Podcast for the Week of July 17th-FREE SUMMER PROGRAMS THIS WEEK!

To Share the Earth Should Be the Right of Every Soul

We have yet scarcely visioned the proper partition of the earth, that the greatest number of the people may partake of it. When finally we have mastered ourselves, we shall look back on the people in the deep gray cities who never had the opportunity or the right to stand on a bit of wild land somewhat as we now look back in pity and in sorrow on those who suffered in the Inquisition or those who were in bondage. To share in the earth should be the right of every soul, and we shall some day make it easy rather than difficult for this to be brought about. - L.H. Bailey, The Open Country

Handbook of Nature Study: Nature Study and Writing

Handbook of Nature Study: Nature Study and Writing: 'We stifle the desire to write if we first lay down rules and formulas as to how to write. Let the child have a personal experience; then allow it to write. "

The Nature Study Idea, Liberty Hyde Bailey

Brunch at the Bailey's Preview Discovering the Bailey Farm-July 15th, 10-11am

Commentary Series: Hunter: Two Anniversaries

Commentary Series: Hunter: Two Anniversaries
From Vermont Public Radio: I've been putting in new strawberry beds every few years since I started gardening in 1948. You would think I would know how to do it by now. But no, I had to get out my handy little, "The Practical Garden Book", by Hunn and Bailey, Macmillan 1900. I have the 1901 edition. That is 110 years ago.

Geraniums

If a window or a garden can have but one plant, that plant is likely to be a Geranium. -L.H. Bailey, Cyclopedia of American Horticulture, 1901

The Fruit Tree

   By the woodshed or the pump, or against the barn or the garden fence, the apple tree or pear tree connects the residence with the world of life and space that stretches out to woods and farms. We transfer our affections to it, as a half-way place between ourselves and our surroundings. It is the warder of the fields and monitor of the home. It is an outpost of the birds. It feels the first ray of morning sunshine. It proclaims every wind. It drips copiously in the rain. Its leaves play on the grass when the year goes down into the long night or winter. And in the spring its brightening twigs and swelling buds reveal the first pulse in the reviving earth. Every day of the year is in its fabric, and every essence of wind and sun and snapping frost is in its blossom and its fruit.

    I often wonder what must have been the loss of the child that had no fruit-tree to shelter it. There are no memories like the days under an old apple tree. Every bird of the field comes to it sooner or later. Perhaps a humming-bird once built on the top of a limb, and the marks of the old nest are still there. Strange insects are in its knots and wrinkles. The shades are very deep and cool under it. The sweet smells of spring are sweetest there. And the mystery of the fruit that comes out of a blossom is beyond all reckoning, the magic growing week by week until the green young balls show themselves gladly among the leaves. And who has not watched for the first red that comes on the side that hangs to the sun, and waited for the first fruit that was soft enough to yield to the thumb!