This is a follow up to the People of the Poor Farm. This article is from the Richmond News dated March 2, 1932 Section B page 1.
The County Home Is Run Efficiently By The Ballards, Grand Jury Finds.
The grand jury was so impressed with the excellent condition of the county home when they made their inspection recently that they recommended an increase in salary for A. W. Ballard, superintendent.
Mr. Ballard and his wife watch every penny’s expenditures and try in every way to save money and at the same time make the inmates comfortable.
All meat used at the home is pork, produced on the premises. The county court purchases vaccinated, certified stock hogs which are fattened from the table scraps. Some corn is fed the hogs. In the last few days thirty-seven hogs have been killed, each weighing on an average of 380 pounds. Mr. Ballard cures the meat and in all of his nine years at the Home he has never lost any of the meat prepared. This is verified by the county court.
Five cows give plenty of milk and furnish butter. A large flock of chickens supplies all the eggs used at the home. A garden is maintained each season from which a large supply of eatables are canned to be used during the winter. The supplies are put up in gallon cans. Everything grown in the garden that is eatable is canned except the tops of turnips, and as one member of the county court laughingly said, Mr. Ballard is thinking of canning them this next season to be used as greens.
Two hundred and fifty bushels of potoes are used annually. Recently Mr. Ballard purchased fifteen sacks of potatoes, a month’s supply; one hundred and sixty-eight loaves of bread are used each month. Light bread is used at the noon and evening meals. For breakfast every day in the year biscuits are served. It requires 250 of them to satisfy 54 inmates. Twelve pies are consumed at the noon meal every Sunday. During week days for dinner and supper either cake or some kind of cobbler is served. It takes 100 pounds of navy beans during the year.
There is no need of skimping, nor is there any, as the county court pays for all supplies and instructs the superintendent of the home to give the inmates plenty to eat. Always on the tables are jellies, preserves, honey, syrups, etc. No one leaves the table hungry.
Each inmate has certain duties to perform and is very happy in carrying them out.
They all insist that they be given some of the employment required to maintain the
Tags: A. W. Ballard, Albany Missouri, Andy W Ballard, Cox, goldie riser, Hankins, Mr. Ballard, Old Albany, orrick, Poor Farm, Ray, ray county, Shelby, South Missouri, triple murder, William T. Anderson





