One fine day in early April Myron spaded up his strawberry bed.  The bed was made in a sunny spot, on moist but not soggy soil, land excellent for strawberry culture because the year before it was part of a potato field.  Following The Chief’s advice he had spread over the bed only a very light covering of well-rotted manure.  Myron first measured off his garden bed driving stakes in at the four corners.  Then he strung off the bed with stout garden cord.  “Now,” he said to himself, “I know exactly what I have to do.”  Then going to one corner of the space with his back toward all the rest of the bed he began his work.

[Illustration:  Photographs by Edward Mahoney

The Way the Chief Taught His Boys to Handle Tools]

He had a fine spading fork which he had bought a few days before.  Grasping the top of the handle with his right hand, with the left midway down the handle, he pressed the prongs of the fork with his left foot vertically into the ground.  Then lowering the top of the handle toward the ground and backward, he slipped his left hand down the handle to about a foot from the prongs, and drew up the spading fork with earth on it.  This earth he threw a little forward and with the prongs broke up the lumps.  He continued this until all the work was done.

Then he looked at his spading fork, his brand new fork, and found the prongs quite bent, “The Chief told us to buy decent tools, but I thought I’d save a little money.  Well, I’ll break up some of these lumps a bit with my hoe and see how that will stand a little work.”  The land Myron’s father had given him was very good indeed, rich and light, so that work of lump breaking was really very slight, yet it made the new hoe-blade rattle in its socket.

After this work had been thoroughly done the boy took his rake and started making fine the soil for the bed.  Myron had learned well how to handle his tools.  These lessons of handling tools The Chief had taught the boys for he felt that a tool should be a skilful instrument in the hand.  “A gardener should wield his hoe as well as a surgeon does his scalpel,” The Chief had often said.  So the boys were proud of really knowing how to work.

After looking proudly at the fine, smooth bed the boy shouldered his tools and marched off to the village.

[Illustration:  The crosses show where Myron set the strawberry plants.  The dotted lines signify the plantings of succession crops]

Do not think that you can save money by purchasing poor tools.  It is quite impossible, because always one has either to buy new and better ones, or mend and remend the poor ones.  The lad found out that a good trowel costs at least 50 cents although a smaller one called a transplanting trowel may be had for 15 cents; cast steel rake, 50 cents (10 teeth), 75 cents (14 teeth); hoe, 50 cents; Dutch hoe, four inches, 40 cents; spading fork, $1.25, and weeder 10 cents.