A LAND GIRL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19730, 27 December 1926, Page 11

A LAND GIRL

MODERN “MAUD MULLER” WINS A SCYTHE CONTEST A modern Maud Muller outdistanced with the scythe a field of 12 masculine mowers ranging from youths to veterans in the hand-mowing contest put on as part of the closing d’ay of the annual Farmers and Home-Makers’ Week, at the University of New Hampshire, says the "Christian Science Monitor.” Miss Helen Bcrnaby, 19 years of age, of North Danville, New Hampshire, turned the contest into a surprise as complete as that which another 19-year-old girl, Gertrude Ederlc, sprung when she swam the English Channel in faster time than tiny man had done it.

Miss Bernaby, the only woman in the contest, cut a swath 288| feet long and 10-J rows wide in the five minutes’ time, easily a longer row than that, mowed by any of the 12 men, some of whom had swung a scythe in more than two score harvests. She learned farm, she explained, naving watched the men at work and beginning to try her hand at when she was about 10 years old. She had put in no special training i for the event. She. swung her scythe in the meadow all day, not for practice, but simply because it was time to cut the hay. She rose at 4.30 a.m., did the morning chores, came to Durham to the mowing contest and won it. That was all. The prize was about £3. At her home with her parents, Mr and Mrs John Bernaby, the girl mowingchampion has the running of the farm largely in her hands for her father is ‘ a building contractor ajid frequently ! away at work. He was on hand, how- ! ever, to enjoy her triumph in the mow- ; ing contest. Miss Bernaby likes farm i life much better than the city, she ex- ! plained, although she wjas born in San '• Francisco and her parents lived in New ' York and Boston until she was eight ■ years old before they moved to the ; New Hampshire farm . There she keeps s in practice at mowing by cutting green ■ feed for the 12 cows which she milks I every morning.