I will not be transcribing each entry since most of Bert's diary is pretty clear. You can read the original more easily by clicking on the image above to view a larger version. I will be including this paragraph, or something similar in each entry so that new readers will know they can click the image to enlarge it for easier reading. Also, there will be some links to the right of the page with relevant information that may be of interest. If you follow Bert's diary regularly, you can skip this paragraph. My notes will include the basics of what Bert talks about each day, along with my own personal thoughts, research, information gleaned from past or future entries, etc. If you have information or suggestions that may help my research, please e-mail me.
Tuesday, July 3, 1894 - Cultivated potatoes at Mr. Avery's place (I believe in Ingleside?) and also on Russell Dye's place. Russell went to Prattsburgh to get Paris Green, and a Paris Green sifter. He comments that there was "none in town". Paris Green was a very poisonous green copper and arsenic compound C4H6As6Cu4O16 used especially formerly as an insecticide and pigment.
I don't know if it was a difference in farming practices, or what, but 8 years earlier in 1886, my great great grandfather Henry C. Olney talks about the family, including the kids, going out and collecting the potato bugs by hand and putting them in jars. Organic farming before they had a name for it?
Wednesday, July 4, 1984 - Bert does more potato cultivating, and "cleans up" 5 bushels of buckwheat to sell to Nat Clark for 75 cents a bushel. He also borrowed a sifter from a neighbor - R.C. Phillips - and "fed the potatoe bugs some paris green and plaster." Below is a Sears catalog item that might be the sort of "sifter" used?
Interesting note that July 4th is not mentioned as being a holiday, or anything other than a regular day.
