Letter from the National President, Mrs. Joseph W. Tiberio
History doesn’t pass the dishes again.
Do you realize that we the members of the Woman’s Farm and Garden Association are an historically important group? That by belonging, that by being members we have inherited a unique and special identification with equal privileges and responsibilities. Both of these are historically significant and continuing.
Here is my latest report to you.
You would be pleased with the progress of our “home base” (so to speak) and that the home base is the original head house of the Ambler greenhouse. How very sophisticated our 1914 green push seems now, with its fairly rustic beginnings.
Other organizations have grand buildings proclaiming many fine gifts and service to our country and community. But ours, in this day of increasing environmental awareness and agricultural crisis continues to stand for all to see simple and fundamental.
We ARE the folks who began greenness on this same campus during another time of need and crisis.
What is left of the historic greenhouse comes the challenge of restoration and use of the head house for our home base… a headquarters. Hazel Herring with the support of all, will make sure that we are claiming a place at last to put down real visible roots.
During my visit there two weeks ago, I inspected the freshly painted head house and enjoyed a huge social event, connected with our own Jenny Rose Carey’s Arboretum. Susan Yeager and Diane Berman and Kathy Beveridge of Keystone Branch joined Linda Lowe along with a host of others to honor Dean James Hilty and his pretty wife, Kathy. Woman’s Farm and Garden was prominently promoted by all of them in this first time-ever use of the space around the head house.
On the subject of bees, The Massachusetts Department of Agriculture has issued a warning to all beekeepers to move hives away from Maple trees which have been infected with imidaclorprid to eradicate the Asian long-horned beetle. Presumably beekeepers in other states are aware of this.
Please keep sending in clippings, notes, newsletters. I do hope you are working toward the prizes being offered and helping the bees and beekeepers in your communities. Kay Engelhart sent in a story from Saginaw News about Haagen-Dazs’s Honey Bee event for children. Samples of vanilla honey–bee ice cream and packets of bee friendly flower seeds were given out. Jean De Decker sent a long article from the Detroit News stating that 2.4 million colonies have been lost in the last two years. All of this will raise food prices, and if not stopped, who dares to think of the future?
None of us are wealthy until we realize that we have something money can’t buy. That goes for our history … past, present and future.