uing
time.[35]

Most of the harvest was used right on the farm. Like manure, which was
recycled to enrich fields and gardens, the grain and hay crops went to
nourish the farm's dairy animals. Little was marketed and little was
wasted. "That proved to be the best thing you could do," noted Holden
Harrison, "grow as much of your own feed for your cattle as you could.
You sold your ... crop production through your milk can."[36]

[Illustration: A shock of wheat on the Ellmore farm near Floris. On this
particularly successful farm the wheat was sold for seed to help improve
the stock on other area farms. Photo in Annual Report of County Agent H.
B. Derr, 1925, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.]

[Illustration: This mechanical hay loader on the Harrison Brothers' farm
near Floris dates from 1935. Photo courtesy of Holden Harrison.]

The fruits of the year's labor came not only from the hay fields but
from garden and orchard, whose abundance had to be gathered, preserved
and stored in the late summer season. Fairfax County had once been a
major truck farming section but the onslaught of insects and competition
from large commercial orchards (such as those in the Shenandoah Valley)
had relegated this produce to the realm of home use. The A. S. Harrison
farm included plum, apple, peach and cherry trees and Margaret Mary Lee
recalled that cherries, pears and apples grew in her family's orchard.
Sometimes pears and apples were made into cider but most of the fruit
was dried or canned for winter use. Many farmers made the extra effort
to keep bees under their fruit trees because they aided pollination and
produced honey from the blossoms. The Lees were among those who enjoyed
the soft hum of the bees among the orchard trees. Margaret Lee
especially liked to recall them darting busily between the fragrant
white sheets, when the washing was hung in the yard.[37]

The vegetable garden, too, had a prominent place in the farm scheme.
Elizabeth Rice noted that "everyone had a good garden, growing such
things as sweet corn, limas, string beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and
asparagus."[38] Others mentioned lettuce, herbs and popcorn in the
family vegetable patch and many farms had grape arbors.[39] Like other
areas of cultivation, the garden plot required care and attention for
three seasons of the year. The round of soil preparation, planting,
nourishing and harvesting added additional responsibilities to the
mult