copyright The Keystone View Co.