Isn't one of the greatest childhood memories carving a pumpkin in the crisp fall air?
There is a pumpkin farm within an hour of my house that will sell a carload of pumpkins for $60. The price goes up for mini-vans and pick up trucks.
I figure I could get 60 pumpkins into my car if I plan it right. I also figure I could sell those pumpkins at the free farmer's market up the street from me for $2-$3. I am not about greed and a good sized pie pumpkin for $2 is cheaper than the grocery store. So I could double or triple that $60. I could safely do that that for three weeks during the pumpkin season, or maybe four if I am lucky.
If you don't have a pumpkin farm near you that sells by the car load, then go talk to a pumpkin farmer. Maybe you could even fill your car for less than $60.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
More Inspiration From The Past
This article is taken from the book Old-Time Farmhouse Cooking by Barbara Swell.
A Country Girl's Advantages by Kittie Turner
Farm and Fireside August 25, 1907
"There seems to be any number of misguided people on this old world of ours who in some unaccountable way have possessed themselves of the idea that when a country girl is grown she has just two alternatives - to get married, or go to town for employment, that there is no way in which she can be independent and yet remain in her farm home. For the disillusionment of those individuals, I want to tell how I not only supply my own needs, but have a nice little sum at interest in my own name."
Okay, so it turns out Kittie Turner was a teenager who possessed the energy and drive of 82 normal people, combined. Here's her story: She's tending her abundance of old-fashioned flowers one summber when a hotel keeper walks up and asks her if she would sell him bouquets on Saturdays for his Sunday tables. At 5 cents per arrangement, Kittie does well for a girl in 1907, but why stop there? She figures other hotels and restaurants may want the same. Sure enough they do, and the money's piling up. What the heck, why not sell her customers fresh-ground horseradish from her garden, too. It was taking over anyway.
Then comes the pillow industry. While going "chokecherrying" and "graping" with her mother one fall day, Kittie gathers a bag of wild hops, which was at that time, a popular remedy for various miseries including sleeplessness. Of course, now everyone wants a hop pillow to sleep on. Business is booming, especially when Kitties' swamp-gathered cattail pillows and even softer milkweed pillows are added to the line. But no pillow sells as well as the $2.50 balsam needle pillow, which nets a hefty $2.48 profit each.
"After the busy horseradish-grinding and flower-planting days of spring, the bouquets of summer and fall, the pillow industry not only of autumn, but of nearly all the year, there are yet several months of idleness during the winter," says Kittie. "Then it is that I get my best licks at Old king Corn." You guessed it. She's gone into the hominy business. With hotels, retaurants, grocers, and neighbors clamoring for the hominy, she can't keep up with the demand. Oh, well, the customers will have to do without, because Kitty's in school and has her home duties to attend to as well.
"Now I haven't told you all my ways of earning money in my country home. I'm afraid if I did there would be too great an exodus amoung the girl readers of the towns. My mother says I help her more than nine tenths of the girls do, and my father thinks I will be an old maid. But however that may be, I know I will never have to marry a man just for the sake of a home and support."
"And I just want to say in parting, girls, that if all of you would make up your minds to be independent, to make the most of every little opportunity that presented itself to that end, there would not be one tenth the unhappy marriages there are when the question of support takes precedence over congeniality and real love."
You're already behind. In the time it took you to read this story, you could've canned 12 quarts of pickles, and stitched three quilts!
A Country Girl's Advantages by Kittie Turner
Farm and Fireside August 25, 1907
"There seems to be any number of misguided people on this old world of ours who in some unaccountable way have possessed themselves of the idea that when a country girl is grown she has just two alternatives - to get married, or go to town for employment, that there is no way in which she can be independent and yet remain in her farm home. For the disillusionment of those individuals, I want to tell how I not only supply my own needs, but have a nice little sum at interest in my own name."
Okay, so it turns out Kittie Turner was a teenager who possessed the energy and drive of 82 normal people, combined. Here's her story: She's tending her abundance of old-fashioned flowers one summber when a hotel keeper walks up and asks her if she would sell him bouquets on Saturdays for his Sunday tables. At 5 cents per arrangement, Kittie does well for a girl in 1907, but why stop there? She figures other hotels and restaurants may want the same. Sure enough they do, and the money's piling up. What the heck, why not sell her customers fresh-ground horseradish from her garden, too. It was taking over anyway.
Then comes the pillow industry. While going "chokecherrying" and "graping" with her mother one fall day, Kittie gathers a bag of wild hops, which was at that time, a popular remedy for various miseries including sleeplessness. Of course, now everyone wants a hop pillow to sleep on. Business is booming, especially when Kitties' swamp-gathered cattail pillows and even softer milkweed pillows are added to the line. But no pillow sells as well as the $2.50 balsam needle pillow, which nets a hefty $2.48 profit each.
"After the busy horseradish-grinding and flower-planting days of spring, the bouquets of summer and fall, the pillow industry not only of autumn, but of nearly all the year, there are yet several months of idleness during the winter," says Kittie. "Then it is that I get my best licks at Old king Corn." You guessed it. She's gone into the hominy business. With hotels, retaurants, grocers, and neighbors clamoring for the hominy, she can't keep up with the demand. Oh, well, the customers will have to do without, because Kitty's in school and has her home duties to attend to as well.
"Now I haven't told you all my ways of earning money in my country home. I'm afraid if I did there would be too great an exodus amoung the girl readers of the towns. My mother says I help her more than nine tenths of the girls do, and my father thinks I will be an old maid. But however that may be, I know I will never have to marry a man just for the sake of a home and support."
"And I just want to say in parting, girls, that if all of you would make up your minds to be independent, to make the most of every little opportunity that presented itself to that end, there would not be one tenth the unhappy marriages there are when the question of support takes precedence over congeniality and real love."
You're already behind. In the time it took you to read this story, you could've canned 12 quarts of pickles, and stitched three quilts!
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