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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
-An American 
 Fruit - Farm 
 
 Its Selection and Management 
 For Profit and for Pleasure 
 
 By 
 
 Francis Newton TKorpe 
 
 ti 
 
 Member of the 
 State Horticultural Association of Pennsylvania 
 
 With 21 Illustrations 
 
 The Face of the Master 
 is good for the Land.'* 
 
 Cato, On Farming, 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New Yorh London 
 
 £be *HmlcfeerE>ocfcer iprese 
 
 1915 
 

 Copyright, 191s 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS NEWTON THORPE 
 
 Ube fmfcfeerbocfeer press, Iftew 12orft 
 
 ©CI.A397844 
 
 MAY -4 1915 
 
Co 
 MARION HAYWOOD 
 
 AND 
 
 MARION EDGERTON 
 THORPE 
 
CONTENTMENT 
 
 Fancy dishes ? No. Remember, 
 June 's for roses, — not December ; 
 Take things in their season ; 
 Vex not life with vanity ; 
 Served or serving, take it simply, — 
 With good cheer and reason. 
 
 After Horace, Carmen XXXVIII. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 THE fruit-farm, of which this book is a record, 
 lies in the Lake Shore Valley, on the southern 
 shore of Lake Erie, in Pennsylvania, a region 
 rich in horticulture. The book is a record of many 
 years' experience at home, of much observation 
 abroad, and is offered as a modest contribution to a 
 subject of greatly increasing interest in our own 
 country. Successful horticulture implies ceaseless 
 attention and obedience to the laws of climate, 
 planting, and cultivation, not excluding such 
 elements as soil-fertility, labor, administration, 
 and birds. The biography of any well-conducted 
 fruit-farm is a chapter in the history of success. 
 Horticulture in America is opportunity, but as yet 
 we are merely at the threshold of knowing how to 
 use the land. The illustrations are from photo- 
 graphs taken — with three exceptions — on the fruit- 
 farm whose history is here related. 
 
 F. N. T. 
 
 Indian Arrow Vineyards, 
 April, 1915. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. — Time and the Tree i 
 
 II. — Selecting the Fruit-Farm ... 33 
 
 III. — The Planting of the Fruit-Farm . . 71 
 
 IV. — Getting along with Help . . .113 
 
 V. — The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm . 131 
 
 VI. — Feeding the Land . . . . .175 
 
 VII. — The Fruit-Farm and the Young Folks . 211 
 
 VIII.— Ten Thousand a Year .... 240 
 
 IX. — Birds and the Fruit-Farm . . . 272 
 
 X. — The Fruit-Farm and Old Age . .317 
 
 Index 345 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Intensive Horticulture: Grapes, Plums, 
 Cherries. Lake Erie to the North. ("Indian 
 Arrow Vineyards") . . . Frontispiece ^ 
 
 Abundance Plum-Tree; Producing 52 Baskets 
 (1913) 
 
 Overlooking the Vegetable Garden 
 
 An Althea Hedge (In Five Colors) in August 
 
 In the Cherry Orchard; Notice the Trees (15 
 Years Old) Kept Trimmed Low for Easy 
 Picking 
 
 In the Cherry Orchard . 
 
 Amidst Vineyards; the Chautauqua Hills 
 ft.) in the Distance (South) 
 
 In Grape Time. (Crawford Vineyard.) 
 Erie to the North 
 
 A Tank for Spraying 
 
 Gang-Plowing ■ . 
 
 Disc-Plowing 
 
 The Two-Horse Cultivator 
 
 Sowing Alsach Clover 
 
 (1300 
 Lake 
 
 16 * 
 
 28 S 
 
 48 ^ 
 
 64*^ 
 
 80 y 
 
 98 V" 
 
 104 
 
 128 
 
 
 140 
 
 144 
 148 
 186 s 
 
 s 
 
xii Illustrations 
 
 PAGE 
 
 horse-hoeing i90' 
 
 Spraying a Young Vineyard for Leaf-Hoppers. 
 
 (Mallick Vineyard) ..... 206 
 
 The Steam-Power Sprayer for Trees and Vines 222 
 
 Tree Spraying; Plum Trees. (Loop Orchard) . 234 ^ 
 
 The Driveway through the Fruit-Farm . . 254 ^ 
 
 Packing Fruit for the Market at the Packing- 
 House ........ 260 
 
 A Bird Sanctuary. Lake Erie in the Distance 308 " 
 
 A Corner of the Fruit-Farm. Lake Erie in 
 
 the Distance ...... 318 * 
 
-An American Fruit-Farm 
 
An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 TIME AND THE TREE 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S song, "The Greenwood 
 Tree," is enough to enroll his name among 
 the immortals. A tree, like a man, requires asso- 
 ciations to give it dignity and virtue. Contrast 
 the newly set sprig with the old tree in the orchard : 
 hope and realization; promise and potency; lone- 
 liness and association. Time seats the tree in 
 dignity and power. When orchard and orchardist 
 grow old together, they weave associations about 
 the fruit-farm. Labor sanctifies as it breaks with 
 the wild. The house you built, the orchard you 
 planted, the vines which have passed through 
 your hands as cuttings, yearlings, and purple fruit 
 become part of the landscape of your life, old famil- 
 iar faces which smile even when the sky frowns. 
 And if there were loved ones whose willing hands, 
 now quiet, helped; whose voices, now silent, en- 
 couraged, — all has the touch of the altar. 
 
 So we grow old with the trees, though their wild 
 
2 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 outburst of new life in springtime seems obliter- 
 ative of any thought of age. Year after year we 
 follow the season: time builds roots and sprouts 
 into vineyards and orchards; the barren, lonely 
 field becomes whispering trees, swinging vines 
 white with blossom, green and red and purple with 
 fruit. The fruit-farm grows before our eyes, yet 
 never can we see or hear one leaf or one twig grow. 
 The miracle of Nature unfolds before us and we feel 
 the indescribable joy and power of creation. The 
 infants come on together, in cradle and in field, 
 and we measure orchard and vineyard by the years 
 of our first-born. But dates are a foreign fruit. 
 In the Valley, who can truly tell, after a dozen years, 
 the age of vine or tree? We only know that with 
 the years come fruit and more fruit, as with child- 
 hood come youth and manhood. 
 
 We do not expect a child to do a man's work, 
 nor a young tree or vine to do the work of an old 
 one. Time bids the fruit grow and makes the 
 fruit-farm. Yesterday we marked off the land, 
 and set out the little trees and vines; to-day the 
 children on ladders are picking the red cherries; 
 the trees are fifteen years high. Two thousand 
 bushels? And we ourselves cleared away the 
 primeval forest and planted the orchard. It seems 
 like being present at creation. Did we plant two 
 thousand bushels of scarlet cherries when we set 
 those whip-stocks? Incredible. To-day the pur- 
 ple grapes in the children's baskets. Four tons 
 on the acre? Did we plant four tons of grapes 
 
Time and the Tree 3 
 
 when we set out these six hundred and six Concord 
 cuttings each with its fringe of root about a little 
 stick of vine ? A thousand baskets of purple prunes ? 
 Did we plant a thousand baskets of prunes when 
 we planted those small, spinous, scraggly sprigs? 
 Two hundred bushels of raspberries? And when 
 did my neighbor plant a thousand baskets of 
 peaches? Or were they peach sprouts, a few inches 
 high that now are dark, rich, shining green boughs, 
 bending low with luscious fruit? Time and the 
 Tree, Man and Nature wrought this miracle; a 
 glorious treasury of associations. "Yes," you 
 say; "cherries at three dollars a bushel; grapes at 
 thirty-eight dollars a ton; peaches at one dollar 
 a basket; raspberries at five dollars a bushel, are 
 associations, very tender associations; give me, 
 I pray you, a hundred acres of such associations!" 
 
 True, the fruitful orchard and vineyard form 
 peculiar associations with the world at large; such 
 associations as half reconcile the young fruit-grower 
 and his young wife "to try it another year." 
 Suppose five, ten, twenty, fifty years and acres 
 of cherries, peaches, prunes, grapes, berries. What 
 of the associations of a lifetime? Shakespeare 
 knew the meaning of his song, "Under the Green- 
 wood Tree." He knew the harsh world and the 
 kindly tree and would rather entrust himself to 
 wintry weather beneath its boughs than to a wintry 
 world which holds man in no kind association. 
 
 There is wisdom in trees. Use the old ones; 
 plant new ones; no fruit-farm is made in a day. 
 
4 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 Therefore mingle the old and the new; the fruit- 
 ing vine and tree and the young orchard and 
 vineyard of your own planting. Your bearing vine- 
 yard and orchard carry the burden of the fruit- 
 farm; while the young vineyard and orchard are 
 growing, the old are bearing fruit. Many a would- 
 be fruit-grower interprets expectation as perform- 
 ance. He may read, or maybe is told, that three 
 years make a vineyard; seven, an orchard, — and 
 truly, but not a self-supporting orchard or vine- 
 yard. Seven years for the vineyard; six for the 
 peach orchard; ten for the prune or the cherry, 
 yes, fifteen; then tree and vine are fully at home 
 and at work; each has formed its associations and 
 bears plentifully. The inexperienced fruit-grower 
 must live while orchards and vineyards are growing 
 into productivity. These are the waiting, the 
 trying years, when expenses mount high and 
 income falls low, — unless your old orchards and 
 vineyards are bearing the burden and heat of the 
 day. It is the bearing, not the merely growing 
 plant that makes the fruit-farm. He is a wise 
 manager who has both. One hand washes the 
 other; the old vineyard buys the new one. You 
 will not mortgage the old in order to plant the new. 
 You will more wisely perfect the old in order to 
 have the new; you will intensify your cultivation 
 of the old in order to bring the new into being. 
 
 Fruit-farming is becoming so exact a vocation, 
 things new quickly become old. Neither orchard 
 nor vineyard is planted or cared for as a generation 
 
 
Time and the Tree 5 
 
 ago. On land worth from four hundred dollars 
 to one thousand dollars an acre we cannot afford 
 to make mistakes, — in selection of variety, in 
 planting, in trimming, in spraying, in soil-making, 
 in cultivation, whatever the detail. On most 
 fruit-farms, — once grain or stock farms, — which 
 may be called " converted farms," the orchard or 
 the vineyard is planted as we would not plant it 
 to-day. Usually trees, vines are set too close 
 together; varieties are poor, ill-adapted to climate 
 or soil or market, and neither orchard nor vine- 
 yard has had the right care. The soil has been 
 depleted ; the vitality of the plant is sub-normal and 
 we must rehabilitate the trees and vines. This 
 may be possible and may be done if truly eco- 
 nomical. But one must carefully count the cost. 
 Can he afford to let the ground, with all its possi- 
 bilities, remain as now occupied, or should he 
 clean it off and start anew? The practical fruit- 
 grower alone can answer this. My own experience 
 is that we cannot afford to let the land do less than 
 its best. Practically it is a question of living; the 
 fruit-grower's living. Can he afford to have his 
 land in the most appropriate and therefore the 
 most profitable fruit? On expensive land one 
 must raise a relatively profitable crop, and on 
 cheap land one can afford to raise no other. Three, 
 five, seven, ten years quickly pass. The golden 
 rule, the supreme rule of the fruit-farm is, "Do 
 what ought to be done at the proper time." If 
 you are young, you have the credit of youth, — 
 
6 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 and its chief asset is time. If you also have capital, 
 you have two credits. Use your credit, it is your 
 capital. Better use your credit than lose time in 
 planting orchard or vineyard, or in attempting 
 to nurse a worn-out vineyard or orchard back to 
 health and productivity. Possibly it may be done, 
 but so rarely, and with such cost of labor and time, 
 that a wholly new deal is preferable. It is time 
 that makes the Tree, and Time and the tree make 
 the fruit-farm. Better tear out unprofitable varie- 
 ties and plant profitable ones than to suffer the 
 years to pass and your fruit-farm become mere 
 vines and shade trees. The annual labor bills are 
 as high for poor varieties as for good ones. 
 
 It costs more to run an unprofitable than a 
 profitable orchard. Time works for you or against 
 you with equal vigor. Your fruit-farm is deteri- 
 orating, your neighbor's is improving, — and at 
 the same time. I have never heard of the fruit- 
 farmer who got ahead of his varieties, but I have 
 heard of varieties that forced the fruit-farmer be- 
 hind. A Concord grape is preferable to a score, 
 yes, to a dozen score of other varieties for the Lake 
 Shore Valley. In other valleys conditions may be 
 different. We must farm with conditions, not 
 against them. A Montmorenci cherry is prefer- 
 able to an Early Richmond, yet we may hesitate 
 to cut down bearing Richmonds and set in Mont- 
 morenci; but we need not set out the objectionable 
 variety, and if our orchards are yet young, we may 
 well afford to supplant the defective with the profit- 
 
Time and the Tree 7 
 
 able tree. Gradually the wise fruit-grower works 
 his entire farm over into only the best varieties, 
 the most profitable kinds for his farm. A fruit - 
 farm cannot be made in a day, though it may be 
 seriously injured in less time. Every experienced 
 orchardist or vineyardist sooner or later has had 
 to face the problem of remaking his fruit-farm. 
 The vineyards planted a generation ago are poor 
 in variety; the rows are too close to permit use of 
 modern tools and, notably, entrance of the sprayer. 
 The expense of working this old-fashioned part 
 of the plantation is out of all proportion to the 
 returns from it. What shall he do? If he does 
 the right thing he will make a clean sweep of the old 
 vines and set the vineyard entirely new. Within 
 five years he will have received profits more than 
 sufficient to compensate him for temporary loss, 
 and his new vineyard will serve him his lifetime. 
 The old vineyard could become only worse as the 
 years pass. Clearly the ledger account shows what 
 should be done in such a case. Likewise with an 
 orchard. Old, dying, neglected trees of poor 
 variety cumber the ground. Cut them down; 
 root out the stumps; plow deep; set new stock. 
 Even though you may not gather fruit from your 
 new orchard, it is a new orchard; it improves the 
 value of your farm. As an asset, you have the 
 new orchard even if it may not bear for several 
 years. The purchaser prefers to buy a new or- 
 chard to an old and unprofitable one. And doubt- 
 less you will be the owner when the trees begin to 
 
8 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 bear. A fruit-farm is quite like a railroad. Road- 
 way and rolling-stock must be of the best and must 
 be kept up with the times, or accidents multiply, 
 dividends fail, the line goes into bankruptcy. 
 The fruit-farm must be kept at highest efficiency; 
 no other condition is worth having. On the stern 
 basis of profit and loss the best conditions are the 
 most profitable, cost as they must. 
 
 While all this is going on, associations are form- 
 ing; rooting deeper than tree or vine; rising higher 
 than leaf or fruit. Your fruit-plantations become 
 part of yourself; the woof and web of your think- 
 ing; the background of your memories; the scene 
 of your activity. And the children have grown 
 up with you and the vines and trees. But of 
 children one must speak conditionally: they did 
 not make the fruit-farm and their associations 
 are not yours. The farm has been your educa- 
 tion, not theirs. Each generation thinks its own 
 thoughts and your posterity will not, cannot see 
 themselves in vineyards and orchards as you see 
 yourself. In a mysterious sense each lives unto 
 himself. You cannot live your child's life any 
 more than could your father live your life. True, 
 you have ancestral memories, but they seem, after 
 all, of another world, not of yours. 
 
 What then becomes of the fruit-farm? Usually 
 it passes to strangers, just as it came to you. 
 They must repeat the story: build associations, 
 enjoy for a season, and pass the opportunity on 
 to strangers. It is ever the case of Time and the 
 
Time and the Tree 9 
 
 Tree. They who plant orchards and eat the fruit 
 of them think of them as a man thinks of his own 
 children, — more tenderly than of other children. 
 Your children cannot know your association with 
 the tree because they did not plant it. Now and 
 then we meet a man or a woman — usually a bache- 
 lor or a maid — who, in lack of other lovables, 
 cherishes the farm because of ancestral associa- 
 tions. This differs from the pride which flourishes 
 on genealogical trees. That your ancestors came 
 over on the Mayflower is a matter of pride, but 
 that these orchards and vineyards were your 
 father's before you, or that you planted them your- 
 self, gives a different sense of association. It is 
 possible for you to have feelings with your parents 
 or for their work, but sympathy, in this sense, is 
 impossible between you and any Puritan on the 
 Mayflower. You may as easily establish sympa- 
 thies with your ancestors of the third century. 
 Time and the Tree form associations but not 
 longer than two generations. A man is proud that 
 his farm belonged to his great-grandfather because 
 this points to family dignity and stability, but he 
 can have no lively associations further back than 
 his parents. 
 
 As the years pass, our associations become more 
 tender, our plantation more productive: a curious 
 commingling of sentiment and potatoes. The 
 lively sense of possession always kindles the 
 faculty of appreciation. What man, past middle 
 life, sitting on his porch and casting his eyes over 
 
io An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 vineyard and orchard which have witnessed his 
 activities, will not reminisce, reciting the changes 
 in his day. "When I came here — " he will 
 begin, and narrate at length the transformation 
 he wrought till you wonder whether this now 
 prolific center, humming with modern life, can 
 possibly, within one short span of life, have been 
 the wild he pictures. But we all do fade as a leaf, 
 and the leaves fall every year. 
 
 To the young this transformation is only a tale 
 that is told. I have heard old settlers tell of bear 
 and deer, of elk and wolves abounding in the 
 Valley; of wandering Indians; of itinerant preach- 
 ers; of journeys in saddle; of dollars rarer than 
 are diamonds now; of pewter dishes and wooden 
 spoons; of linsey-woolsey clothes; of hand-looms, 
 and corn planted between the stumps of the new 
 clearing. Could these pioneers return they would 
 be unhappy. They would miss this ancient world; 
 they would miss the hand-looms and the saddle- 
 horses; the pewter plates and the bowls of mush 
 and milk ; they would miss the venison, and the ser- 
 mons two hours long; the primeval forest, the vines, 
 the flowers, the meager fruits of their day. Suffi- 
 cient unto the day is the happiness thereof. We 
 would not be happy in their shoes, nor they in ours. 
 Their associations could not be ours, nor ours theirs. 
 Neither can ours be our children's. Each genera- 
 tion must form its own, for it can enjoy no other. 
 
 We cannot then expect our children to think of 
 our fruit-farm as do we. We have made it our 
 
 
Time and the Tree n 
 
 home; it is only the nest for the children; and the 
 young birds do not know the value of the old nest ; 
 they seek their own. Can our fruit-farm become 
 as the nest to the birds of the forest, or be home to 
 our children as it has been home to us? The 
 answer must be as the way of the world, — each 
 after its kind. I have never known a man to think 
 as highly of his father's house as of the house he 
 builds for himself. Time and the Tree make the 
 fruit-farm, but the tree must grow under your 
 own hands and within your time. There are 
 bridges which carry one generation over into 
 another. Sometimes children and grandchildren 
 play about the fruit-farm and a new sowing of 
 associations is made, a new harvest gathered. 
 From father to son; from son to grandson the 
 fruit-farm passes, each generation like the Tree 
 which Time grows on the place: an embodiment 
 of associations; memories in the flesh. Doubtless 
 as land becomes valuable in America, and the 
 struggle for a livelihood the sharper, families will 
 cling to the fruit-farm as a protection, an anchor 
 to windward, a safe investment, a dependable 
 source of a livelihood. The land of New York 
 City has as great commercial value as all the farm 
 land between the Mississippi and the Atlantic 
 north of Georgia. Its value lies in its scarcity 
 and the profitable use, largely the monopoly use, 
 that can be made of it. Farm values are higher 
 in America to-day than ever before, and they 
 increase faster than population. 
 
12 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 The choice fruit regions of America are favored 
 locations, few in number and of limited area. Land 
 values within them are now higher than elsewhere 
 in the country. They will ever be higher than 
 other farm lands. Sometimes the bonds and 
 stock of a corporation become so valuable that they 
 are never in the open market. Heirs do not part 
 with them. Fruit-farms are the favored estates 
 in America, more favored than coal or mineral or 
 lumber lands, for these, once exhausted, are of 
 slight worth. Fruit-lands properly managed are 
 inexhaustible. Cato knew this two thousand 
 years ago and advised his countrymen to adapt 
 the culture of their lands to the wants of the times. 
 The history of Rome is the history of the land; 
 so too is the history of France, of Germany, of 
 England, Scotland, Ireland. The history of Amer- 
 ica is the history of the land, more difficult to 
 understand because land in this country has ap- 
 proximated personal property in ease of transfer, 
 — an innovation unknown in any other country. 
 The history of the Fruit Valley is the story of its 
 land. Climate holds the pen. 
 
 The man who has spent his life building up a 
 fruit-farm knows that little remains at the close 
 that existed at the beginning. The tree, the vine, 
 the shrub, the root of to-day, is not that of a few 
 years ago. The old has passed ; the new is passing. 
 Those hungry, thirsty cells which in earth or air 
 are drinking in plant-food will themselves soon 
 become plant-food. Half a ton of leaves grow on 
 
Time and the Tree 13 
 
 the apple tree this summer and every leaf falls 
 to the ground and perishes. This ring of wood 
 thinly protected by a coating of bark will, in a 
 few years, be near the center of the tree. Hardly 
 a shred of the vine we plant will exist in ten years. 
 Posts and stakes rot away, are cast into the fire, 
 and turn to ashes before our eyes. We scatter 
 them over the vineyard which they once so stoutly 
 held up to the sun. The berry bushes we planted 
 vanished long ago. What is there here now that 
 was here a quarter of a century ago? We have 
 laid out new roads and alleys; we have torn down 
 and rebuilt houses and barns. The life of the 
 place is new. We have changed. The picture of 
 ourself on the wall is of another man who did not 
 think as we think now. His eyes looked out upon a 
 different world. Yes, Time and the Tree have been 
 busy. And these faces at the board, these bright 
 eyes, these new beings sitting in the old seats, 
 these children roaming, sporting under the shadows 
 are newcomers, brought by Time and the Tree. 
 And we turn to the ledger of the old days, the days 
 of small things; there are hundreds of tons and 
 thousands of bushels now. Then we thought a 
 hundred bushels a portentous crop, and to-day 
 not a tree on the fruit-farm of that kind ! 
 
 Yet Time is never weary and the Tree is ever 
 growing. Not only is it ever green but ever fruit- 
 ful. It is a wonderful tree, very much like folks, 
 a bundle of associations. You call the apple 
 "Seek-no-further," but I call it the fruit-farm. 
 
14 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 The fruit-farm is a vast clock which marks off 
 the seasons in bold lines, not by months and min- 
 utes but by the coming and going of blossom, fruit, 
 and leaf. Nature has her routine, first the leaf, 
 then the bud, then the full corn in the ear. We do 
 not say it is July, but cherry-picking time; not 
 October, but the time of grape harvest. So is it 
 time to trim orchard and vineyard; to plow; to 
 spray; to cultivate; to look over the farm tools; to 
 apply potash; to sow the soil-crop; to harvest and 
 market the fruit. A cherry tree is a natural time- 
 piece and the fruit-grower goes by the tree rather 
 than by his watch. The weather winds the farmer's 
 clock. In all his work there is a leisurely haste and 
 the wonder is of so prolific a crop from relatively 
 so slight effort. He plants an orchard, feeds the 
 soil, cares for the trees, and gathers hundreds of 
 bushels of cherries, yet at no time was he rushing 
 about, or seemingly in haste like the broker, the 
 head of a corporation, or a young capitalist. And 
 there are others who, like the Canterbury Pilgrim, 
 seem busier than they are. The fruit-grower is 
 busier than he seems. He has a relay of helpers: 
 in the powers in earth and air; in chemical forces 
 which make our planet habitable. He has only 
 to hitch his own efforts to their wagon and he is 
 brought in due season to the market where he 
 would be. 
 
 When we consider how few are the food-makers 
 in this world, we may well be astonished by the 
 amount of food-products. Travel as you may in 
 
Time and the Tree 15 
 
 America — and it is also true in other lands — you 
 see few people at work in the fields. Orchards, 
 vineyards, fields of grain, of vegetables, of berries, 
 stretch away before your eyes and not a man any- 
 where at work, — perhaps one here or there resting 
 on his hoe-handle, or hitching the team, or tinker- 
 ing at a tool. Yet the vision is of orchards and 
 vineyards and fertile fields. What might happen 
 were the production of food intensive rather than 
 extensive? If every rood of ground produced its 
 full contribution under complete cultivation? 
 Such intensification is hinted at to-day on our 
 best fruit-farms. Why not eight tons of grapes 
 to the acre? Five hundred bushels of cherries? 
 Three hundred bushels of prunes? Three tons of 
 gooseberries? One thousand baskets of peaches? 
 It is not impossible. Only two factors are essen- 
 tial: man and climate. There is always risk of 
 the enemy: untimely storms, wind, that break 
 down the orchard and the vineyard; hail that cuts 
 tree and vine and shrub into shreds ; late frosts that 
 kill buds and early frosts that destroy fruit; light- 
 ning that consumes rows of grapes and fruiting 
 trees ; insects that devour all green things, and fungi 
 that suck the life from root, stalk, leaf, and fruit. 
 The weather is freakish and has no respect for 
 man. Between man and weather there is ever 
 distrust, frequent war, and final surrender by 
 him. Yet, seedtime and harvest are his security; 
 Nature will have her own, and despite wind and 
 weather. 
 
16 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 With the fruit-grower things rarely turn out as 
 well as he hopes or so badly as he fears. No man 
 can weigh the fruit on the vine or tell the number 
 of bushels in the orchard: Cherries hang in count- 
 less red balls and grapes in countless purple amidst 
 the green. Nature may know how many; we 
 take to the scales. Who has ever heard in April 
 of the failure of the Delaware peach crop? If my 
 memory fails not, the farmer's crop always fails 
 somewhere in April; I speak by the newspapers. 
 But in the Lake Shore Valley in April and May, 
 grapes are always to be a heavy crop ; they blossom 
 in June. In July, the crop is always "less than 
 last year"; in August, the berries swell and color 
 and look quite pompous; "a bumper crop," say 
 the newspapers. In late September and through 
 October, is the harvest. Your vineyard returns 
 as you gave to it. No soil, no vine; no vine, no 
 wine. Your grapes weigh up to your feeding of 
 the soil. Nature knows her own. You starved 
 your land and now you starve; you fed your land 
 and now it feeds you. In the Valley, Nature 
 keeps a strict ledger account with every acre and 
 its owner and returns investment of care with 
 interest, but discounts all poor farming. Feed 
 the Concord vineyard well and every year it faith- 
 fully responds, and it is the only plant in the Valley 
 which never fails to respond. Other plants take 
 a year off, — cherries, plums, peaches, apples, prunes, 
 currants, but the Concord never takes a vacation. 
 You can depend upon it to bear you a harvest as 
 
Time and the Tree 17 
 
 ample as your treatment of it is careful. So on 
 your fruit-farm, the vineyard in April, July, August, 
 October, is ever evenly, quietly, bountifully, re- 
 sponding to your care. It is the almanac of 
 your life; it marks the divisions of your activities. 
 You bank on your vineyard; you hope for your 
 orchards. Grapes there will be, — cherries, prunes, 
 peaches, apples, there may be. Even the acres of 
 showy bloom may not mean cherries. Wind and 
 rain, untimely, may wash the prospective cherry- 
 crop to the ground. Cherries are occasional. 
 Yet the fruit-grower may make the occasion; he 
 may make a cherry crop every year in his soil. It 
 is an art, but not elusive. The soil-less man has 
 no cherries in his soil. He who puts them there 
 in potash, phosphoric acid, nitrogen, and humus, — 
 clover, vetch, soybeans, stable manure, and drains 
 the earth bottom and top to keep the pores open, 
 and so sets soluble plant-food circulating through 
 it, finds them all later in the golden fruit on the 
 trees. And he never finds on tree or vine any 
 fruit he has not first deposited in the ground. Here 
 the miracle is seen: for every cherry he hides in 
 the earth he picks many a handful on the tree. So 
 it is quite possible that the fruit-grower banks 
 both on his vineyard and his orchard. The chances 
 are on his side. 
 
 Feed thy tree 
 And it feeds thee; 
 Feed thy vine 
 And make thy wine. 
 
18 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 Way back in the Middle Ages men sang this 
 little verse, — and it was made in Germany. Some 
 have learned it in America. Every fruit-grower 
 should learn it by heart and frame it in orchard 
 and vineyard. It looks very pretty on the face 
 of the farmer's clock. It is always reflected in 
 the cheery face of the successful fruit-grower. I 
 know would-be fruit-growers who have never 
 learned it; never practiced it. They demand 
 "bumper crops" every year of orchard and vine- 
 yard and curse the barren trees because they do 
 not give something for nothing. By and by their 
 fruit-farms are for sale. Sometimes the sheriff 
 wants the farm so badly he takes it. Then the 
 late owner will tell you how to raise fruit, much as 
 the man whose horse has been stolen tells you how 
 to lock the barn. "It is better," says Cato, "to 
 buy from a man who has farmed successfully and 
 built well." And again: "When you inspect the 
 farm, look to see how many wine-presses and stor- 
 age vats there are; where there are none of these, 
 you can judge what the harvest is. Know that 
 with a farm, as with a man, however productive 
 it may be, if it has the spending habit, not much 
 will be left over." 
 
 Feed the land at the right time; care for it in 
 season and you will harvest in season. It seems 
 a simple rule, yet its simplicity is its difficulty. 
 The unselfish man begins with his land: "I feed 
 you; you feed me"; this is his working formula. 
 Something for something, but never something for 
 
Time and the Tree 19 
 
 nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum because she 
 cannot fill it. If you dig a gulf you must raise a 
 mountain. If you gather potash in eight-pound 
 baskets, during the grape harvest, you must de- 
 posit potash long before harvest. "What!" you 
 exclaim, "a ton of potash! $47.83 buried in the 
 earth! Ruination! I cannot afford it! There 
 is nothing in horticulture at that rate!" Now we 
 know that two tons of grapes contain thirty-nine 
 pounds of potash, eleven pounds of phosphoric 
 acid, and thirty- two pounds of nitrogen; and that 
 most of the crop is water. If we have picked a 
 hundred pounds of potash from the soil we cer- 
 tainly should return a like amount, and well can 
 we afford to. Doubtless there was potash in the 
 soil unavailable as plant-food ; we must keep up the 
 supply. It is only the available potash that feeds 
 the grapes. "The great doctrine of availability," 
 which Webster remarked, with bitterness, was 
 exemplified in the nomination of General Taylor 
 for the presidency and which worked his triumphant 
 election, is also exemplified in grapes and cherries 
 and all other fruits. You can have them if you 
 make your plant-food supply available. This is 
 the ancient game and play of fruit-growing. You 
 do not put a ton of food into the acre of orchard 
 or vineyard, yet the crop consumes many tons. 
 You gather, say, four tons of grapes or eight tons 
 of cherries to the acre. You scatter perhaps half 
 a ton of fertilizer and plow in a clover crop. 
 Nature returns you fruit of greater weight than 
 
20 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 that of the plant-food you have deposited, — and 
 she ever will, howsoever much plant-food you 
 deposit. She always keeps a reserve; she is look- 
 ing out for her own rainy days. She must always 
 have something in the treasury. Earth and air 
 help you ; the laboratory of the soil turns out more 
 than you put into the crucible. It reminds one 
 of the transformation of natural gas into gasoline, 
 yet natural gas contains no gasoline. Surely the 
 mystery of fruit-growing is bewildering. Yet, 
 were you to hold back your pinch of potash or 
 wisp of straw, your land would not feed pounds of 
 potash, of nitrogen, of phosphoric acid, and of 
 straw to your trees and vines. 
 
 It seems then, that Nature helps the fruit-grower 
 who helps himself. "With me you prosper; with- 
 out me," she says, "you perish." Some men, 
 considered by the world to possess monumental 
 generosity, say to the charity: "Raise a dollar 
 and I will give you fifty cents"; or, if desperately 
 generous, they say: "Raise a dollar and I will give 
 you another." Then the campaign opens and 
 nobody has any peace; and the giver of the second 
 dollar insists that the college shall be named after 
 him. To the fruit-grower Nature says: "Give the 
 soil a spoonful of plant -food and I will give a ton." 
 Nature is forgotten and the fruit-grower has the 
 tree named after him. And this is going on all the 
 time. Scratch the earth and it yields a cherry; 
 feed it and it yields tons of cherries. 
 
 At whatever angle we approach the fruit-farm 
 
Time and the Tree 21 
 
 we sooner or later arrive at the center — the soil. 
 Tell me the soil and I will describe its owner. It 
 is his alter ego. Dust we are and back to dust we 
 go, and while we live we are keepers of the dust. 
 Yet all do not seem to know this. May we not 
 assume that as soon as there was opportunity for 
 soil on the earth man appeared? He is the only 
 animal that makes soil and deliberately gets his 
 living from it. Not only does he look before and 
 after, he is the soil-maker. If you will but weigh 
 this against his other creations, you will discover 
 that it is his most important contribution to his 
 own civilization. "Oh that mine enemy would 
 write a book!" exclaims the hungry critic. "Oh 
 that my friend would transform land into soil!" 
 exclaims the hungry man. The high cost of living 
 means the low production of soil. 
 
 But the earth has its seasons like the sky, and 
 the laboratory of the soil is more active at some 
 seasons than at others. I once knew a farmer who 
 planted corn while sitting in slippers, in a rocking- 
 chair, on the porch, reading the New York Evan- 
 gelist. He did not get enough from his cornfield 
 to renew his subscription to the paper. Another 
 farmer I knew raised record crops of corn and could 
 not read or write. The ancient Lake-Dwellers, 
 on Lake Geneva, raised wheat. I have seen their 
 wheat, — black, oxidized grains sealed in a bottle 
 in the De Candolle Collection; but the Lacustrines 
 sang their songs like Homer; they never bothered 
 themselves with reading or writing. They raised 
 
22 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 wheat. One of the startling revelations to the 
 graduate of the agricultural college, and of col- 
 leges in general, is the big crop which the man of 
 the diploma does not raise and the steady crop the 
 unlettered fruit-grower always raises. This does 
 not count against the college but for the unlettered 
 farmer. He reads books in grapevines, sermons 
 in cherry stones, and crops in everything. He 
 cannot give scientific names to root-worm or 
 brown-rot, but he can exterminate them by spray- 
 ing at the right moment. He never thinks of the 
 chemical properties of the soil beneath his feet, 
 but it is as loose as ashes and filled with humus. 
 His regular and heavy harvests tempt you to dis- 
 parage his college-bred neighbor who takes samples 
 of the earth, fills bottles with queer liquids, makes 
 tests, and tells you that the land lacks nitrogen. 
 "Too much sorrel," remarks the unlettered neigh- 
 bor. "The land is sour; sow clover, soybeans, or, 
 best of all, cover it deep with barnyard manure. 
 That is what is the matter with your land." Both 
 tell the truth, and each by his own tests and through 
 his own formula. Shall we dispraise either fruit- 
 grower, him who knows the chemistry of the land 
 or him who knows the meaning of sorrel? Each 
 acts up to his knowledge and sorrel was grow- 
 ing before chemical laboratories were endowed. 
 Practically, one is as wise as the other. But 
 there is a difference. The fruit-grower, who also 
 is a soil-chemist, saves, conserves time. Knowl- 
 edge is a short-cut to the flour barrel, as well as a 
 
Time and the Tree 23 
 
 dangerous thing. The Swiss Lacustrines raised 
 wheat four thousand years ago, but less to the 
 acre than does the wheat-farmer of to-day. Knowl- 
 edge outlined at agricultural colleges is not unlike 
 prepared food ; it has the ingredients of nutriment. 
 But we prefer ordinary meat and drink. For 
 extraordinary service, for much labor in brief time, 
 for the weariness and exhaustion of great risks, 
 and for carrying capacity cut down to lowest 
 terms, as when reaching the Poles, or marching 
 against the enemy, — concentrated food has its 
 uses. 
 
 It is every man's experience that he must know 
 his machine, his task, his labor, in order to utilize 
 the scientific conclusions duly worked out in his 
 own vocation. The fruit-grower must know his 
 own land, his own soil — its composition, vitality, 
 productivity. Fruit-instinct is a pearl of great 
 price. The best horseman has best horse-sense 
 and the word has become the world's metaphor. 
 Fruit instinct is not given with diplomas at agri- 
 cultural colleges. As Webster said of eloquence: 
 " It cannot be brought from far; it exists in the man 
 and in the occasion." The fruit-grower with 
 fruit-instinct can raise fruit despite agricultural 
 college, or experimental station, just as the man 
 with the scholar's instinct may become learned 
 despite Harvard or Wisconsin. There is a sub- 
 stitute for instinct and that is knowledge ; it is not 
 instinct. They differ. A farmer by instinct will 
 always raise more cherries to the acre than will the 
 
24 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 farmer by mere knowledge. It is instinct that 
 keeps the race on the planet, — not new knowledge. 
 But as the agricultural college cannot make a 
 fruit-grower, no more can the medical school make 
 a doctor, the law school a lawyer, or the engineer- 
 ing school an engineer. It is the man himself, 
 not the school. The diploma is only a certificate 
 that he passed the college way. But knowledge 
 must be the capital and resource of most men; the 
 genius among farmers is rare. Luther Burbank 
 is unique, but he can set thousands of lesser men to 
 work improving varieties: to produce paper-shell 
 and other walnuts; to improve oats, wheat, and 
 barley; to reclaim the deserts with cactus; to 
 improve flax, hemp, and cotton; to increase the 
 yield of clover, timothy, and alfalfa; to improve 
 peas, beans, and tomatoes; to add even a better 
 potato than the Burbank; to better all kinds of 
 berries; to improve grapes; to work out perfect 
 plums, apples, prunes, without seeds; to make 
 quinces delicious raw and to double the productive- 
 ness of the cherry ; to improve the pear, — in brief, 
 he can tell posterity how to apply his methods and 
 discoveries and thus to increase immeasurably the 
 world's supply of food. Men by knowledge can 
 learn to carry on what he began with instinct. 
 The agricultural college, like any other training 
 school, helps plain people learn how to make a 
 living. There is only one kind of scientific work. 
 There is only one scientific method in fruit-farming. 
 There are different approaches to this method. 
 
Time and the Tree 25 
 
 It is therefore a question whether the would-be 
 fruit-grower will turn out a fruit-grower, or only 
 a medium through whom the title to the land is 
 transferred to some man who is a fruit-grower by 
 instinct. The ''natural farmer" shines like the 
 "natural painter," the "natural musician," even 
 the "natural doctor," or the "natural engineer." 
 Nature fits most men for something, but not always 
 for fruit-farming. Almost any man believes that 
 he can do light farming; that if he had only a well 
 equipped fruit-farm he could "get along nicely" 
 and even run the risk of getting rich. Nature in 
 due time — very infrequently, and but once — pro- 
 duces her Raffael, her Beethoven, her Shakespeare, 
 her Angelo. It is the fashion of the world to 
 praise the ornamental, the luxurious, and to over- 
 look the practical and the necessary. "Arms and 
 the man, I sing"; "Achilles' wrath I sing," — so 
 open JEneid and Iliad. War, passion, beauty, 
 statecraft, crime, wickedness, — not fruit-farming, 
 are the subjects of the story. Cato, it is true, 
 more than twenty centuries ago wrote on Farm 
 Management, but it is not literature as is the 
 Germany or the Agricola of Tacitus. The Ec- 
 logues of Virgil are of the oldest literature of farm- 
 ing, but they dwell on the passions of men, not 
 on cherries or corn. It is hard to make poetry 
 out of a quart of berries save by assimilation, and 
 that is not poetry but chemistry. Perhaps our 
 units of measure of things and men need revision. 
 Virgil, first to put the peasant into literature, 
 
26 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 makes him a churl, a slave. Shakespeare's farm- 
 ers are all boors, the butt of ridicule, as are his 
 laborers of any calling. Only in the modern novel 
 of "real life" is the farmer the hero of the story. 
 Adam Bede has a soul as well as a jack-plane, and 
 passions quite as picturesque as Scott's Antiquary. 
 But the farmer has at last got into literature, and 
 has come to stay. American life has compelled 
 recognition of his rights and privileges as a man. 
 Democracy runs to farmers as theocracy to priests. 
 Ours began as a nation of farmers. 
 
 " By the low bridge that arched the flood, 
 Their flags to April's breeze unfurled; 
 Here the embattled farmers stood 
 
 And fired the shot heard round the world." 
 
 The arrow-maker, the sword-maker, the maker 
 of the war-harness, the gun-maker, the ship- 
 builder, the money-maker, — why not the food- 
 maker? No Virgil or Shakespeare hereafter will 
 make the farmer the boor and butt of his story. 
 Indeed the echoes of Mantua and Abbotsford now 
 print themselves in taking-titles of new novels 
 which bring swiftly to mind green orchard boughs, 
 sweeping vines, purpling fruit, and the stress and 
 storm of life on the farm. This life is made the foil 
 to the life of the city, that we may know the 
 commonplace of commonplaces: whether in the 
 bank, in the White House, or on the farm, human 
 nature is quite the same. A man's a man whether 
 under an apple tree or over the roof of a sky- 
 
Time and the Tree 27 
 
 scraper. So in latter days, literature has dis- 
 covered the fruit-farmer: all in due time. In the 
 almanac of letters the fruit-grower has his date. 
 Some people will discover mere respectability 
 in all this; finding it in a book, they will believe it. 
 This discovery is merely their own. The fruit- 
 grower is a man with a special instinct. Napoleon 
 was an excellent farmer but took too much time 
 for military exercises. Yet his farm — France — 
 is a better farm because of his farming. He ex- 
 hausted the French, but not France. 
 
 Washington was a farmer, and though much 
 absent from his plantation, on military excursions, 
 he neither exhausted the Americans nor Mount 
 Vernon. And we know that he preferred his farm 
 to the presidency. I have long considered him 
 the greatest of Americans, and much of his great- 
 ness was due to his instinct for farming. Cincin- 
 natus, in the old Roman story, owed all his fame 
 to his reputation as a farmer. Jefferson too, was 
 a farmer, and has recorded his conclusions in one 
 of the most famous of books, his Notes on Virginia: 
 
 Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of 
 God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts he has 
 made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine 
 virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred 
 fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the 
 earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a 
 phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an 
 example. It is the mark set on those, who, not looking up 
 to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the hus- 
 
28 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 bandman, for their subsistence, depend for it on the casual- 
 ties and caprices of customers. Dependence begets 
 subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and 
 prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. This, the 
 natural progress and consequence of the arts, has sometimes 
 perhaps been retarded by accidental circumstances: but, 
 generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of 
 the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its 
 husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy 
 parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to measure 
 its degree of corruption. . . . The mobs of great cities add 
 just so much to the support of pure government as sores 
 do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners 
 and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. r 
 
 In our day, as in other days, in all countries, 
 at all times, men love to get back to the land. This 
 points to their natural avocation; circumstances 
 have made them senators, judges, lawyers, manu- 
 facturers, railroad-men, writers, doctors, sea- 
 captains, bankers, and so on through the weary 
 list. Many a good fruit-grower has been spoiled 
 in the lawyer, the doctor, the merchant. Happy 
 is the man who is doing what he is best qualified 
 to do, particularly if he is by instinct a fruit- 
 grower and grows fruit. In our day the world is 
 reaching this conclusion. Young men are looking 
 to fruit-raising as a vocation, as they look to other 
 vocations. Like banking, railroading, mining, 
 practicing law or medicine, or engineering, fruit 
 
 1 Notes on the State of Virginia. Written by Thomas Jefferson. 
 Philadelphia, Printed and Sold by Prichard and Hall, in Market Street, 
 Between Front and Second Streets, M.DCC.LXXXVIII. Query XIX. 
 P- 175- 
 
Time and the Tree 29 
 
 land is an opportunity. It is not merely that 
 fruit-raising may be commercially profitable but 
 that it is a business worthy a man's best services. 
 In other words, there is a career in fruit-raising 
 as in war or mining, in printing, publishing, or 
 manufacturing. Fashion governs the world and 
 fruit-farming is in fashion. It is not a disgrace 
 to raise potatoes, or cherries, peaches, or grapes. 
 Is it a disgrace to raise puppies, or kittens, or 
 triple-combed roosters? Yet a cattery is not 
 precisely like a fruit-farm. 
 
 In Cato's time every senator owned a huge piece 
 of Italy. Landownership meant aristocracy, and 
 to this day the landlord is the master among men. 
 Every nation, at some time, gets land-hungry and 
 it is land-hunger that keeps the world a military 
 camp. I know that there is a vociferous part of 
 mankind that calls property robbery and land- 
 ownership tyranny. Therefore, it says, "Own 
 no land." The more people the less land, yet the 
 land is no less. This inverse ratio of land and 
 people partly explains its appreciation. And as 
 fruit-lands are limited in extent and are uncommon, 
 such lands are most prized of all. These lands 
 are clocks on the earth's surface, marking time. 
 The fruit-grower knows his time-piece and so 
 regulates his activities. He never winds the clock; 
 it is a perpetual self-winding time-piece. It tells 
 him when to plant and when to cultivate; when 
 to trim and when to gather the harvest. What 
 farmer ever carries a watch, save to a wedding, a 
 
30 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 funeral, or to meeting! He can farm a lifetime 
 without one. In the Valley, the lake breeze tells 
 when it is four o'clock afternoon, and the clover 
 also marks the hour. No less precise are the 
 shifting of the air-currents at nine in the evening; 
 at three in the morning. The cherry tree is a dial, 
 and the moving shadow of the grape-vine marks 
 off the hours. But these are the finessing of the 
 clock; there are the great divisions of the seasons. 
 Winter begins when the leaves fall and ceases 
 when again they start. Spring begins with the 
 call of the soil and ends with the setting of the fruit 
 on vine and tree. Summer begins with the grow- 
 ing grapes and cherries and ends as they ripen; 
 and autumn — briefest of seasons — slips in between 
 the purpling fruit and the leaves rustling at your 
 feet. All in due season. 
 
 And then, there is within the man a mysterious 
 interpreter of the seasons, — that instinct which 
 moves him to do and do. By that subtle power 
 he reads the clouds in the sky; the invisible winds; 
 the rising and setting of sun, moon, and stars, and 
 the shades and colors on the living earth. It tells 
 him when to plow and to sow; when to cultivate 
 and to harvest; and in following it he does all 
 things in season. 
 
 In planning the fruit-farm we must remember 
 the days. Strawberries ripen in June; grapes and 
 prunes in October. As the fruit-farm is a cycle 
 of the seasons, each arc of the cycle may register 
 its fruit. With care we may have a succession of 
 
Time and the Tree 31 
 
 fruits quite through the year. The links of this 
 fruit-chain are strawberries, cherries, raspberries, 
 dewberries, blackberries, plums, apples, peaches, 
 grapes, nuts, and the gifts of the garden, between: 
 radishes, salads, peas, beans, onions, beets, pota- 
 toes, corn, okra, egg-plant, — each in succulent 
 varieties. One must live, and he may live well, 
 on the fruit-farm. The table may have fresh fruit 
 the year round if one will but take the trouble 
 to secure it. Few fruit-growers take the trouble. 
 If the housewife is also fruit-grower, helper in 
 orchard, berry-field, and vineyard, she will prove 
 to you that you cannot pick cherries and make 
 cherry pies at the same time. But if the labor 
 supply is thriftily used, cherries will be picked and 
 pies will be made. Nearly every fruit may be 
 kept sound for a time in cold storage, and kept 
 indefinitely, provided it is dried, pickled, or canned. 
 Much of this art and mystery lies on the distaff 
 side of the house. Apples, prunes, and grapes will 
 keep long: the apples, unbruised, in barrels, if 
 kept cool; the prunes, sound, in shallow boxes, cool 
 and dry; the grapes, unbroken, in dry sawdust, 
 such as is used in packing California grapes. Set 
 these treasures in a room tempered all the time 
 just above freezing, and they will keep themselves 
 for half the year. Garden produce as all bulbs, 
 tubers, and roots, keep best in cool, dry sand, 
 above freezing, but no fruit will keep (save air- 
 tight) beyond the season when its kind again is 
 forming. Evidently fruit preservation is a prob- 
 
32 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 lem of temperature and exclusion of air, and I may 
 add, of light. The fruit-cellar therefore becomes 
 a conserver of supplies: it is a clean, airy, cool, 
 ventilated, dry room, usually below ground. It is 
 not an ice-house. The great clock of Nature 
 marks off the farmer's time: to do and what to do. 
 Neither too early nor too late, but in season is the 
 law of the fruit-farm. Nature hates to be nagged 
 and refuses to make up anybody's lost time. There 
 is a tide in the affairs of the fruit-farm which leads 
 on to fortune. It must be taken at the flood. 
 No man can run a fruit-farm on an ebbing tide. 
 Nature gives man and beast, plants, and all living 
 things their food in due season; but she has no 
 supplementary hours; no extra seasons; she is 
 reduced to the lowest terms. Instinct tells the 
 fruit-farmer all this. Some fruit-farmers learn 
 it as a task of the day. But whether by instinct 
 or by knowledge, the farmer knows his clock, 
 though he never winds it; and though he can not 
 set the hands backward or forward, he can move 
 precisely with them. 
 
II 
 
 SELECTING THE FARM 
 
 CLIMATE and location determine the value of 
 the farm. In selecting the site, we must 
 consider climate first, for we are prisoners of 
 climate. It is climate that determines what seeds 
 shall grow and what shall not. Farming is only- 
 one of the uses man makes of climate. It is be- 
 cause of climate that the earth brings forth fruit 
 after its kind. Location means convenience, and 
 the most convenient use of climate is the most 
 convenient use of the land. Yet all land is not 
 equally convenient for use. The man himself 
 must know. He contributes to the conclusion of 
 the whole matter, for his decision in choosing a 
 climate determines his future. There are climatic 
 belts, or regions, each having possibilities and 
 limitations. Man cannot change these. The 
 kind of farming possible depends upon climate; 
 therefore one must go to the proper region for 
 fruit-land, grain-land, or grazing-land. True, 
 tropical fruits may be made to grow in hothouses; 
 man may supply the climate after the fashion of 
 things artificial; but we do not look for orange 
 
 3 33 
 
34 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 groves amidst snow-banks. The supreme law 
 in farming is adaptation. Perfect adaptation 
 means perfect farming, and degrees of adaptation 
 shade off into utter failure. The farm is largely 
 man-made; it cannot be said to be wholly natural. 
 Indeed, the most productive farms are adaptations 
 which illustrate man's farthest departure from the 
 wild. Such adaptation, for human ends, exempli- 
 fies the best use of climate. Thus a ranch in the 
 Lake Erie Valley, or a vineyard among the Idaho 
 mountains is not an example of the nice adaptation 
 of climate to human wants. The sun settled this 
 matter ages ago. 
 
 Usually, in seeking a farm, a man is dominated 
 by his associations. Nearness to the old home, to 
 friends, to city or town, determines his choice 
 rather than the suitableness of the land itself to 
 the uses he purposes to make of it. The idea is 
 common that any land will raise anything possible 
 within the zone in which it lies. Thus most people 
 believe that oranges and cocoanuts grow in strings 
 along the equator, and apples anywhere in the 
 temperate zone. Yet we are assured that all 
 grains and fruits, all roots and leaves and stalks, 
 used by man as food, thrive best close to the north- 
 ern, or southern, limit of climatic production, 
 like oranges in Jaffa, Florida, and California, 
 and wheat in British America. If a man would 
 raise any farm product in perfection, he must 
 select his farm within the climatic belt adapted 
 to such production. This means specialization in 
 
Selecting the Farm 35 
 
 farming on a grand scale. In a general way every 
 man considers climate when he deliberately locates 
 his home. He thinks at least of the extremes of 
 heat and cold, of drouth and rainfall, of sunshine 
 and cloud. His instincts guide him. He inherits 
 from his kind the experience of the ages ; from cave- 
 dweller and lake-dweller, from the man of the Stone 
 Age, of the Bronze Age, and of the Iron Age, — 
 from that innumerable throng of men and women 
 who have filed across the earth from the beginning, 
 bequeathing to him experiences of long ago which 
 yet dominate our lives. Most serious of experi- 
 ences is of the art of making a living. So man 
 considers wind and weather when he seeks a home. 
 In a rude way he avoids total failure, for wind and 
 weather drive him into a corner in which he can 
 eke out existence. If climate be not too unfavor- 
 able, he concludes that he has made a good choice. 
 At least he proceeds to farm his land. 
 
 But most men come into possession of a farm 
 without being consulted about the climate. Each 
 thus receives a tool as a gift and continues to 
 handle it as did his fathers before him. So near 
 is he to wind and weather; so close a prisoner of 
 climate is he, life with him is static ; he gives climate 
 no serious thought, save to grumble at the biting 
 frost, the scorching heat, the engulfing rain. Who 
 has not witnessed the transformation of a region 
 from grain to fruit; from potato fields to truck 
 gardens? The thoughtless farmer is ignorant of 
 his own sky and tries to raise wheat when he 
 
36 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 should be growing peaches; grapes, when he should 
 sow his fields to buckwheat. It is the old story of 
 the round farm in the square hole; of meadows in 
 Florida and orange groves in Vermont. 
 
 Within any climatic belt, the chief problem for 
 the farmer to solve is the selection of the site for 
 his farm. This means, primarily, convenience. A 
 well-located farm is like a corner lot on Broadway. 
 Remembering always that land unadapted to farm- 
 ing cannot be made farm land by mere location, 
 of two farms the better located is the more valu- 
 able. Everybody desires convenient land, — that 
 is, land most accessible for making a living. Good 
 roads shorten the distance to market and cut down 
 the cost of farm administration. The test is 
 transportation. A farm many miles from the 
 city but connected by good transportation is nearer 
 the city than another lying quite close yet inacces- 
 sible. Location determines the cost of farming. 
 Land remote from markets, though producing 
 heavy crops, eats itself up in transportation; the 
 farmer is attempting the impossible. He may 
 starve amidst plenty. Poorer land well located is 
 worth more than choicer land badly located. The 
 best farms being best located always command 
 the highest price; they cost most and pay best. 
 
 Climate is the constant factor in farming; the 
 value of location varies with world conditions. 
 Every inch of American soil was once out of rela- 
 tion to the world-market. Much of it is now in 
 relation to that market and lands are ever coming 
 
Selecting the Farm 37 
 
 into favorable location. The larger currents of 
 world events, the smaller American currents, 
 affect land values. Within fifty years the wheat 
 region in America has shifted from the Middle 
 States to the Western, centering about Illinois, 
 and again northward, across Minnesota, into 
 Canada and British America. The potato belt 
 has removed from the latitude of Boston and 
 Chicago to that of northern Maine; the cotton 
 belt, from the Sea Islands of the Carolinas to the 
 coast of Texas. Truck-farming is more profitable 
 in Florida than on Long Island. Nature, that 
 is, climate, makes this possible. Transportation 
 solves the problem. Every market town in Amer- 
 ica is now close to the fruit-lands of California, 
 the cotton fields of Texas, the truck-farms of 
 Florida, the vineyards of Chautauqua and the 
 Lake Erie Valley, the potato fields of Maine, the 
 berry fields of New Jersey, the tobacco fields of 
 Virginia and the Carolinas. Though we commonly 
 think in terms of our political geography, our real 
 geography is economic, — a geography of lines of 
 trade and travel, of railroads and steamship lines. 
 The real distances in America are best learned in 
 the market place. 
 
 Lines of trade and travel, general and local, 
 determine the value of location, and by such lines 
 must be understood the available ones. A through 
 railroad may traverse a farm, yet the farm itself 
 may be practically many miles from a railroad. It 
 is the most accessible farm land that is most 
 
38 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 valuable for farming. Most purchasers must be 
 content with " second best" land, — with the less 
 or even the least valuable location. One must 
 come first, or command equivalent resources, would 
 he have the pick of the land. Every farm has its 
 price, and youth and cash are the best credit. 
 Land best located is a permanent asset and may 
 be sold at any time with slight risk of loss. In 
 ease and opportunity of transfer such land re- 
 sembles the most valuable personal property, such 
 as jewels and the precious metals. He who owns 
 the farm everybody wants owns the best farm. 
 The best located farm is, economically, the most 
 productive. Primacy of location is the supreme 
 advantage. Only the wise man discovers this. 
 He recognizes the possibilities of the site; he fore- 
 sees favoring changes, — markets, roads, trade, 
 commerce, associations. 
 
 Or, indifferent to conveniences, the investor 
 ignores all demands save his own, subordinates 
 himself as a world-producer and selects a site 
 exclusively pleasing to himself. He deliberately 
 cuts himself off from relations which the world at 
 large demands. He locates in isolation, apart, 
 by himself, remote from men; beyond the whistle 
 of steamer or train ; beyond trolleys and even be- 
 yond automobiles. He builds a retreat, a little 
 world of his own. His site, however delightful to 
 him, cannot be called other than exceptional. Few 
 shall ever desire it; it is not a commercial article. 
 His is the exception, not the rule, in locating a farm. 
 
Selecting the Farm 39 
 
 His isolation is in these days artificial. The world 
 to-day lives in, by, and through its relationships. 
 He ignores them. In this he consults his own mind. 
 He pays the price of isolation precisely as another, 
 who has primacy of location for every convenience, 
 pays the price of his primacy. A home in the 
 woods, remote from the haunts of men, has its 
 price, and to many, a prohibitive price, just as to 
 many, corner lots on Broadway and best located 
 farms have a prohibitive price. So, after all, 
 valuation depends upon the man. In him we 
 come to the inconstant quantity. His tastes, 
 ideas, whims, theories, notions, desires, passions, 
 determine for him the value of any land. His 
 selection of a site is determined by his racial 
 instincts, his age, his education, his temperament, 
 his previous associations. If his motive be wholly 
 to buy and sell, his choice differs from that of him 
 who yields to sentiments of association. Men at 
 some time turn to the scenes of their childhood 
 and youth. Many never remove from these scenes. 
 Some select a farm within a region with which they 
 are familiar because there they feel at home and 
 know how to proceed. In other words, these 
 have most courage when on their native heath. 
 But thus to yield to sentiment may be to ignore 
 the laws of climate and location. 
 
 Very few men proceed, as one may say, scien- 
 tifically in the selection of a farm. New Zealand 
 may, scientifically, be preferable to a township 
 in Pennsylvania, but you locate in the township 
 
40 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 without for a moment weighing the superior oppor- 
 tunities of New Zealand. Indeed, the instances 
 of scientific procedure in locating farm lands are 
 almost limited to capitalists who combine for 
 profit in the exploitation of a region, as a Texan 
 fruit-belt, or a wheat-belt in British Columbia; 
 rubber fields in Central America, or guano beds 
 On the Pacific islands. 
 
 Ordinarily the man who buys a farm buys within 
 a region limited by his own associations. He buys 
 land which reflects himself. The farm is a landed 
 edition of himself. The so-called economics of 
 farming is essentially the psychology of the farmer. 
 He doubtless never thinks of himself as a psy- 
 chologist. His mind is his farm. The psychology 
 of farming may seem an obscure, not to say a rare 
 and uncertain crop, though it truly includes all 
 the labors of the farmer all the days of the year. 
 He may miss the moon at bean-planting, but he 
 cannot escape the psychology. Indeed, the psy- 
 chology of farming is the function of which the 
 farmer is unconscious his life long. But in select- 
 ing the site for his farm he responds to this func- 
 tion. No nice analysis of motives strains his 
 mind, when, rapidly casting his eye about him, he 
 resolves that the site suits him, or can be made 
 to suit. He desires himself in the site and so is 
 satisfied. 
 
 When you have decided to purchase a farm [says Cato, 
 that rare old Roman farmer], be careful not to buy rashly; 
 do not spare your visits and be not content with a single 
 
Selecting the Farm 41 
 
 tour of inspection. The more you go, the more will the 
 place please you, if it be worth your attention. Give heed 
 to the appearance of the neighborhood, — a flourishing 
 country should show its prosperity. When you go in, 
 look about, so that, when needs be, you can find your way 
 out. Take care that you choose a good climate, not 
 subject to destructive storms, and a soil naturally strong — 
 in a healthy situation, where labor and cattle can be had, 
 well watered, near a good-sized town, and either on the sea 
 or a navigable river, or else on a good and much frequented 
 road. Choose a place, which has not often changed owner- 
 ship, one which is sold unwillingly, that has buildings in 
 good repair. Beware that you do not rashly contemn the 
 experience of others. It is better to buy from a man who 
 has farmed successfully and built well. * 
 
 What motive, then, in buying a farm? To sell 
 again and quickly, at a profit? Then you are a 
 dealer in real estate, not a farmer. Do you buy 
 in order to indulge in an avocation? Then it is 
 diversion you are seeking. Would you experiment 
 with seeds, roots, and soils? Then it is a chemical 
 laboratory or pure science you are after. Are 
 you timid as to stocks and bonds, shares and in- 
 dustrials generally. Then it is an investment you 
 seek, — something you may be able to find when 
 you would take an inventory. Do you want the 
 farm as a home — a site for yourself where land 
 and sky, the procession of the seasons, springtime 
 and harvest, rain, snow, hail, fungi, insects, and 
 the pleasant anxieties of life weave their warp 
 
 1 The copy of Cato on Agriculture which lies before me bears the date 
 1598, is the edition of John Meursum, printed at Antwerp, by Plantin. 
 I follow the admirable translation of Fairfax Harrison. 
 
42 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 and woof? Then you say to yourself: "Here 
 will I live; I have found the site on which to 
 make my farm." Imagination translates oppor- 
 tunity into realization: this is the psychology of 
 farming. 
 
 The Chautauqua fruit-belt in New York and 
 the Lake Erie Valley in Pennsylvania extend for 
 fifty miles parallel with the beach of the lake, 
 beginning seven miles east of the city of Erie. 
 This entire region is a narrow valley, not wider 
 than six miles between the lake and the range of 
 low hills to the southward. It is a rolling country, 
 rising from the lake level to the crest of the hills 
 some thirteen hundred feet. The hills are cut 
 across by deep gulches, which begin at the crest 
 and open northward and northwestward to the lake. 
 The streams are swift and shallow, though in ancient 
 times sufficient to cut chasms half a mile wide and 
 in places three hundred feet deep. The exposure 
 is of the earliest formations known to geology: the 
 Silurian, the Devonian, and the Carboniferous, 
 abounding in fossils both of plants and animals. 
 The enormous elevation of this mass of hills gave 
 the swift descent of waters to the lake and caused 
 the extinction of possibly a dozen species of shell- 
 fish whose remains now compose the rocky basis 
 of the hills, — a vast heap of shell buried amidst the 
 stone. For ages the waters have seeped through 
 this formation, impregnating the entire Valley 
 with a solution of lime. In the Lake Shore Valley 
 is the oldest land on the globe and the rocks tell 
 
Selecting the Farm 43 
 
 their own story. From the crest of the hills to 
 the edge of Lake Erie these streams cut deviously 
 upwards of a dozen miles. The ravines disclose 
 layers of mollusks, coral, fossil lilies, cone-in-cone — 
 that puzzling formation which awaits explanation, 
 — and innumerable layers, in varying thicknesses 
 of sedimentary rock. In this Valley the Garden 
 of Eden has been located by a writer of some emi- 
 nence in his day. Vestiges of inhabitants during 
 the Stone Age abound in arrow-heads, spear-points, 
 stone pestles and mortars, skinners, and rude pot- 
 tery. The region is a fruit garden, whether or not 
 Adam and Eve ever dignified it by their melan- 
 choly presence. The land slopes northward toward 
 Lake Erie, and the area suited to orchard and vine- 
 yard is sharply defined by the crest of hills at the 
 south, the lake at the north, the level plain of Ohio 
 at the west, and the high hills of Chautauqua Coun- 
 ty to the east. It is a narrow valley containing not 
 over three hundred square miles. Within this 
 domain grapes, berries of all kinds, peaches, pears, 
 apples, prunes, cherries, cereals, melons, vegetables, 
 grow in perfection, attaining the maximum in qual- 
 ity and quantity. The contour of the Valley makes 
 this possible. Fruit of any kind attains perfection 
 at the northern limit of its production. The 
 Valley marks this limit, for fruits that are adapted 
 to it, in the United States. The lay of the land is 
 favorable. It slopes towards the north, thus pre- 
 venting too early start of sap, leaf, and bud in the 
 spring. The soil is deep, as tested by borings of 
 
44 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 innumerable gas wells in the Valley, attaining a 
 depth of one hundred and seventy-five feet in 
 many places. Lake Erie tempers the weather, 
 preventing extremes of heat and cold, making 
 spring late and prolonging autumn till all fruits 
 and the wood of the new growth are well ripened. 
 The lake is part of an immense waterway, some 
 two thousand miles long, a depression which is 
 the natural highway for winds and storms, afford- 
 ing perfect ventilation of a body of air warmer than 
 otherwise would be found in this latitude. This 
 ventilation secures against frosts and cold and 
 storms of all kinds, for most storms which threaten 
 the Valley move down the lake without harm. 
 The lake winds protect orchards and vineyards, and 
 every field they sweep, from untimely frosts. On 
 an early September day, the traveler who passes 
 over the crest of hills to the south of the lake and 
 thus emerges into the edge of the Mississippi 
 Valley notices at once a change of temperature. 
 He sees a region blackened by early frosts. The 
 demarcation is sharp: on one side of the highway 
 purpling vineyards, peach trees bending low with 
 fruit; on the other side, cornstalks blackened by 
 frost, and everywhere the sere and yellow leaf. 
 It is useless to attempt to raise fruit outside the 
 fruit line of the Lake Erie Valley. Here, almost 
 in sight of the lake, one may raise cherry trees for 
 shade but not one cherry will ever ripen on the 
 tree. 
 
 Nor is this the conclusion of the matter; Nature 
 
Selecting the Farm 45 
 
 protects the Lake Erie Valley with blankets of 
 clouds from November till April, moderating the 
 winter and thus sheltering all kinds of berries, 
 vines, and fruit trees. The moderate snowfall 
 is sufficient to cover the ground with this best of 
 all winter covers. From May till November the 
 weather is ideal, rarely attaining eighty degrees 
 of heat, and the coldest winter day seldom shows 
 zero weather. Within this Valley are upwards 
 of thirty million grapevines in highest productivity ; 
 thousands of acres of berries, peaches, apples, 
 prunes, plums, cherries, melons, corn, wheat, 
 potatoes, peas, beans, and vegetables. The Valley 
 was the far "West" until a few years after the 
 close of the Revolution, when settlers began enter- 
 ing at the east from New England and New York, 
 and from Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh, 
 through the west, near Erie. La Salle discovered 
 the region in 1679, while voyaging on the Griffon 
 westward along the south shore of Lake Erie, 
 accompanied by Father Hennepin, that charming 
 romancer, and others, first of Europeans to behold 
 this garden of the New World. Baron La Hontan, 
 in 1688, penetrated the region at the command of 
 Denonville, Governor of New France; and Charle- 
 voix, in 1720, traversed the Valley, recording the 
 prodigality of Nature, the abundance of wild apples, 
 plums, grapes, the forests of nut trees, the deer, 
 bear, elk, and buffalo on every side. It was 
 Charlevoix who left the name " Aux Boeuf " which 
 yet lingers in Erie County, though better known 
 
46 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 as French Creek. But it was not until Perry's 
 victory in 1813, 
 
 "On the tenth of September, 
 The day we remember," 
 
 that the western country became indisputably 
 American soil, and New France — the hope of the 
 great La Salle — became at last America. For more 
 than half a century the Valley has been traversed 
 by one of the principal railroads of the country, 
 giving swift transportation to the markets of the 
 world. To-day it is teeming with population and 
 every rood of ground supports its man. There 
 are many fertile farming regions in America; this 
 is but one of them. Here fruit land sells for a 
 thousand dollars an acre and some of it produces 
 five hundred dollars an acre. If the net return 
 be capitalized at five per cent., the land would be 
 worth from seven to ten thousand dollars an acre. 
 The explanation lies wholly in the climate. Nature 
 has made the Valley a fruit garden. She has made 
 other regions a fruit valley, a grain field, or a 
 truck-garden. We are wise if we take her as she 
 is, get on her side and use climate to supply our 
 wants. We can do no more, and most of us do less. 
 In selecting the site for a farm the purchaser 
 rarely gives a thought to the geology of the region. 
 He will discover, however, if he pursues the matter, 
 that every fruitful farming region owes its fruit- 
 fulness, as does the Lake Shore Valley, to climate 
 and soil, — and that is as much as saying, to its 
 
Selecting the Farm 47 
 
 geology and its climate. The immense produc- 
 tivity of the Lake Shore Valley is due chiefly to 
 its geology — to the lay of the land, hollowed and 
 leveled, twisted and heaved perhaps sixty million 
 years ago. Three hundred feet of dead shellfish, 
 a mass of dissolving lime, is a strong basis for 
 producing fruit. Elevation, the northern slope, 
 perfect ventilation, the protection of a vast body 
 of fresh water, a coverlet of clouds in winter, a 
 deep and responsive soil, and primacy of location, 
 impart qualities which are rarely combined. 
 
 Many are the rich fruit valleys of America, each 
 having charms of its own, but no man can describe 
 life in all these valleys. Climate, soil, and the 
 man are the three elements in every fruit valley. 
 The accessories are only slightly less essential, — 
 neighborhood, markets, transportation, schools, 
 churches, amusements, relationships with the 
 whole world. Any fruitful valley in America 
 might be taken as a unit of horticultural measure ; 
 comparisons make heroes of us all. If I have 
 taken the Lake Shore Valley as a unit of measure, 
 it is because of familiarity with that measure, not 
 because other measures are lacking. The essen- 
 tials of contentment are not on a sliding scale; 
 ten thousand a year may not be had from fifty 
 acres in any fruit valley. But the laws of fruit- 
 farming apply in all fruit valleys, and whether 
 we live in the east or the west, in the north or 
 the south, in Pennsylvania or California, in Florida 
 or Michigan, we must obey these laws. We must 
 
48 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 be careful of the type. So the three hundred 
 square miles of the Lake Shore Valley hint at 
 means and methods quite as significantly as do 
 the larger or the lesser areas of other American 
 fruit valleys. 
 
 It might seem then that farming is a profession 
 quite as truly as law, medicine, or theology. No 
 longer can farming be continued by mere rule of 
 thumb ; one of the oldest of occupations, it at last 
 is becoming exact, — that is to say, scientific. 
 There are thousands who yet do " light farming," 
 and they have their reward. The call "back to 
 the land" is a very worldly one because tested by 
 all worldly tests it is profitable. If the farmer 
 who owns the finest farm could at will turn it into 
 an oil-field abounding with "gushers," he might 
 not be unwilling to make the change. Many a 
 farm has suddenly become a forest of derricks. 
 The mere by-products of farming, — fresh air, pure 
 water, pretty scenery, singing birds, and ever- 
 changing skies cannot, as attractions, fully explain 
 the return to the land now for some years going on 
 in America. It is the products of farming which 
 bring men back to themselves and to their own. 
 Competition in every vocation is now so fierce, 
 farming is discovered as an open approach to 
 sanity and comfort. If this be true now when the 
 population of America is but one hundred millions, 
 what will it be three generations hence when popu- 
 lation exceeds four hundred millions? How shall 
 they get food? The land area does not, cannot 
 
Selecting the Farm 49 
 
 increase. Yet the land must respond — and easily — 
 by intensive farming. But first the wild lands of 
 all the continents shall have been inclosed as farms. 
 South America, the land-hunter's paradise, will 
 fill up with immigrants long before the twentieth 
 century shall have passed. But intensive farming 
 has already begun in our America. Corn cannot 
 be raised on Broadway, yet Broadway must have 
 corn. Cities must be fed and the world henceforth 
 will ever be demanding a yet more varied, abund- 
 ant, and invigorating food supply. The essential 
 measure of farm values is human necessity. Hence, 
 in selecting the site for a farm, when the mind is 
 made up as to what sort of farmland is desired, 
 the would-be farmer may well pause and weigh 
 conditions. In order to do business one must go 
 where business is done. In order to farm success- 
 fully, profitably, satisfactorily, one must use land 
 best adapted to the sort of farming he affects. 
 Climate, location, associations, are the three factors 
 which properly determine the choice of the site. 
 Climate determines all; soil can be made; so too 
 railroads, highways, schools, churches, post-offices, 
 markets. Associations grow. In brief, given a 
 favorable climate and primacy of location, all 
 that remains to be done man can do. 
 
 All the traditions declare that health lies in 
 farming, doubtless because no man can be a weak- 
 ling and a farmer. The hayfield is supposed to 
 restore lost health; when doctors fail, we take to a 
 farm and carters. This tradition of identity of 
 
50 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 health and farming seems to be as old as the race. 
 Yet in no vocation is invalidism a prerequisite. 
 Farming compels good health for it puts the man 
 to the test. No vocation demands abler or saner 
 men. It is an illusion that farming does not 
 require brains; that when a man has failed at 
 everything else he may resort, successfully, to 
 farming; that nobody can fail at that. The pro- 
 fessional collector of statistics has neglected a field 
 here quite untouched, as to the number of farmers 
 who fail as farmers. Horticulture is expert-work 
 and he who is not an expert need not hope to raise 
 fruit, — perfect fruit and in ample quantity. There 
 is a difference. To raise peaches and not peach- 
 pits, merely, requires peach-thinking; not peach- 
 pit thinking. A man's mind must be attuned to 
 the keynote of his vocation, and his vocation is to 
 be measured as it conduces to the general welfare. 
 Thus to a healthy mind horticulture has its pleas- 
 ures ; to a diseased mind, no vocation is pleasurable. 
 We come then again to the man; his vocation 
 depends upon his health. A sick fruit-grower 
 means a neglected fruit-farm. The farm never 
 misrepresents its owner. In order to have healthy 
 farms the fruit valley must have healthy farmers. 
 Mere residence on a fruit-farm does not generate 
 either health or the fruit-farming sense. Fruit- 
 farmers, like poets, are born, not made. 
 
 Yet, ignorant as we are of the laws of health, we 
 know that earth and air are the mother of sound 
 mind and body. The billionaire who trudges 
 
Selecting the Farm 51 
 
 barefoot through the dewy grass in chase of 
 health is more likely to find it than by going bare- 
 foot down Wall Street. The air of the fruit-farm 
 has more ozone than the air of the office or the 
 factory. So the conceit follows that health may 
 be had simply by standing in the open on the farm, 
 gazing at the scenery, and retaining your breath 
 while you count seventeen. All this is a delicate 
 compliment, possibly a tribute, to Nature, though 
 rendered by a dress-suit. Were earth and air the 
 sole elements of longevity, country people should 
 die young as centenarians and many who knew 
 Washington should still be among us. Indeed, 
 some wide-eyed peasant should yet linger who 
 could tell us whether Caesar fell in the Capitol or 
 at the base of Pompey's pillar, and some domestic 
 of Elsinore could give us back-stair information 
 whether Hamlet was really mad. 
 
 The fountain of perpetual age does not bubble 
 up even on the best fruit-farm in the Valley, and 
 I have seen but two and known but one cente- 
 narian there. My neighbor, at seventy-five, is 
 renewing his youth by returning, after fifty years' 
 absence, to the old homestead, and is converting 
 it into a fruit-farm. Yesterday, said he to me: 
 "If I had only known what I was to miss in life, 
 I would never have left the Valley; there is more 
 pleasure and satisfaction in raising fruit than in 
 any other occupation in the world. The trouble 
 is, we do not find it out until we are old." He had 
 spent his life in electrical engineering in many 
 
52 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 lands; had amassed a fortune. He had not tried 
 all occupations, but he was now generalizing in 
 very bold fashion. One of the best fruit-growers 
 in the Valley became one after having given forty 
 years of his life to the shoe business, acquiring 
 wealth. "I wish I had begun at the start, and 
 not when I was old," he said. "I never suspected 
 what I was missing of pleasure," and he was 
 thinking, though not aloud, "of profits also." 
 
 "But the world," you reply, "is not composed 
 wholly of successful electrical engineers and shoe- 
 dealers; there are others." More money is spent 
 to regain health than to keep it, and most men 
 who have spent the first half of life making money, 
 spend the second half in fighting disease and ward- 
 ing off death. First part, gain; second part, pain, 
 — is the story of most men's lives. And never a 
 Crcesus who would not exchange his last ingot of 
 gold for a loaf of bread and a stomach to digest it. 
 "Skin upon skin, yea, all that a man hath will he 
 give for his life." 
 
 So again we come at last to the man, and princi- 
 pally to his stomach. Give me the stomach and 
 I will not only rule the world but will live forever, 
 — if either were worth while! Fruit-farming, like 
 every other vocation, is a case of stomach. No 
 business concern will employ an invalid. The 
 basis of life is physical whether you enter the army 
 or the orchard. Nature promptly solves the prob- 
 lem by applying her harsh law of survival. The 
 world is not made of weaklings; every blade is a 
 
Selecting the Farm 53 
 
 survival like the aggregate flora of the globe. 
 There were no mules in the Garden of Eden though 
 there are dinosaurs in the fossil beds. ^Eons ago 
 these shrubs and trees and grasses of our wild did 
 not exist, and asons hence they will be known only 
 by the records of the rocks, — an imprint, here and 
 there. We are all on our way to a niche in some 
 museum. There were no Lincolns or Washingtons, 
 no Shakespeares or Miltons, no Fultons or Edisons 
 in the Age of Stone, nor can we foretell what shall 
 be the type and service of man ages hence. But 
 this we know, whether the age be Devonian or 
 Miltonian, that the law of survival is working, 
 and weaklings go to the wall. The world is for 
 healthy people, though the lame, the halt, and the 
 blind seem to possess it, and sickness the rule rather 
 than the exception. Banish disease and death and 
 soon we must remove to other planets for standing- 
 ground. Or, would life's cycle close, and the gaps 
 merely fill up? If the human machine wore out 
 by age instead of breaking down by functional 
 disturbance, decay of tissue, or accident, and men 
 attained the normal bound of life's journey, would 
 there be room and food for all? Having no experi- 
 ence in this, the world can only theorize, but if 
 analogy can guide us, man would live his cycle, 
 like plants and other animals: no less, no more. 
 
 The new books are always telling us that the 
 average of life is increasing. It is the charm of 
 doing slum-work — the "call" of the "submerged" 
 to very worthy people — to extend life; and sta- 
 
54 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 tistics follow enthusiastically. The new gospel is 
 a bath and an overcoat as against a straight dose 
 of Calvinism, or heresy Literally it is now "wash 
 and be clean.' 
 
 The ideal farm-house of the pioneer was a 
 kitchen and a cellar and an outside chimney; of 
 the farm-house of to-day, a refrigerator, a bath- 
 room, a porch, and a vacuum cleaner. The world 
 is obsessed by Wesley's "Cleanliness is next to 
 godliness," and some disciples reverse the saying. 
 Ours is the age of soap and electricity, as was 
 Lucullus's of peacock tongues and proscriptions. 
 The age of pork and cabbage is past ; ours demands 
 the dessert. 
 
 Yet, despite statistics, Hull House, psychology, 
 and desserts, we have more diseases to contend 
 against than had Naaman or Louis XIV. We 
 must take to spraying ourselves for insects and 
 fungi as we spray our orchards and vineyards. 
 Congestion of people and fruit trees has invited 
 disease. Fruit-raising is artificial, a sort of open- 
 air, hotbed work, — a case of floral over-population. 
 The fruit-farm is a concentration of effort to trim, 
 shape, and direct Nature to our liking. The 
 Japanese grow trees in human shape and admire 
 them as works of art and genius; the fruit-grower 
 grows a cherry whose fleshy part exceeds that of 
 a dozen cherries in the wild. All our fruits are 
 monstrosities obtained by the exaggeration, or 
 atrophy, of some part of the natural plant. We 
 force the plant to run to a juicy pulp, to leaf, or 
 
Selecting the Farm 55 
 
 bulb, as grape, apple, peach, potato, or currant, 
 and thus, meddling with its balance of function, 
 we make one part, say the pericarp, a giant, and 
 leave other parts weaklings. The sole fate, seem- 
 ingly the sole function, of weaklings is to perish 
 untimely. So while we are raising cherries of 
 mammoth size and exquisite color, we are killing 
 the cherry tree. This is fruit -farming. Every 
 cultivated plant is relatively short-lived. A fruit- 
 farm is an assembly of plants more or less diseased 
 because abnormal, and the burden of the fruit- 
 grower's toil is to maintain them in a productive 
 state. Defying Nature he yet depends on Nature. 
 Inviting disease, he gives trees and vines medicine 
 to cure it. He sprays leaf, stock, stem, flower, 
 and fruit. He puts medicine into the soil as soluble 
 plant-food. He stimulates the plant by cultiva- 
 tion. He invades the life of the plant and enslaves 
 it to his own ends. Domestication is interference. 
 Despite this bold invasion and conquest, he 
 maintains his plantation in sufficient health to 
 consummate his purposes, and trees and vines, 
 shrubs and roots bring forth some thirty, some 
 sixty, some a hundredfold. The healthy fruit- 
 farm is the farm which, year after year, bears its 
 heavy harvest. This means that the fruit-grower 
 has mastered the art of compelling Nature to 
 produce a pericarp, a pod, a root, a leaf, a stem, 
 to suit his ends. The plant no longer merely pro- 
 duces seed after its kind, but fruit after the owner's 
 kind. The difference is the difference between the 
 
56 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 wild and the fruit-farm. The hand of man is on 
 the lever. Nature serves. Yet, let him once 
 drop the lever, cease his care, remit his domination, 
 and orchard and vineyard again return to the wild. 
 
 Health breeds health. In maintaining the 
 health of his vines he maintains his own. It is 
 not a case of absorption but of use. "Use, the 
 law of living," writes itself on men as on trees. 
 We plow the grape row, not the porch floor. 
 Italians are said to ripen bananas under the bed- 
 clothes; peaches and grapes are grown in the open 
 by the touch of the hand. This is a mystery that 
 the owner can convert soil into baskets of fruit. 
 In digging for gold in the potato patch the farmer 
 finds it, in every bushel of potatoes. By tying 
 grapes in the winter the viticulturist is able to 
 pick off a hundred dollars an acre in October. In 
 keeping orchard and vineyard in health, he keeps 
 himself in health. Bankers, lawyers, — I will not 
 say doctors, — manufacturers, merchants likewise. 
 "Keep your shop," says Poor Richard, "and your 
 shop will keep you." Keep your health and you 
 can keep your shop. Men who fail in business 
 usually fail in health. Failure means disease and 
 sickness. Men lose their grip, and then, — "heart 
 failure." So prosperous people are healthier than 
 unprosperous. Like breeds like in all things, men 
 included. Incentive is health. This gone, why 
 breathe longer? 
 
 On the fruit-farm there is always much to do; 
 this is a secret of health. Disease loves the easy 
 
Selecting the Farm 57 
 
 chair. Leisure usually is sickness and the doctor. 
 If he is a lover of gold he will treat leisure with 
 respect ; it is his best friend. There is leisure on the 
 fruit-farm but not of the hopeless kind; it resembles 
 Sunday, rather than an indefinite vocation. On 
 Monday the weeds are still growing; indeed, they 
 work full time, and botany fails to root them out. 
 The fruit-grower's leisure is his opportunity to 
 stop and think. The more the thinking, the more 
 the fruit. Land thinks weeds and stones, unless 
 you make it think fruit. Trees and vines think 
 sprouts, insects, fungi, and toil for man. Once he 
 gains the upper hand, there was never a more 
 faithful servant than his orchards and vines, — 
 indeed, his whole farm. But once it gets the upper 
 hand, he is amidst the wild again, — a jungle of 
 weeds, a tangle of superfluity, a burden of mort- 
 gage and bad debts. No fruit-farmer ever catches 
 up with lost time. Nature is punctuality. This 
 is the greatest lesson learned on the fruit-farm. 
 May-plowing cannot be done in July. Regular- 
 ity of life is health. Nature loves rhythm and 
 cycles, the regular swing of seed time and fruitage. 
 Once the grower is in tune with his land and keeps 
 on playing the tune, there is wonderful harmony 
 in the harvest. But out of tune, he must expect 
 barren orchards. It is not merely rising with the 
 sun and going to bed with the Big Dipper that 
 makes a fruit-farm; it is the work done between 
 these interesting events that counts. Order and 
 system are Nature's formula for health; so round 
 
58 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 and round and over again is the game. A scratch 
 here and a scratch there do not raise peas or 
 cherries. Each section of a farm at its best, the 
 whole is a fruit -garden. 
 
 This routine is Cato's, Washington's, Webster's, 
 everywhere the best farmer's "succession of crops." 
 This year this section has its soil-crop of clover, 
 next year, that section; but a third section requires 
 special treatment : we know the needs of the ground. 
 We have a map of the farm always in mind, and 
 we follow the principle of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, "all sections are equal." Regularity and 
 routine are the conditions of fruit-farming, but 
 the farmer must mix them with brains. Land has 
 its peculiarities like folks and must be humored. 
 A ton of ashes on this piece; a ton of phosphate on 
 that: stable manure on this; Alsach clover on the 
 other. There is no hard and fast rule; one must 
 know his land. Here is occupation for leisure 
 hours. 
 
 We go much by colors in fruit-farming: a scanty 
 growth of foliage, a light shade of green, a pre- 
 mature brown, — we recognize the signs ; the soil is 
 hungry for nitrogen. Small, scanty, dropping 
 fruit means tree-hunger for potash. But abundant 
 foliage year after year and no fruit means practi- 
 cally the wrong sort of tree. Why cumbereth it 
 the ground? We cut it down, grub out the root, 
 and cast both into the brush-pile, strike a match 
 and scatter the ashes around the tree that has both 
 leaf and fruit. To trees as to persons that have 
 
Selecting the Farm 59 
 
 much, much shall be given, and from them much 
 is expected. The fruit-farm must not be suffered 
 to run to shade trees. All this means thought and 
 activity in the owner, — and activity and thought 
 are health. 
 
 But there are other friends on the fruit-farm, 
 foremost among them "Nature dressed in living 
 green." Our very interference with Nature inten- 
 sifies as well as creates our interest in her. She is 
 the undiscovered country, the unexplored mystery, 
 the untried experiment. Our ignorance is her 
 opportunity. Not that with knowledge come all 
 our woes, but that the invasion of Ignorance and 
 conquest over him is the god-like deed of man. 
 In dressing land we clothe our own souls. It was 
 the earth, the land, not Adam that was cursed, 
 and to him dominion was given. The ancient 
 story conceals life. Idleness is death. In subdu- 
 ing the wild, man becomes immortal. Fruit- 
 growing is a long process of land-conquest, as yet 
 hardly begun. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon 
 were made famous by the arches which supported 
 them, not by the fruits and flowers they bore. 
 It was the engineering not the apple that made 
 them one of the Seven Wonders. On the fruit- 
 farm it is still the engineering that works the 
 wonder. It is the selection of the land, the making 
 of the soil, the kind of tree and its planting, the 
 cultivation of the ground which produce the won- 
 der. This done, apples, peaches, grapes, cherries, 
 berries follow as night the day; as echo, the voice. 
 
60 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 What have we in this bunch of red cherries and 
 of purple grapes? Engineering. The man thought 
 and did, and lo, this fruit! No thinking, no 
 peaches. "Yes," you interrupt, "but what of 
 frost, wind, hail, blight, and borer?" I reply: 
 There is no peach but thinking makes it so, and 
 the more you ponder this, the better judge of 
 peaches you will become. Climate makes the 
 peach possible, if only some one thinks peaches. 
 For the peach is as much man-made as a piano. 
 There are no Steinways at the North Pole; the 
 climate is unfavorable; nor peaches, nor people, 
 for that matter. The law of peaches is climate 
 and man. He thinks out the peach, the cherry, 
 the grape, the apple; no thinking, no fruit; only 
 the seeds of the wild, which are not our fruit. 
 
 Thus in fruit-farming man is a creator, and 
 creation, procreation, is health. Iron and steel 
 and stones cannot think; "as dumb as a rock" 
 has much significance. Stones neither grow old nor 
 sicken; they exist. But man must do more than 
 exist, — he must think and act; and because the 
 fruit-farm offers him opportunity, it makes for 
 health. Every profession exalts itself; and every 
 fruit-farm is the best farm, so says its owner. 
 His ideals may be ahead of his deeds. 
 
 A man is a creature of parts, wonderfully made 
 and assembled, and wherever these parts function 
 best there he should live, — if health is his purpose. 
 Theoretically health is every man's objective; 
 practically, it is only a possible objective for many. 
 
Selecting the Farm 61 
 
 Most men sell their lives at so much a day, from 
 two coppers in China to thousands of dollars in 
 Europe and America. The love of money — what- 
 ever that signifies — makes the bargain. It is idle 
 to expostulate. The habit is fixed with the race. 
 The greater the risk, sometimes the lower the pay. 
 Only a few people think they can afford to be 
 healthy, just as few can afford to live economically. 
 To these few a word is sufficient, for none are so 
 deaf as those who will not hear; none so pitiable as 
 those who hear and are prisoners of their deafness. 
 What is the objective? Health? Wealth? 
 Pleasure? Knowledge? Length of years? Fame? 
 Leisure? Service? Drifting? The Unknown? 
 Really this is the question, come to it as we may, 
 whether by way of the factory or the fruit-farm. 
 I suspect that the question has long been an- 
 swered: "Length of years, riches, honor." Now 
 riches and honor are relative, but length of years 
 is absolute. There is a cycle of life for every plant 
 and animal, according to its kind. Robins live 
 say fifteen years; turtles five hundred. It is the 
 way of turtles and robins. And how long shall a 
 man live ? "A day, and yet forever, ' ' answers one ; 
 1 ' fourscore and no more, ' ' replies another. Schools 
 of thinking differ here also. But we are speaking 
 of this earth, not of some other universe. "Oh!" 
 replies the young doctor; "in that case, barring 
 accident, as long as his arteries keep elastic." 
 There you are. "Know thy arteries," Socrates 
 should have said. 
 
62 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 "I am looking for a climate," is the invalid 
 traveler's constant plaint; he means, of course, 
 that he is looking for elastic arteries. They are 
 health. Being now definite, we can test our habi- 
 tat, our fruit valley — wherever it lies — for arteries, 
 just as physicians take the pressure of the blood. 
 For blood-pressure is symptomatic. So too are 
 vocations, as any one may know by perusing the 
 reports of life-insurance companies. "Occupation, 
 fruit-growing"; "cashier in a bank"; the company 
 figures nicely on the risk and takes the man who 
 is likely to pay premiums the longer time — judging 
 by his arteries. Life insurance is common among 
 bank clerks; uncommon among fruit-growers, for 
 they prefer, like some steamship companies, to 
 carry their own risks. He has the farm as insur- 
 ance; the clerk has his month's salary. The 
 fruit-grower has earth and the open; the clerk has 
 the park and the street, the office, bank holidays, 
 and two weeks in August for Atlantic City, or 
 the Canadian woods. The fruit-grower has the 
 security of his land; the clerk, the secret of his 
 earning power — which is his health — and this he 
 is insuring. The fruit-grower falls back upon his 
 fruit-farm; the clerk upon his insurance policy. 
 But the insurance policy means annual premiums 
 to the company; the fruit-farm, annual fruit to 
 the farmer. A few years after I began fruit-farm- 
 ing, I took out an endowment policy in a great 
 mutual company. I was examined duly by the 
 company's physician and pronounced a good risk. 
 
Selecting the Farm 63 
 
 For twenty years I punctually paid the premiums. 
 The day of maturity came, and, after pondering 
 over the "choices" for settlement, I made mine, 
 by the terms of the policy and the written agree- 
 ment of the company, signed by its agent. When 
 the day of settlement came, the company repudi- 
 ated the act of its agent, made out its own figures, 
 stated briefly that so it would settle, and "begged 
 to hear from me . " My vision of twenty years faded . 
 Three thousand dollars went with that dream. 
 I expostulated. The company explained that 
 rates of interest had fallen in twenty years and 
 earnings had not been so large as were expected. 
 But now it was issuing a new, a different kind of a 
 policy to the old line endowment. Would I not 
 be examined by the company's physician and take 
 out another policy? I could make a better invest- 
 ment under the new plan. My curiosity was 
 aroused. I took the examination and was 
 congratulated on my arterial pressure which 
 (the company's physician said) indicated a 
 man twenty years younger. I settled with 
 the company and thought pleasantly on my 
 arteries. Meanwhile my fruit-farm had been 
 in the making; this explained the arterial pres- 
 sure. Instead of taking out another policy — on 
 the new and improved model — I bought more 
 fruit-farm, not wholly unmindful of arteries. 
 But I will be just. T do not overrate the fruit- 
 farm nor underrate the insurance company; 
 I think on my arteries. It was the fruit-farm 
 
64 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 which kept the arteries elastic, not the insurance 
 company. 
 
 One of the annual premiums of the fruit-farm 
 is health; usually, with insurance companies one 
 must die to win, and lose in order to collect. 
 Meanwhile life has its pleasures in the fruit 
 valley. 
 
 It would be unfair to any fruit valley to repre- 
 sent it as free from sickness and disease; it too has 
 doctors, and patients by the thousand. Indeed, 
 in the fruit valley, sooner or later everybody sends 
 for the doctor. Yet I have never heard that sick- 
 ness there is due to fruit-farming. Health is the 
 rule. But this, you say, is generally true in 
 America. There are vocational diseases which 
 must be reckoned with, like phosphoric poisoning 
 in the making of parlor matches (of a certain kind) ; 
 lead-fumes in the manufacture of paint; gout 
 among heavy capitalists, and lung troubles among 
 mill hands. When appendicitis was discovered 
 by the public, some twenty-five years since, it 
 was promptly attributed to grape seeds, yet though 
 the Valley is a vast vineyard, appendicitis is not 
 epidemic in ' ' grape time. ' ' And it may be asserted 
 confidently, that no case of appendicitis can be 
 attributed to the seed of any fruit. Cherries and 
 milk are fatal, yet though the Valley raises thou- 
 sands of bushels of cherries and milkmen abound, 
 no cases are reported. Some say that the milk is 
 too well watered to be fertile of cherry indigestion, 
 and, moreover, that cherries sell so well in New 
 
Selecting the Farm 65 
 
 York and Pittsburgh and Chicago that the 
 pickers cannot afford to eat them. The elevation 
 above the sea — five hundred and seventy-three 
 feet at the lake and thirteen hundred and more 
 feet along the crest of the Valley — is too high and 
 the winds too dry for lung troubles. But the 
 water from the limestone in the Devonian Hills 
 at the south is so hard on the human frame that 
 when pickers tumble, without notice, from cherry 
 trees, they may crack their bones; although some 
 pickers use water only as a wash. Because of this, 
 their aversion, other liquids are consumed, as in 
 other valleys in America. This is one of the perils 
 of fruit-farming. Despite these drawbacks, the 
 health of the inhabitants is reflected by thousands 
 of acres of fruitful orchard and vineyard. These 
 are the fruit-growers root and branch. Not 
 every fruit-farm betokens a healthy master. 
 Farms get down at the heels and lose hope, and 
 so merely hold the world together. The healthy 
 fruit-plantation means a healthy owner. Valleys 
 and plains the world over illustrate this truth. 
 
 But here, in the beautiful Valley, men are think- 
 ing and doing, and so are healthy. Some might 
 think harder and do more; some year after year 
 think and do less. So there are stationary fruit- 
 farms, like bowlders, left by the retreating ice of 
 the Glacial Period, ages ago, — mere monuments of 
 former progress. It is no art to find the complexion 
 of the owner's mind in the appearance of his vine- 
 yard. The Valley is a good place in which to study 
 
66 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 what may be called vegetable psychology — not 
 merely to tell how long it takes a man of 32 years, 
 5 months, 7 days, 2 hours, 13 minutes, and 3f sec- 
 onds, at high noon, to think, but also how long he 
 has been thinking and when he ceased to think. 
 For as a man thinks so is he and his fruit-farm. 
 Years ago, in the days of pioneering it was oats 
 and barley, buckwheat and potatoes, rye and wheat, 
 corn cattle, sheep and horses; but the thinking of 
 the Valley no longer takes these antiquated forms ; 
 it is peaches, cherries, grapes, prunes, strawberries, 
 raspberries, currants, plums, gooseberries, apples, 
 melons, some corn, a little wheat, less oats, a few 
 potatoes, and a somewhat neglected vegetable 
 garden. Fashions change in thinking and so in 
 farming. Our grandfathers thought in terms of 
 ox-teams; we, of automobiles. We are warned 
 not to put our trust in the legs of a horse and we 
 are rapidly learning not to put it in the brake of an 
 automobile. Sufficient unto the day is the evil 
 thereof. As many fruit-growers now have autos, 
 some new perils are added to the ancient list. It 
 may be possible to run a machine and keep in good 
 health, but not all autoists have as yet learned 
 the secret. Some manage to keep in fair health 
 without machines. Whence the conclusion that 
 autos are not necessary to health, or even to 
 fruit-farming. Yet, as an automobile gives its 
 owner much to think about, and, as it ages, keeps 
 him increasingly busy, and as thinking and doing 
 are conducive to health, owners and users of 
 
Selecting the Farm 67 
 
 machines should be by right husky men, well 
 conditioned for length of years. 
 
 The coming of the machine has made the entire 
 Valley — like other valleys — an accessible neigh- 
 borhood and has shortened its length from fifty 
 miles to sixty minutes. And if the owner turns 
 turtle, he may report by telephone at the first 
 farmhouse. So a stroke of invention has made 
 neighbors of us all. This too makes for health. 
 No longer the sickness that comes from isolation; 
 no more the bad fruit-farming that comes from 
 not knowing what your thoughtful neighbor is 
 doing. So the Valley is improving, if by no more 
 than by active imitation. The tradition that 
 farming is health is thus borne out. The weaklings 
 sell out and emigrate, and the fittest survive. For 
 more than half a century now the process of natural 
 selection has been active in the Valley, and to-day 
 the survivors themselves are passing through the 
 winnowing process. Clearly the Valley illustrates 
 the effect of domestication on man. Possibly the 
 process has been hurried a little with land at from 
 four hundred dollars to one thousand dollars an 
 acre; but at a thousand an acre some land in 
 the Valley is cheap; and at one dollar an acre 
 other land within it is expensive. It depends 
 upon climate and the man, rather than upon the 
 land. The man depends upon his health. Thus 
 again we come to the man, and this means, when 
 reduced to lowest terms, to the state of his health. 
 Invalidism may possibly be an avocation but never 
 
68 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 a vocation. A fruit-farm is not a sanitarium, 
 though sometimes put to such a use. 
 
 Back to the earth and the open, actively induced 
 by interest in the vocation of fruit-raising, a man, 
 not too old to get well, may regain health. But to 
 use a farm as a medicine, "one drop in a pail of 
 water," is merely a change of doctors. Even the 
 rival schools of medicine do not pretend to change 
 the pharmacopoeia. Cherry trees sometimes grow 
 elastic arteries; so too, ranching, or hoeing corn 
 or taking the grand tour by Karnak, Egypt, and 
 the Holy Land; for only healthy people survive 
 Jerusalem. No one comes to the fruit-farm too 
 young, but it is easy to come too old. Happy the 
 man who inherits not merely acres but the love 
 of cultivating them. 
 
 The true fruit-man would rather raise fruit 
 than eat it, which is not an instance either of 
 commercialism or surfeit, — only of a pleasant part- 
 nership with Nature. Every sane man yearns to be 
 a creator. Man is the maker as he is the thinker, 
 and his cherries are never finer than his thoughts. 
 He who has not experienced the joys of growing 
 things knows no more than the pleasure of seeing 
 fruit for sale in the market. First the leaf, then 
 the bud, then the fruit, — but always the man. 
 The sacred books record that the Creator was 
 pleased with His handiwork, and in this men re- 
 semble their Creator. The poet is poet because 
 he is a maker, and we call him of low degree still 
 a versifier, or maker of verse. It is then a divine 
 
Selecting the Farm 69 
 
 touch that makes kinsmen of us all — the love of 
 creating, be it a railroad, a watch, or a fruit-farm. 
 Here is the secret of health, — to create, to enjoy 
 the creation. The personal equation must be 
 figured out by every man. Some men, at ninety, 
 can run a railroad, but the usual age for retiring 
 is not far from sixty. "The machine," after that, 
 as Hamlet would say, "is no longer to him." The 
 wheels creak and the grist runs low. The railroad 
 president finds pleasure in the system he has built 
 up ; the fruit-grower, in the plantation he has made. 
 And many fruit-farmers are worn out at sixty and 
 fail to reach ninety. It is the man, not the railroad 
 or the farm. 
 
 Innumerable are the books which tell us how to 
 be strong and stay so; how to be well and happy. 
 In a drug store, as one glances about and reads 
 the labels on the bottles and the signed testi- 
 monials, he may well wonder not why any should 
 die, but why any take the trouble to be sick. Or he 
 may have a more painful thought: how take all 
 these potions and live. Yet we live and we die 
 despite the apothecary, despite the fruit-farms. 
 Doctors, in their puzzled moments, are likely to 
 send the patient off on his travels. It is an open 
 secret that the good doctor's purpose is to get the 
 patient thinking about something else than him- 
 self. Fruit-farming is this resource; the farmer 
 always has something to think about and to think 
 hard. His thousands of vines and hundreds of 
 trees keep him busy. Wind and storm, frost, 
 
70 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 snow, hail, sleet, lightning, insects, fungi, changing 
 fashions for fruits, prices, the market, and all the 
 certain uncertainties of the entire fruit vocation 
 furnish a complete encyclopaedia of diverse pro- 
 vocation of much thinking. The fruit-grower has 
 plenty to do, plenty to eat, and plenty to think 
 about, — which is the very tripod of health and 
 sane living. He therefore should be a healthy 
 man, having all these things and living on the 
 earth and in the open. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE PLANTING OF THE FRUIT-FARM 
 
 WHETHER in the wild or under cultivation, 
 climate determines the survival, and there- 
 fore the selection, of varieties. Soil merely holds 
 what climate permits to grow. Exposure, slope, 
 wind-ways, moisture, are details of climate. A 
 multitude of varieties means the multiplication of 
 weak stock; survivals are known as standard varie- 
 ties, vigorous, and, with ordinary care, producing 
 fruit. A variety, unadapted to a locality, struggles 
 for existence and becomes a mere shade-tree. Cato, 
 in one of his ' Fragments, ' ' says : ' ' Trees that bear 
 fruit are happy ; those which do not bear, unhappy. " 
 Perhaps this means varieties adapted to location. 
 Planted in deep, rich soil, the standard variety fruits 
 productively, or, as the old Roman would say, 
 "happily. " A hillside may be, and usually is, wet 
 and springy; even a slope may lack under-drainage. 
 In setting the fruit-plantation, one must consider 
 drainage, exposure, direction of prevailing winds, 
 nearness of woods and forest as windbreaks, open 
 spaces of lake, river, or valley, and the habit of 
 the plant, be it tree, shrub, bush, or vine. 
 
 71 
 
72 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 Most men are in a hurry to get the fruit-farm 
 into profitable bearing, and are tempted to select 
 for planting stock that is too old. Small young 
 stock is best : grape roots one year from the cutting ; 
 trees one year, in some varieties two years, from 
 the bud. The shock of replanting is always great, 
 — much greater than we realize; therefore plant 
 young, vigorous roots. Vitality is the main thing. 
 Bruised roots and rootlets are gateways to disease; 
 therefore make a clean cut with a sharp knife, 
 leaving the end of the root, or the end of the 
 branch or twig smooth. It rapidly heals over, in 
 health, unless the wound be a laceration, big 
 and rough. Many trim the top but ignore the 
 bruised and broken roots. In handling stock 
 from the nursery, keep it covered, especially 
 the roots, from sun and wind. Either will dry out 
 and kill the rootlets, and these are the mouths 
 and stomachs of the tree below ground, — the 
 counterparts of leaf and twig in air. Trim 
 after the tree or vine is set, when you can see it 
 from all sides; otherwise you may have cut off 
 the wrong branches. The tree is to be kept ever 
 in balance and its poise cannot be known till 
 it is properly set. 
 
 As you would first work your corn-field before 
 planting corn, so will you first work and lay out 
 your land for orchard or vineyard. The careful 
 man, in laying out a large tract for orchard or vine- 
 yard, may employ a surveyor, for tree rows and 
 grape rows; the orchard and vineyard sections 
 
The Planting of the Fruit- Farm 73 
 
 will stand for generations and cannot be changed. 
 Straight rows look best and economize labor. 
 Trees must be in line in whatever direction the eye 
 follows them, and an orchard must be cultivated, 
 at times diagonally as well as at right angles. The 
 tree must be set with respect to its habit. This 
 slender stem you plant will become a canopy of 
 foliage and fruit, upraised on a stately trunk. 
 You must see the full-grown orchard in its infancy. 
 So the orchardist must grant ample space of earth 
 and air, for roots below and foliage above are 
 counterparts, — the two halves of the living thing 
 you plant. In fruit-raising, we cut back the top 
 and encourage spread of root in order to secure 
 concentration of vigor in fruit and foliage. We 
 must know that a rich soil means a rapidly growing, 
 large, healthy tree; a thin, poor soil means a weak- 
 ling. Therefore in planting an orchard we must 
 consider the soil. I give two distances, — the 
 greater for the richer soil: 
 
 Apples 25 to 40 feet each way 
 Pears (standard) 20 " 25 " 
 
 Pears (dwarf) 12 " 18 " 
 
 Quinces 16 " 
 
 Peaches 16 " 24 " 
 
 Plums 18 " 24 " 
 
 Cherries 18 " 20 " 
 
 Blackberries 6 by 4 feet 
 
 Raspberries 6 " 3 " 
 
 Currants 6 " 4 " 
 
 Gooseberries 6 " 4 " 
 
74 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 Strawberries i foot apart in the row; the rows 
 
 apart for cultivation with a horse, — 
 say 3 feet at least. 
 
 Grapes 8 feet apart in the row; the rows 
 
 9 feet apart, so as to admit modern, 
 two-horse tools, sprayer, grape 
 wagon, etc. 
 
 The essential problem in planting is twofold: 
 to secure feeding and breathing space for the tree 
 and ample room for cultivation with horses and 
 modern tools. An apple tree will grow fifty feet 
 high, but fruit at that height is out of reach. So 
 too a cherry tree, a plum or prune or peach, will 
 grow too high for practical use. Any tree which 
 must be picked with use of a painter's ladder 
 instead of an ordinary, commercial, picking ladder, 
 costs more than it is worth. A fruit-tree must 
 be kept low, and therefore out-spreading. This 
 means ample space and wide planting. No man 
 ever regrets giving his trees sufficient space in 
 which to fruit low. Ground fruit, such as berries 
 and all vegetables, must be planted according to 
 the care they are to receive. In Germany, and in 
 Europe generally, all labor in the field is by hand, 
 and therefore the space between rows is narrow, — 
 usually little more than the width of the hoe for 
 vegetables. In America hand labor is unusual, — 
 is too costly. All work is done with a horse, or, 
 on most farms, with a team. Twenty years ago 
 tools, such as cultivators, drags, plows, and spray- 
 ing-machines (if any) , were small, light, and narrow, 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 75 
 
 rarely having a spread of over six feet. To-day 
 the spread is nine feet and two horses must be used. 
 A fruit-farm, in order to be both scientific and 
 practical, must nowadays be run on a generous 
 scale. The fruit-garden may be run by hand; 
 the fruit-farm must be run by horse power. Yet 
 if the ground fruits — berries, tubers, and the like — 
 be planted closely and in narrow rows, and the 
 ground be kept rich and thoroughly worked, — 
 intensive cultivation, — the grower will get far 
 more from his land than does the fruit-farmer who 
 runs his farm by horse power, acre for acre. One 
 need but compare production in Germany with 
 that in America, on equal areas, to discover this. 
 But in America we have not cheap farm labor. 
 We are compelled to rely on teams and tools and 
 a few hands to run them. 
 
 In planting, keep the roots from bruising; cut 
 injured parts clean away to escape root and branch 
 diseases. Avoid bruising the bark, the limbs, the 
 twigs. Cover bruised parts with a coating of 
 pitch, paint, or formaldehyde to keep out air and 
 water and germs, and the numberless spores of 
 fungi floating in the air and quick to take lodging 
 in the wounded plant. Even a coat of painter's 
 oil is a protection. In time the tree will heal the 
 wound, if possible. For a few years a young tree 
 or vine will flourish, then suddenly show signs of 
 disease and die before your eyes. The spores of 
 fungi got in their deadly work where you left a 
 wound of bruised bark or mangled root. Your 
 
76 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 years of labor and waiting are wasted. Tree- 
 planting is largely a problem of securing breathing 
 space in earth and air. Most growers sooner or 
 later regret that they had not planted farther apart, 
 giving ampler space for growth. The condition of 
 the plant, at any time in its later history, will be 
 determined by space as well as by cultivation. It 
 is yours to trim, to fertilize, to cultivate; the tree 
 has only to grow. Thus soil fertility and control 
 of the plant are your problem. Your supreme 
 purpose is to concentrate the strength of the soil 
 upon the plant. The whole life of the plant must 
 be active in production of fruit : this is the supreme 
 function of tree, vine, bush, or shrub. 
 
 It is an easy labor to set out trees and seemingly 
 to plant an orchard. Land may be plowed, har- 
 rowed, marked, and so, on the surface, be made 
 ready for the young trees. But trees root deep, — 
 indeed, produce as much area of feeding surface 
 in roots as of feeding surface in branch, twig, and 
 leaf. No fruit-tree grown in North America will 
 nourish in water or in dry earth ; nor will it flourish 
 in soil which passes from water-soaked to ashen- 
 dry condition. Extremes kill the tree. In plant- 
 ing an orchard, the most important question is of 
 drainage. Happily, most cultivable land so slopes 
 as to be, as it is said, self -draining ; which means 
 that the subsoil, even the surface, is neither 
 water-clogged, nor as dry as parchment. Water, 
 in form of moisture, is ever circulating through a 
 well-drained soil. The earth acts much like a 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 77 
 
 lamp wick, and ever exhibits the process of capil- 
 lary action. This action prevented, the soil 
 becomes fatal to the root of vine or tree; the soil 
 becomes water-soaked, or parched. 
 
 But many a field otherwise adapted to orchard 
 culture is not adequately drained. Its geological 
 structure may prevent such effective drainage as 
 is desired ; the layers of the soil ; the strata of the 
 rocks, or even the slight undulation of the surface 
 may have the effect of a series of dams, holding 
 back the water, and so soaking and clogging the 
 soil. The only remedy is drainage, which is of 
 two kinds, — by a ditch, whether open or covered, 
 leading to stream or lake, or by drainage wells, fed 
 by such a ditch. The simple problem is to prevent 
 standing water. If the land is saucer-shaped, as 
 to surface, and bottomed by hardpan, water will 
 stand within the hollow as in a metal basin. Either 
 cut a ditch across the edge of the basin, letting the 
 water escape into stream or lake ; or sink a drain- 
 age well, piercing the hardpan, thus letting the 
 water sink through a porous bottom and thus 
 vanish. But dig the drainage well, not in the 
 middle of the low spot, lest it fill and remain full; 
 for the sediment will tend to choke the gravel bot- 
 tom to which the well was dug. Sink the well in 
 gravel soil at the edge of the low spot, even many 
 rods from its center, and having by accurate level- 
 ing ascertained the necessary drop to carry off the 
 water, dig the ditch from the center of the low spot 
 to the well, through gravel, if possible, for the water, 
 
78 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 passing through the tile at bottom of the ditch, will 
 sink into the gravel all along the length of the ditch, 
 and ordinarily fail to reach the well. Cover the 
 ditch with care, and care consists, in laying the tile, 
 say four- or six-inch as may be needed according 
 to the amount of water to be carried away ; the tile 
 lying end to end, in foot lengths, the joints open, 
 and protected by small flat stones, set like the 
 peak of a roof, over the joint. Fill the ditch, 
 covering the tile, to a depth of a foot or more with 
 loose stone, — small round-heads picked up from 
 the farm. This stone covering acts as a drain and 
 filter. If the soil through which the ditch is dug 
 is hard clay, or close loam, it is well to cover the 
 loose stone with strips of burlap, — old phosphate 
 bags, which will keep the superincumbent earth 
 back from washing into the spaces between the 
 stones, till the earth has hardened, or "settled." 
 This simple protection secures a practically open 
 run-way for the water at bottom of the ditch, to a 
 height, say of the imposed stones. At the entrance 
 to the ditch, near the center of the low spot, cover 
 the stone — laid atop the tile — with coarse gravel, 
 say for a rod. This makes sure the easy entrance 
 of the surface water as it accumulates after a heavy 
 downpour. The drainage well itself is dug to a 
 depth which gives coarse gravel as a bottom, to an 
 indefinite depth. The well, walled up with loose 
 stone, like an ordinary water -well, should be four 
 or five feet in the clear, and may be arched over at 
 the top; or covered with large flat stones, or with 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 79 
 
 a cover made of cement and cast in a wooden frame. 
 The well may be covered so that the plow cannot 
 strike this arch or cement. Of course the careful 
 fruit-grower keeps a plot of his land and locates on 
 it all ditches and drains. 
 
 Better than the ditch and the drainage well is it 
 to spend a few days, before setting out the orchard, 
 with team, plow, and shovel, and a crew of men in 
 leveling the proposed orchard field. Fill up the 
 hollows; cut down the hillocks; you will save 
 greater cost in drainage wells and ditches and dead 
 trees. It takes a dozen years to produce a tree 
 in full bearing, and well-drained land need know 
 slight if any loss of trees because of either water- 
 soaked or parched land. 
 
 Once the subsoil is drained, the tree knows no 
 serious hindrance to rooting. Extremes of flood 
 and drouth are prevented. And if the tree thence- 
 forth is adequately cared for, — by trimming, spray- 
 ing, cultivating, soil-fertility, and wind and weather, 
 the fruit-grower may reasonably expect his reward. 
 Drainage at bottom and cultivating at surface 
 are only parts of the care of an orchard. The 
 simple but inexorable rule, not to set a tree after 
 it starts to grow, — in the spring, or before it ceases 
 to grow, in the fall, — and a second and like rule, 
 never, to plant an orchard on undrained land, may 
 be accepted as the orchardist's chief guide. There- 
 fore it is well, if trees are to be set in the spring, to 
 get the land ready the fall before ; or, if to be set 
 in the fall — an admirable time for most trees, — to 
 
80 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 get the land ready during the summer, say in 
 August, when the water is low, and ditches and 
 wells may be dug most cheaply and effectively. 
 
 Subsoiling is a process of draining: the sub- 
 soil plow following in the furrow of the ordinary 
 plow, breaking through the hard earth to a depth 
 of several inches, making it porous, ventilating it, 
 and enabling plant roots easily to find their way 
 through it. Land which is thus locked at bottom 
 and impervious may well be thus plowed deep be- 
 fore trees are set out, but subsoiling is useless as an 
 attempted corrective of hardpan. Or if the land 
 is a thin, shallow soil resting on strata of rock, sub- 
 soiling is equally impossible and valueless. The 
 best land for fruit is land naturally well drained: 
 land overlying a rocky or hardpan bottom at a 
 depth of from eight to twenty feet. The imper- 
 vious bottom aids in retaining plant-food in the 
 soil. Soil which is sandy or gravelly to a great 
 depth is expensive to keep fertile, — the food- 
 supply ever dissipating; or land which overlies 
 hardpan or stratified rock, a few feet below, and 
 sloping sharply, is drained too rapidly, — being, in 
 fact, a mere cover for a perpetual underground 
 stream which carries away fertilizer. It is folly 
 to set out an orchard in shallow soil, say of two 
 feet depth, or less, for, later in the life of the 
 orchard, heavy winds are likely to uproot the 
 trees. The roots, in such land, strike down- 
 wards till they reach the rock or hardpan, then 
 spread laterally but have not sufficient overweight 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 81 
 
 of earth to counterbalance the violence of the 
 wind. 
 
 Subsoiling does not always correct the evil of 
 an impervious stratum, for the earth soon settles 
 back to its primitive condition. After the orchard 
 is once planted, subsoiling cannot be done, unless 
 possibly in the case of dwarf pears, whose roots 
 tend to cluster rather than to spread laterally. 
 But to subsoil a grown orchard of apple, cherry, 
 peach, or prune would be fatal to thousands of roots 
 and doubtless kill the trees. For surface crops, 
 as strawberries, grain, truck, and even raspberries, 
 subsoiling is often a help. Far better is it to drain 
 the land by tiling, as explained above. The su- 
 preme purpose of subsoiling and tiling is to give 
 a permanent outlet for superfluous water. The 
 subsoil is commonly said to contain ingredients 
 poisonous to plant-roots, which means that stag- 
 nant water kills the kind of vegetation attempted 
 by the fruit-grower. It cannot be too well under- 
 stood that fruit-stock will not grow in standing 
 water, hence the necessity of drainage. The tile- 
 drain is worth more than the subsoil plow; both 
 may be necessary in preparing the land for the new 
 orchard. 
 
 Having marked out the land for orchard or 
 vineyard, you dig the holes. Some advocate 
 digging with a stick of dynamite, but the thought- 
 ful man knows that if land is so hard and rocky 
 that a hole in the ground can be made only with 
 dynamite, the roots of the tree will be limited by 
 
82 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 the loosened earth; they soon strike as it were a 
 metal casing and growth ceases. It is precisely 
 like attempting to raise trees at Atlantic City. 
 There the hole is dug in the salty sand and is filled 
 with soil imported from the mainland. The tree 
 lives till it has exhausted the imported soil; if 
 longer, new soil must be supplied. A like con- 
 dition prevails near Chicago. Spread the roots 
 carefully with the fingers in the loose earth, at 
 bottom of the hole. Let no fertilizer of any kind 
 come in contact with the roots. Cover these with 
 earth only, and on top of this layer of soil scatter 
 the fertilizer, sparingly. I have had best success 
 when the hole is filled to within six or eight inches 
 of the top with soil, then fill in with well-rotted 
 barnyard manure and cover as a mulch. This 
 keeps the whole root-mass moist. Do not water 
 the tree, and never pour water about the tree 
 without afterwards throwing fresh earth on, to 
 prevent baking of the soil and closing up its pores. 
 This means that plants should not be set when 
 the ground at the bottom of the hole is dry as 
 powder. There are times amidst an unusually 
 dry season, in spring or fall, when plants must 
 be set, or planting go over another year. Then 
 water may be poured into the hole before the plant 
 is set. The soil filled in will act as a mulch. But 
 such planting is inadvisable. Again, after plants 
 are set, growth may set in. If irrigation is neces- 
 sary, wet the ground thoroughly. Moisture for 
 roots comes chiefly and naturally from below, not 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 83 
 
 from above. The best irrigation is to keep the 
 ground, the surface, constantly stirred. This is 
 equivalent to a rainfall and is more beneficial than 
 irrigation. If you keep the cultivator running 
 through your plantation, you will not need ir- 
 rigation. 
 
 All plant-food is soluble, therefore it should reach 
 the plant as moisture. In the laboratory of the 
 soil the change is from solid to liquid. The thin 
 walls of the root-cells absorb moisture, feeding on 
 the soluble food as it passes through the cell walls. 
 Therefore all fertilizers must dissolve or decay, 
 must break down into liquid or gas in order to be- 
 come available plant-food. This law must be re- 
 cognized when trees and vines are planted. Raw 
 fertilizer touching the roots poisons them; but 
 a neighboring supply of food for the speedy use of 
 the young plant helps it tide over the shock of 
 transplantation. I have found it desirable to set 
 the young tree deeper than it stood in the nursery. 
 As a rule, deep setting means a greater supply of 
 food to the root. Grafted trees — pears, cherries, 
 prunes, plums, peaches, indeed all trees which 
 are grafted or budded at the root (of course, 
 apple, or other varieties grafted in the stock, ex- 
 cepted) — should be set so that the bud-stock will 
 be covered, otherwise the latent buds in the wild 
 stock may burst forth into perennial suckers of 
 endless annoyance. A grapevine, being a cutting, 
 not a graft, gives no like trouble, but should be set 
 so that the top bud is quite even with the ground. 
 
84 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 There is a notable difference in budded fruit-trees. 
 Some are so budded that the growth at the point 
 of budding becomes much greater in diameter than 
 that below the bud. This means that the budded 
 stock grows faster than the original stock on which 
 it is budded. The result oftentimes is the bursting 
 of the bark above the point of budding, thus letting 
 in fungi and insects and disease. The remedy 
 is to buy stock of even growth with the original 
 root stock, and also to set the tree well below the 
 line of budding so that the sun may not scald the 
 bark. The best preventive is not to buy stock 
 so budded, for after the orchard has stood, say a 
 dozen years, the trees, — notably sour cherry trees, 
 will suddenly die without notice. 
 
 All plants when set — trees, shrubs, vines — 
 should be thoroughly tamped — i. e., the earth 
 should be fully and firmly pressed down, as it is 
 put over the roots, imbedding the rootlets and 
 preventing their drying out. The common method 
 of setting strawberry plants is an illustration. 
 Usually the farmer chooses a cloudy or even a 
 rainy day for setting them. He uses a piece of 
 wood, a sort of conical trowel with which he 
 first presses out the hole, then, shaking out 
 the roots, he holds the plant amidst the hole 
 and with the tool presses the soft earth firmly 
 about the roots. Many a tree perishes because 
 the planter neglected to press the soil firmly 
 about the rootlets. 
 
 All fruit-trees and nut-bearing shrubs, except 
 
The Planting of the Fruit- Farm 85 
 
 apricots, are best planted in the fall. The season 
 is convenient for the work and the tree is in order 
 for starting growth in the spring. Many orchard- 
 ists insist, however, that peaches should be set in 
 the spring. It is possibly well enough to plant in 
 the spring if you can get your nursery stock early 
 enough without risk of being frosted during trans- 
 portation. Grapevines, berries, currants, should 
 be set in the spring. Climate and location must 
 be duly considered. It is presupposed that the 
 ground is in order, — a preparation easiest made 
 in the fall, or late summer for fall planting. This 
 preparation implies the adaptability of the section 
 to the immediate purpose. Wet, undrained land 
 is not adapted to fruit of any kind. Cherries and 
 peaches do best on dry, well drained soil. A stony 
 soil is no detriment to the tree but is expensive to 
 cultivate. Plums, prunes, and apples will prosper 
 in moister land than one may wisely select for 
 peaches or cherries. In planting orchard or vine- 
 yard, care should be taken to have the sections 
 accessible by alley or road, and so to set the rows 
 that there shall be little or no waste of time and 
 labor in cultivation. Short rows and frequent 
 turns are hard on men, team, and tools and run up 
 the labor bills. Have the turn at the end of the 
 row come in alley or road, and waste no land. 
 The farm that abuts on the highway has the 
 advantage of economy in use of land and in 
 turning the team. Plant land to the limit of 
 the line if possible and make the turn in the 
 
86 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 roadside. As in Germany, plant fruit-trees along 
 the roadside and so get use of the land. In a 
 fruit country there is the least disturbance of 
 fruit by thieves, for everybody is a watchman. 
 Care should be taken to lay out alleys and 
 roadways economically, for they cost the use of 
 the land, the land itself, and the upkeep of the 
 road. 
 
 All berry crops are short-lived: strawberries 
 two years; raspberries not more than ten; currants 
 and gooseberries somewhat longer. An orchard or 
 a vineyard is planted -for an indefinite period. 
 Apple trees are long-lived and usually bear profit- 
 ably when fifteen years old. Individual trees and 
 some varieties begin to bear at seven years from 
 planting. Apples on young trees are like a child's 
 earnings, small and infrequent, and rather hard on 
 the child. The tree thrives best on -well-drained, 
 strong land. Our memories are of the old orchard, 
 a cool, cavernous, fruitful retreat, the home of birds 
 and bees, or waving grasses and fruit-laden boughs, 
 of tall ladders too, and the shaking of top branches, 
 the rattling of apples through them, over our heads, 
 and our scuttling to a safe retreat. The apple 
 trees never failed, — for we forget the barren years 
 and never knew the waste of finest apples at top 
 of the tree that could not be reached even with the 
 tallest ladder. The sprig of a tree we plant spans 
 no more than the shade of one's hand; the old 
 tree we remember seemed to brush the clouds. 
 Now we keep the orchard low and let in the sun- 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 87 
 
 light. Only unsuccessful orchardists put out sixty- 
 foot apple trees. 1 
 
 Pear trees flourish in moist, rich, well-drained 
 soil. They are usually short-lived and subject to 
 many diseases. Of these the blight and the scale 
 are familiar, making pear culture uncertain and 
 unprofitable. Yet the orchardist who can control 
 these diseases and raise pears has a profitable crop. 2 
 
 1 The variety of apples as displayed at the annual exhibit of the 
 Pomological Section of the Horticultural Society of the State is bewilder- 
 ing and each kind seems best. A general consensus of opinion indicates 
 that for the States of the North and East, the best early or summer 
 apples are Yellow Transparent, Early Harvest, Primate, Early Joe, Red 
 Astrachan, Golden Sweet, Oldenburg, Summer Permain, Chenango, 
 Bough (sweet), Gravenstein, Jefferis, Porter. 
 
 The best autumn, — Maiden's Blush, Bailey (sweet), Fameuse, Fall 
 Pippin, Wealthy, and Mother. 
 
 Winter, — Jonathan, Hubbardson, Grimes's Golden, Tompkins's King, 
 Wagener, Baldwin, Yellow Bellflower, Rhode Island Greening, Talman, 
 Northern Spy, Red Canada, Roxbury Russet. 
 
 For the South and Southwest: 
 
 Early summer, — Red June, Yellow Transparent, Red Astrachan, 
 Summer Queen, Benoni, Oldenburg, Gravenstein. 
 
 Autumn, — Haas, Late Strawberry, Maiden's Blush, Oconee, Rambo, 
 Peck's Pleasant, Roman Beauty, Carter's Blue. 
 
 Winter, — Paragon, Shockley, Smith's Cider, Hubbardson, Hoover, 
 Horse, Grimes's Golden, Buckingham, Jonathan, Winesap, Kinnaird, 
 Ben Davis, York Imperial, Romanite, Rail's Genet, Limber Twig. 
 
 In the Northwest, extremely hardy varieties: 
 
 Early, — Yellow Transparent, Tetofski. 
 
 Autumn, — Oldenburg, Fameuse, Longfield, Wealthy, McMahan. 
 
 Winter, — Wolf River, Hibernal, Northwestern Greening, Pewaukee, 
 Switzer, Golden Russet. 
 
 3 Of varieties as early pears, — Clapp, Bloodgood, and Summer Do- 
 yenne; as autumn pears, — Bartlett, Boussock, Flemish Beauty, Buffum, 
 Howell, Seckel, Louise Bonne, Duchess (d'Angoul^me) ; for winter, — 
 Anjou, Sheldon, Clairgeau, Lawrence, Kieffer, Winter Nellis, and East 
 Beurre. At the North the Keifer tends to grow small, coarse, and 
 stringy, and of poor flavor; it is better at the South. 
 
88 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 All diseases to which fruit is subject seem to 
 afflict the pear tree. We are not as yet practically 
 acquainted with the preventive of blight. The 
 usual treatment for scale remedies that evil, but 
 for pear blight we as yet can do no more than to 
 cut out the affected part, a foot or so below the sign 
 of the blight, and burn the cuttings. Leaf blight 
 is hindered if not prevented by spraying with 
 Bordeaux mixture. The best treatment of the 
 pear tree is abundant feeding. Orchardists differ 
 in opinion as to cultivation; many, and successful 
 raisers of pears, insist that the orchard should be 
 left in grass and be freely enriched with plant- 
 food, barnyard manure, and with fruit-food — 
 potash. The dwarf varieties are more susceptible 
 to disease than the large or standard varieties. 
 
 In the old days, land thought to be unfit for 
 anything else, especially if wet, yet plowable, was 
 set to plums. Yet the tree has its preferences and 
 ever for well-drained, strong, rich soil. Plums 
 divide into two classes, Domestic and Japanese; 
 the latter newcomers which grow rapidly, fruit 
 early and abundantly, tend to overbear, and are 
 short-lived. This means that they are very sus- 
 ceptible to disease. The Japanese varieties blos- 
 som and set their fruit early and therefore are 
 somewhat uncertain at the North. If raised there 
 they should be planted on late ground that slopes 
 to the north and where May does not come in 
 March, or March in May. The variety of plums 
 is somewhat bewildering, and whatever the or- 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 89 
 
 chardist plants he will sooner or later doubtless 
 wish that he had planted some other variety. 
 Plums seem to be the favorite fruit for experimenta- 
 tion by the nurserymen. New varieties crowd 
 upon us each year. The orchardist who raises 
 plums for profit desires size, color, flavor, prolific- 
 ness, and good shipping qualities. This may be 
 truly said of the desirable in any kind of fruit. 
 But a plum tree must always grow very near the 
 market house; the fruit will not bear handling. 
 By the time it is fit to eat it is too ripe to stand 
 transportation. If shipped green, it suggests per- 
 simmons in July. Yet, conditions being favorable, 
 plums are worth raising. If kept trimmed low — 
 and the plum tree is a very vigorous grower — an 
 acre of plums, say one hundred and fifty trees, of 
 standard variety, but not a mixture of many 
 varieties, will, when in full bearing — that is, when 
 the orchard is fifteen years old — yield from fifty to 
 seventy-five nine-pound baskets to the tree and 
 give a gross return of from three hundred and fifty 
 to five hundred dollars. The essentials for profit 
 are large, well-colored, firm fruit of fine flavor, and 
 a good market which may be reached, say within 
 twelve hours. 1 
 
 Of higher value than the plum is the prune, 
 which seems to be only a hardy, late plum. One 
 
 x The varieties are legion, but by general consent, based on experience, 
 the best domestic plums are Bradshaw, Lombard, Imperial Gage, 
 Jefferson, Fellenberg, Shropshire, Monarch, Coe Golden Drop, Green 
 Gage, and Grand Duke. Of Japanese varieties, — Burbank, Abundance, 
 Red June, Satsuma. 
 
90 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 cannot easily distinguish a plum tree from a 
 prune tree, but experience soon discovers the su- 
 perior value of the prune. It is hardier, more 
 productive, longer-lived, and more regular in bear- 
 ing. Of prunes three desirable varieties are York 
 State, German, and Italian, the first possibly a 
 local "sport" or seedling, the tree strongly resem- 
 bling wild stock. Maturing in late September, or 
 mid-October, the prune is firm, large, rich in color 
 and quality, and able to bear shipment to long 
 distance. Some orchardists report an income of 
 from five hundred to eight hundred dollars an acre 
 from their prunes. The enemies of plum and prune 
 multiply every year. Black-knot is most formid- 
 able and is cured by cutting out and burning the 
 affected parts, even if the whole tree must go. 
 The trees must be sprayed for scale, for fungus, and 
 for other insects than the scale, — moths, curculio, 
 and the like. Both plums and prunes tend to 
 overbear and thus produce a mass of small fruit. 
 The preventive is thinning out the fruit early in 
 the season, rather than to let the limbs crash down 
 under weight of superfluous fruit, or to rely wholly 
 upon trimming. The orchardist who has many 
 plum or prune trees must plan to give them cease- 
 less attention. They are highly profitable when 
 rightly managed. Every fruit-farm needs fruit 
 in its succession from opening summer till closing 
 winter. By consulting the catalogue of a trust- 
 worthy nurseryman, the fruit-farmer may select 
 a few plum trees as it were "for table use." The 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 91 
 
 Japanese Abundance ripens in the Lake Shore 
 Valley about the first of August, and by careful 
 selection of varieties the farmer may have plums 
 from this time till snow flies. He may well re- 
 member that one plum tree, well cared for, pro- 
 duces many plums. He may plant several varieties 
 in order to have succession of fruit, but he will not 
 plant many trees save of the variety which he 
 knows will prove profitable commercially. Other- 
 wise he will litter his land with fruit he will not 
 know what to do with. He will have too much to 
 use or give away and not enough to sell. 
 
 Peaches, next to apples, command the market, 
 but no section of our country shows uninterrupted 
 health of its peach orchards. The tree has many 
 enemies. It is rather long-lived, as many still 
 in bearing in the Valley have passed their first 
 quarter of a century. During this period many va- 
 rieties have come and gone. Weather rather than 
 climate seems to determine the fate of the peach 
 tree. The climate may be peach but the weather 
 may prove "yellows," "scale," "black-knot," 
 or some other evil in form of insect or fungus. 
 The tree requires a well-drained, light, fairly rich 
 soil. It is a rapid grower and needs vigorous 
 trimming. Wet, heavy land is not for peaches. 
 As one travels over America he will see more 
 extinct peach orchards than of any other fruit. 
 Varieties are legion and each peach area has its 
 favorites of soil and climate, of grower and of con- 
 sumer. In peaches as in plums, it is color, size, and 
 
92 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 quality that determine the selection of varieties. 
 The rich yellow, crimson, pink, free-stone, firm 
 juicy peach is always in good demand. Very early 
 peaches are usually cling-stones, fair in color but 
 rather tasteless, or even bitter. The money -mak- 
 ing peach is the late, canning peach. The house- 
 wife never cans the early peach. She waits till the 
 fruit shall be cheaper and suddenly discovers that 
 the season is quite past and she has not yet put up 
 her peaches. This makes a market for the later 
 and, one may say, better varieties. 1 
 
 In planting peaches one must observe the same 
 caution as in planting plums, — one, two, possibly 
 three standard varieties for commercial profit, — 
 say Dewey, Elberta, or Crawford, but never a 
 mere mixture of varieties. An acre of peaches, or 
 many acres, can be most effectively cared for if 
 of one kind. The labor bill compels this economy. 
 It is best to harvest a thousand bushels at one time 
 than one bushel a thousand different times. There 
 is money in peaches but not always in peach or- 
 chards. In the peach belt anyone can raise peaches 
 if he can raise peach trees, successfully warding off 
 yellows, curl-leaf, borer, brown rot, scale, root-gall, 
 and the new diseases the summer may bring forth. 
 The first question is whether your land lies within 
 
 1 One may prudently consult successful peach-growers as to varieties. 
 The Crawford, early and late; Hale's Early, Alexander, Elberta, 
 Oldmixon, Stump the World, Gold Drop, Smock, Early Rivers, Cham- 
 pion, Belle of Georgia, Captain Ede, Fitzgerald, Admiral Dewey, Foster, 
 Morris White, Wheat, and Mountain Rose are standard varieties. A 
 peach calendar may be made out, like the plum, so that the household 
 may have peaches from mid- July until snow flies. 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 93 
 
 the peach belt; whether you are under the true 
 peach sky. If so, plant peach trees. Every or- 
 chardist in every peach belt in the country is 
 confronted by the same question. While you are 
 waiting, another is reaping from two hundred to 
 six hundred dollars an acre from his peach orchards. 
 
 A cherry tree, like any other fruit tree will live, 
 even flourish as a shade tree, where it will not 
 bring forth fruit. But there are more desirable 
 trees for shade than are cherry trees. The cherry 
 likes a well-drained soil, not too dry or heavy. 
 Like peach or plum it grows rapidly, and like all 
 fruit-trees perishes quickly in standing water, 
 either above or below ground. Like other fruit- 
 trees it makes its annual growth while the fruit is 
 growing. If left to itself, leaf and fruit will mature 
 together, the fruit clinging the longer. Here is 
 the clue to feeding the tree, — both for fruit and 
 for foliage. 
 
 Sour cherries or sweet? Which shall you plant? 
 The sour are more regular in bearing; the sweet 
 carry the higher price but are less hardy. Thus 
 it may be said that while an orchard of sour cherries 
 bears every year, it bears heavily on alternate 
 years. Cherry trees, specially of sweet varieties, 
 are long-lived, long-jointed, brittle, coarse growing, 
 and susceptible to injury from wind, snow, and 
 ice-storms ; often break down badly in early spring 
 when the sap is starting, and are quite likely to 
 break, when winds are strong, under weight of 
 leaf and fruit. To escape such injuries the tree 
 
94 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 must be headed low, and, if possible, the whole 
 orchard should be sheltered by wind-breaks, by 
 woods, or by the lay of the land. Of sweet cherries 
 the standard are Napoleon, Elton, Black Tartarian, 
 Oxheart, Windsor, Rockport, Yellow Spanish; of 
 sour cherries, the Early Richmond, Montmorenci, 
 May Duke, Reine Hortense, Kentish, and Morello. 1 
 Early Richmond ripens first, Morello last, with 
 an interval of a month, in some seasons, between 
 first and last picking. Of sour cherries the Mont- 
 morenci is best, both for tree and for fruit. The 
 tree is compact and a prolific bearer ; the Richmond 
 is a sprawling tree, weaving about in the wind and 
 less prolific. The old-fashioned cherry tree by the 
 kitchen door peeped over the roof and its best fruit 
 was picked from the shingles on the tip-top 
 branches. We are learning to head our cherry 
 orchards low so that much of the fruit may be 
 gathered while the picker stands on the ground, 
 and the remainder from short ladders made for the 
 purpose. 
 
 The care of sweet cherries and of sour is not quite 
 the same. The trees have unlike habits and must 
 be trimmed differently. Just how this trimming 
 shall be made is also a matter of opinion. Some 
 orchardists, highly successful with cherries, trim 
 the sweet varieties vigorously, opening up the 
 center of the tree to the sun, and cutting back 
 boldly. Sour cherries do not readily bear such 
 
 1 Cherries are budded in the nursery on Mazard, or on Mahaleb root- 
 stalk. Opinions vary as to relative value of these root-stalks. 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 95 
 
 trimming and are more subject to sun-scald. But 
 either tree should be trimmed with a knife rather 
 than with saw or ax, and the orchardist's chief 
 study should be to keep the tree low, well balanced, 
 and free from trimming scars. Doubtless the best 
 rule is, "Do as little trimming as possible." 
 
 The quince thrives in a rich, deep, moist, well- 
 drained soil. Of late years it has become rare in 
 some fruit valleys, having been quite eliminated 
 by insects and fungi. The fruit is never in great 
 demand. Some think that the disappearance of 
 forests, woods, and wind-breaks, as well as the 
 invasion of fungi and insects, accounts for the dis- 
 appearance of the quince. The tree at best is an 
 uncertain bearer and never very prolific. The 
 orange quince remains a standard variety. But 
 the orchardist, like the public at large, seems to 
 have lost the taste for quinces. Ashes are excel- 
 lent fertilizer for the tree, — unleached wood ashes. 
 Trimming consists largely in removing dead and 
 dying wood. The tree cannot be kept shapely 
 like a cherry or a peach tree. 
 
 Grapevines, but not grapes, will grow almost 
 anywhere in America. The extremes are vines as 
 foliage plants and vines that fruit in fine quality 
 and great quantity. This means that the grape 
 areas of America, as elsewhere in the world, are 
 sharply defined by climate. Here the law is 
 "each after its kind." In rather a loose way, 
 grapes may be described as raisin grapes and others, 
 — that is, grapes that will dry and cure and grapes 
 
96 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 that will not dry. The former are known the world 
 over as "layers." The non-raisin grape is of the 
 temperate zone; the raisin grape is subtropical: 
 the division is strictly climatic. In America the 
 raisin grape area is in California; the table grape 
 areas are numerous and widely scattered. One 
 of the noted areas is the Lake Shore Valley, which 
 includes the celebrated Chautauqua Belt, of west- 
 ern New York. In these days when young men are 
 taking up horticulture as a vocation, as other men 
 take law, medicine, or engineering, they will do as 
 does the young lawyer or engineer, — they will go 
 to the place where such business as they wish to 
 carry on is done in the best manner and most 
 profitably. Thus, as the years pass, the ablest and 
 most successful fruit-growers will be found in the 
 best fruit regions of the country. The non-raisin 
 or table grape — the common wine grape of the 
 country — comes to perfection at the northern 
 margin of grape cultivation. Here they reach 
 perfection of quality and quantity. This law of 
 fruitage is common to all vegetable life. Quality 
 may determine the commercial value of any fruit. 
 This is true of grapes. 
 
 Left to itself the grapevine grows to extraor- 
 dinary length, and ever tends to foliage rather than 
 to fruit, — whence the vigorous trimming necessary 
 in viticulture, for the art of raising grapes consists 
 in converting superfluous foliage into superior fruit. 
 You may have a hundred feet of vine and here and 
 there a scraggly, small bunch of inferior fruit. Cut 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 97 
 
 back the vine; restrain its growth; force it to 
 fruit instead of to foliage and you have many large, 
 compact bunches of superior fruit. The practical 
 problem is to concentrate the vitality of the vine 
 into fruit. But this is also the constant problem 
 in the orchard; it is the basis of the art of fruit- 
 growing. 
 
 The first explorers of the Lake Shore Valley, 
 La Salle, La Hontan, Charlevoix, two hundred and 
 fifty years ago, took note of the abundance of the 
 wild grapevines, along the shore of Lake Erie, run- 
 ning to the tallest tree-tops and hung with many 
 clusters. The progeny of those vines is vigorous 
 in the Valley to this day, — creeping over the rocky 
 bluffs of the lake, and hiding the lofty cuts and 
 chasms, — locally known as "Hogs' Backs," — 
 made by the sixteen streams, — of which La Salle 
 makes mention, in the sixteen gulches which 
 traverse the ancient Devonian hills walling in the 
 Valley along the south. The wild grapevine will 
 live anywhere in America except in the arid wastes, 
 — the " Great American Desert" mapped out 
 in the school-books of our childhood, but which 
 has vanished with the "West." It yields to 
 cultivation, like other fruit stock from the wild, 
 and prospers best in deep, rich, well-drained soil. 
 The vine grows in two sections, — one below, one 
 above ground, their surface exposure in earth and 
 air quite equal. Trimming the upper vine concen- 
 trates vitality in the roots and upon the fruit -buds. 
 Every vine, capable of fruiting, buds to reproduce 
 
98 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 fruit after its kind. Very vigorous vines in a state 
 of nature do this. Cultivation consists in modify- 
 ing the habits of the vine. It has been said that 
 all our varieties spring by cultivation from the wild 
 vine. As a general statement this is true, but all 
 our varieties do not come from the same wild vine, 
 or directly from the wild, — but through domes- 
 tication and crossing of varieties themselves. 
 Occasionally a seedling appears having marked 
 characteristics, and so fixed as to be capable of 
 reproducing its kind. Commonly the strong ten- 
 dency in the vine is to revert to the wild. The 
 wild stock of one region of the earth differs from 
 that of another. Transplanting from region to 
 region and cross-fertilization produce varieties. 
 The Concord grape was a seedling, but the chance 
 that a seedling will develop a desirable variety 
 is remote. Only a professional experimentalist, — 
 a Burbank, — can wisely attempt the problem of 
 producing a new variety. The fruit-grower who 
 wishes grapevines which will produce each after its 
 kind, plants cuttings, not seeds, much as the or- 
 chardist sets grafted stock, not seeds of apple, 
 peach, or plum. The seed reverts to the wild, save 
 so infrequently as to make the rule practicable; 
 the cutting and the graft remain true to stock. 
 
 The culture of the grape varies widely in different 
 countries and in different parts of the same country. 
 In the Lake Shore Valley and the Chautauqua 
 Grape Belt, the vines are set in rows, eight feet 
 apart in the row, the rows nine feet, though 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 99 
 
 some set them ten, apart. The vine is trained on 
 two wires, stretching the length of the row, the 
 lower three feet, the upper, six feet from the ground. 
 Each wire is drawn taut, is fastened securely to 
 the post at the end of the row, and is also fastened 
 by staples to stakes at intervals of twenty or 
 twenty-four feet apart driven in the row. The 
 vine is fastened to the wire with twine — a heavy 
 hemp cut to length — or with wire. The hemp is 
 cut long enough to tie readily; the wire, fine and 
 flexible, is about three inches long. Fifty years 
 ago vines were tied with willow, as they still are 
 in Germany. The method was brought into the 
 Valley by the Germans who came in great numbers 
 shortly after the Revolution of 1848. As the 
 German skill has died out, and labor has become 
 scarcer and more expensive, the use of the willow 
 has ceased. The wire is convenient but is liable 
 to cut the vine if it sways in the wind. The hemp 
 cord has proved a practicable substitute for the 
 willow, is easier to handle, and cannot injure the 
 vine. 
 
 The end posts are well set and anchored either by 
 bringing the upper wire over the post and burying 
 in the ground, the extreme end of the wire wrapped 
 about a stone, thus bracing the post in front, or 
 by placing a brace in the row, behind the post, — 
 using a strong stake or a fence rail. The wire 
 anchorage system in front of the post is objection- 
 able because it interferes with the tools, catches the 
 hames, and may be torn out as the team turns the 
 
ioo An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 row. The grape rows themselves are of the length 
 of the section, and usually line up with the several 
 rows in the succeeding section. In setting a 
 vineyard it is expedient to have long rows and as 
 few turns as possible. The weight of the wire 
 with vines and fruit is great, often excessive under 
 pressure of the wind. Old wires break; new ones 
 may pull out staples, and the great weight of wire, 
 fruit, and foliage may and often does break down 
 the end post. The purpose of the stakes is to 
 ease this weight. 
 
 Grapes develop in light, air, and dryness; if 
 suffered to lie on the ground they never color or 
 ripen. Vines must hang from the wires, not rest 
 on the soil. Raisin grapes, as in California or 
 Spain, will ripen near, or even on the ground, the 
 canes on which they grow springing from a stub, 
 or stock to which the vine is trimmed back every 
 year. The vine of the Concord type is trimmed 
 back to a point about three feet from the ground, 
 the stock below as straight as possible. From the 
 point where the stock reaches the lower wire the 
 vine is trained to two arms extending in opposite 
 directions from the point, each arm fastened to 
 the lower wire. From each arm two canes are 
 suffered to grow to the top wire, all other wood 
 being cut away annually. Another system, called 
 the umbrella system, trims away all wood along 
 the stock to height of the top wire and at that point 
 allows the canes to grow and hang down over both 
 wires. The objection to the umbrella system is to 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 101 
 
 the ever-lengthening stock, rising above the wires, 
 for the stock, as it ages, acquires much loose rough 
 bark which easily becomes the refuge for fungi 
 and insects. The arm system, which prevails in 
 the Lake Shore Valley, keeps the stock low and 
 permits new canes each year. This year's grapes 
 grow on last year's wood, so that in trimming 
 provision must be made for a year ahead. By this 
 system the strength of the root is annually concen- 
 trated upon the fruitage of buds on the four or more 
 canes. These buds, stimulated to growth by trim- 
 ming, fertilizing, and cultivation generally, develop 
 rapidly into leaf, tendril, stalk, and fruit. The 
 trimming of the vine determines the character of 
 the vineyard and is doubtless the most important 
 part of grape culture. The root stalk, growing 
 constantly, tends to become a thick, heavy stump, 
 having short stubs sticking out as memorials of the 
 poor trimmer. These stubs split and crack at the 
 ends, under sun and rain, and give entrance to 
 fungi and insects, — fertile culture ground for the 
 countless spores ever floating in the air. To avoid 
 evil results, the vine should be trimmed close to 
 the stock, making a clean cut. Small wounds heal 
 over, but large cuts must be covered over with some 
 artificial surface that will exclude the spores, — 
 say, pitch or paint. The stock below the bottom 
 wire becomes ultimately at the top a mass of scars. 
 The trimmer allows a sprout to grow from the root 
 and to take the place of the old stock, which he 
 saws off and burns. By this procedure the vine- 
 
102 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 yard may be renewed and kept young. Vines 
 may grow crooked stocks which interfere with the 
 tools. These may best be supplanted by a new 
 shoot. Again, the old vine may have what is 
 called the "dead-arm," — that is, so diseased do the 
 two arms become because of trimming and spores 
 of fungi, they die even down to the ground and 
 must be replaced by a new sprout from the root. 
 
 A grapevine naturally tends to fruit at the end, 
 of course on last year's wood, so the clusters, in 
 successive years, would, if the vine is untrimmed, 
 form farther and farther from the root. The 
 trimmer cuts back the vine and keeps the fruit 
 near the stock, converting the vitality which would 
 become length of vine into quantity and quality 
 of fruit. Trimming is therefore the yearly regula- 
 tion of buds. Experience alone enables the trim- 
 mer to know how many and what buds to leave for 
 the season. He may suffer the vine to overbear, 
 with consequence of little or no fruit the following 
 year and a dangerous shock to the vine. The 
 entire art of cultivation culminates in the shape, 
 form, and fruitful vigor of the vine. 
 
 Of several hundred variety of grapes which will 
 fruit in northern vineyards, less than half a dozen 
 are of commercial value. In the Lake Shore 
 Valley, and generally in the north, the Concord is 
 the standard grape ; the unit of measure of prolific- 
 ness, vigor, hardiness, regularity in bearing, and of 
 quality and quantity of fruit. If it may not be in 
 every respect the best known grape, it is the one 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 103 
 
 grape which combines the greater number of desir- 
 able qualities sought. It is a climatic grape, like 
 every other, and doubtless nourishes at the north- 
 ern limit of grape cultivation as can no other 
 variety. Again, it may not be adapted to vine- 
 yards south of Mason and Dixon's Line, or in the 
 California grape area. The practical question in 
 any area is, What grape can be grown here, pro- 
 fitably, year after year? This means, What grape 
 of first quality, will stand the climate, fruit abund- 
 antly, bear regularly, and always be in demand? 
 Whether for table use, or for wine, the Concord is 
 unsurpassed. At the South Shore Wine Cellars 
 I was told that from this grape every brand of wine 
 known on the market may be made. The Concord 
 has never failed in the Lake Shore Valley, — a 
 record which cannot be claimed for any other 
 grape, any other fruit, or any other plant known 
 to the region. It ripens about October first and is 
 harvested during that month. It will hang on the 
 vine till spring and preserve some hint of its 
 quality. There are earlier and later varieties: 
 earlier, — Worden, Moore's Early, Campbell, and 
 Delaware; later, Catawba and Isabella, but these 
 two varieties have quite disappeared from com- 
 merce. The Niagara, a large white grape, ripens 
 with the Concord; also the Agawam, Brighton, 
 Hartford, and some eighty other varieties. But in 
 planting a vineyard one must consider the end, — 
 which is to raise grapes at a profit. Varieties to 
 suit the owner may be set, as it were, for table use, 
 
104 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 but not for profit. A variety of grapes becomes a 
 nuisance, like a variety of peaches or plums. The 
 vineyardist needs to raise grapes on a large scale, 
 so that he may harvest them at one time, with 
 economy of labor. Varieties compel irregular 
 picking, variety of packages, and extra labor. If 
 varieties are raised, let there be enough of each to 
 make the effort a commercial success. Five rows 
 of a variety are a nuisance; five acres may be 
 profitable. In planting a vineyard, care must be 
 taken to secure regularity; straight rows; vines 
 set sufficiently deep so as to protect the roots, not 
 alone from frost but from the teeth of the tools. 
 In wiring grapes, the rows may well be run so as to 
 escape the violence of prevailing winds — that is, 
 with the line of storms, not across it. Thus if 
 by mishap a hailstorm visits the region, grapes 
 which row with the storm escape better than those 
 which traverse its course. In the Lake Shore Valley 
 rows running parallel with the lake are less likely 
 to suffer from storm, — a serious matter when acres 
 must be re-tied after a northwester. But the Val- 
 ley lies at the confluence of two vast circulatory 
 systems of the continent: the St. Lawrence, and 
 the Mississippi, and in consequence storms spring 
 up quite without notice from any quarter. Few of 
 these storms are violent, and for a period of nearly 
 fifty years vineyards have been injured by hail 
 but twice. It is folly to set out grapes on land 
 that is not grape land. The traveler through the 
 Valley will see many acres of such folly. The 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 105 
 
 cost was too great and the vineyards have been 
 neglected or abandoned. Nor does it truly pay 
 to set a vineyard unless it is to be cared for cease- 
 lessly, fed bountifully, trimmed wisely, and, in a 
 word, kept at highest production. There are 
 hundreds of acres of such fine vineyards in the 
 Valley and the average yearly return — gross — for 
 each acre is about one hundred and forty-five 
 dollars. 
 
 Strawberries require well-drained, rich, moist 
 ground. The supreme test is the growth of root, 
 stalk, and leaf, provided the variety is self -fertiliz- 
 ing; if not, two varieties must be set, pistillate 
 and staminate. A large, dark green leaf on a 
 strong leaf -stalk means a large berry or cluster of 
 berries. Irrigation is a temporary soil. The 
 yellow root means health and vigor; the black root 
 means age, weakness, and death. Repeated cul- 
 tivation during the first season means fruit the 
 second and is better than irrigation. Ceaseless 
 hoeing of the strawberry bed raises the price of 
 strawberries. This year's runners are next year's 
 bearing plants. Plant the bed early; plant deep 
 and set each root firmly with soil well pressed about 
 the rootlets. The best strawberry beds are put 
 out on rainy days in April. Late summer or fall 
 planting is a sorry substitute for April setting. 
 Strawberry raising is a special business and he who 
 would succeed may well read the special Straw- 
 berry Bulletins issued by the Experimental Sta- 
 tions. Mulch the vines; keep them cool, moist, 
 
106 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 free from weeds and enemies, and you will have 
 berries. In common experience the chief enemy 
 is the white grub or cutworm, the larva of the 
 ordinary August locust. It is said to spend seven- 
 teen years underground, and seventeen days as 
 locust, during which it lays its eggs against another 
 subterranean sojourn. Every locust stands for 
 seventeen ruined strawberry beds. The only 
 remedy is to set the plants where there are no 
 grubs, and this means in soil that has been worked 
 deep and thoroughly for several years. Repeated 
 plowing of the ground throws out the grubs that 
 they may be devoured by birds and the patient 
 hen. 
 
 The strawberry plant is short-lived, for com- 
 mercial purposes, and its fruit deteriorates after 
 the first crop. Unless very near a good market, 
 one better have a strawberry bed than a strawberry 
 field. The crop must be handled quickly, at 
 short distance from market, and with unusual skill, 
 — if made profitable. The Marshall, Brandywine, 
 Parker, and Eagle are, or were yesterday, desirable 
 varieties; but each season brings new ones, more 
 numerous than of plums or grapes. The desired 
 berry is large, firm, of high color, of fine quality, 
 odor, and taste. But the market demands a good 
 shipping berry. Most of the best eating berries 
 are poor shippers, and many good shippers are 
 poor eating. So the fruit-farmer raises straw- 
 berries for his own table and strawberries to sell 
 to city folk who may not know the difference. It 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 107 
 
 is a profitable crop but requires patience and what 
 Napoleon called "the ignominious love of details." 
 On a fruit-farm it is most desirable to raise early 
 fruits, — those that market in June, July, August, 
 rather than in October and November. It is most 
 desirable to get off fruit in good weather; to clear 
 up the year's work as early as possible. Straw- 
 berries, raspberries, and cherries come early and are 
 soon off the grower's hands. He gets his returns 
 early in the season and is thus enabled to meet 
 later expenses. 
 
 Raspberries, black or red, and of the red, the 
 earlier or the later, properly set out, will run, as a 
 crop, for a dozen years, barring destruction by 
 blight, rust, and winter-killing. The ideal thing 
 is to secure and to maintain highly vigorous 
 plants. Raspberries bear the third year and usu- 
 ally regularly. Light, gravel, well-drained soil kept 
 rich and moist produces fruit. But gravel land 
 may dry out in May and June, or amidst picking 
 time, and a heavier soil, a clay loam is better. No 
 crop responds better to timely rains, which means 
 that the root needs much moisture. This indi- 
 cates the proper care of the raspberry patch : keep 
 it well worked, stir the soil, irrigate with the cul- 
 tivator. Nitrate of soda hurries up the growth 
 of the canes, but barnyard manure or the best 
 commercial substitute keeps the plant in vigor. 
 The old canes must be cut out after the crop is 
 picked. Running the cultivator through the patch 
 during a drouth, whether or not the fruit is picked, 
 
108 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 will act as a rainfall. The Cuthbert, early or late, 
 still holds its own as a red variety; the difference 
 in time of ripening being about ten days, the later 
 Cuthbert being the superior berry. Of black 
 varieties, Kansas and Eureka are later than Con- 
 rath or Palmer. The Marlboro competes with the 
 Cuthbert in favor. Anthracnose, a fungous disease, 
 is the worst enemy of the plant, but may be extermi- 
 nated by spraying with Bordeaux mixture. After 
 seven years the plants seem to get weary of the 
 ground and have passed their maximum production, 
 whence the rule with many growers not to keep a 
 berry patch in one place more than five crops. 
 Dewberries and blackberries require like soil and 
 treatment: the danger as before being that the 
 farmer will neglect the patch and let the canes dry 
 up. There is no remedy for the red rust, save to 
 dig out the diseased canes and burn them. The 
 dewberry is practically exempt from disease, — the 
 best variety, the Lucretia. 
 
 Of blackberries, the Snyder, the Wilson, the 
 Taylor. Some farmers plant raspberries, black- 
 berries, or dewberries as a catch crop between the 
 rows of young orchard and run the patch till the 
 orchard begins to bear. The practice is not to be 
 commended. Potatoes, corn, beans, carrots, tur- 
 nips, strawberries may be so planted, but never 
 berries borne on canes. The raspberry root is 
 like that of a tree and the plant exhausts the soil 
 over an area of several yards. One cannot raise 
 two spears of grass on the same spot, much less a 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 109 
 
 cherry tree and a raspberry bush. The bush will 
 gain on the tree; the berry-field, on the orchard. 
 You are robbing the orchard while raising berries, 
 nor can you fertilize the ground for both orchard 
 and raspberries. The raspberry roots are persist- 
 ent and can be exterminated only after costly 
 labor, running through years. Your trees will 
 suffer, and you started to raise an orchard not 
 berries ; therefore give the orchard the right of way. 
 A passing crop like potatoes, or any hill crop, 
 even strawberries which last but two years, may 
 be suffered, but do not neglect to fertilize both 
 for the cover crop and for the trees. At best it is 
 a doubtful venture, and when your orchard is at 
 last in bearing, you will regret if you delayed and 
 stunted it by a cover crop of raspberries, and will 
 rejoice that you gave it the land. 
 
 Currants and gooseberries demand rich, moist, 
 well-drained land. England and central Ger- 
 many — cool, moist regions of the earth — are the 
 paradise for currants and gooseberries. America 
 is too dry for the best fruit of this order. Yet, 
 if they can be grown, both fruits are profitable. 
 The care of the bush consists in cutting away dead 
 branches and superfluous young ones. The fruit 
 comes on the old canes and one must therefore 
 trim with discretion. The enemy comes like a 
 thief in the night, — borer, leaf blight, and currant 
 worm. The astonished farmer discovers suddenly 
 that his bushes are bare sticks. Before the blos- 
 soms, spray with a weak solution of Paris green; 
 
no An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 after the fruit forms, with pyrethrum, a tablespoon- 
 ful in a gallon of water. This disposes of the worms. 
 For leaf blight use Bordeaux mixture, applied 
 carefully and not too strong ; for the borer, cut out 
 the bush, root and branch, and burn quickly. All 
 currant bushes are susceptible to disease. The 
 standard varieties are Fay, Chautauqua, and 
 Cherry, but there are others. The Victoria is 
 considered most hardy. The Black Naples will 
 make dark currant jelly and is a prolific producer. 
 Gooseberries always call up vistas of English 
 gardens, tarts, marmalade, and things generally 
 sour, but the berry is gaining friends in America 
 and proves highly profitable. Keep the plants 
 moist, — which means constant cultivation and 
 mulching. If spraying is necessary while in fruit, 
 apply an ounce of sulphide of potassium in three 
 gallons of water. But fungi are best kept off by 
 assiduous cultivation of the gooseberry patch. 
 The Downing is best adapted to America, as the 
 Triumph, Lancashire Lad, and other European 
 varieties are subject to mildew. 
 
 In the Lake Shore Valley reports are made of 
 large profits from strawberries, raspberries, cur- 
 rants, and gooseberries. Experience has taught 
 the folly of setting many varieties; one or two 
 suffice, and the acreage should be large. One 
 holding of sixty acres of currants is known. The 
 returns per acre for raspberries have reached 
 six hundred dollars gross, and more for goose- 
 berries. A fair average for a carefully tilled field 
 
The Planting of the Fruit-Farm in 
 
 would be, one year with another, about four 
 hundred dollars. 
 
 In planting the fruit-farm it is best to plan 
 generously, giving each fruit its exclusive acreage 
 and management according to its own nature. 
 The profitable fruit-farm refuses to be mismanaged 
 long; it pays or ceases to be a fruit-farm. One 
 can raise plants, trees, vines, shrubs, roots of all 
 kinds, — but this does not mean fruit. It is fruit 
 we are after, not trunks, stems, stalk, and leaves. 
 We plant the fruit-farm for fruit. As the military 
 man would say, that is our "objective." There are 
 several essential elements in our planting: climate, 
 soil, drainage, selection of varieties, time of plant- 
 ing, manner of planting, and trimming the new 
 plant. Once the stock is set out, our work has 
 only begun. 
 
 We will therefore suppose that the site for the 
 fruit -farm has been within the fruit belt, in whatso- 
 ever part of America, and that the facilities for 
 marketing have been duly considered. The well- 
 drained land has been laid out into appropriate 
 sections. The farm is unified by well-made roads 
 and alleys. The question of varieties has been 
 duly weighed; you have decided precisely what 
 fruit you will raise. You have obtained only 
 standard varieties from dependable nurserymen 
 and have planted your trees, your shrubs, your 
 berries, and your vines in the right way. You have 
 provided for ample cultivation; assigned sufficient 
 space for teams and tools; have avoided useless 
 
ii2 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 turns; have not crowded your planting but have 
 well considered prospective spread of root and top, 
 for mature, abundant fruitage. You have given 
 yourself sufficient space not merely for cultivation 
 of the plants but for administering all the business 
 connected with them, — for ingress and regress of 
 teams and wagons and for the economical handling 
 of crops. You have considered well the problem 
 of housing man and beast, tools and fruit. You 
 have, in brief, to the best of your ability, after 
 adequate examination of authorities and a decent 
 respect for experience, obeyed the principle of 
 horticultural economy, in buying land, in planning 
 your plantation, in setting out your fruit of all 
 kinds, and particularly in restricting yourself to 
 few varieties. You have assembled your farming 
 machine. Now it remains to run it productively. 
 
IV 
 
 GETTING ALONG WITH HELP 
 
 AT the bottom of fruit -farming is the labor 
 "**■ question: somebody must do the work. 
 Whatever the labor question that bothered our 
 grandfathers, it is our labor question that bothers 
 us. "How can I get the work on my fruit-farm 
 done?" There is only one solution to this problem : 
 Make the work so profitable that it will be desir- 
 able to the persons you want to do the work. This 
 is the only hope, not alone for the fruit-farmer but 
 for every other employer of labor. But its realiza- 
 tion is not easy. Walpole's dictum, "Every man 
 has his price," is true in farming. Possibly the 
 price is prohibitive to you; if so, you will not long 
 run a fruit-farm; you will close the farm just as 
 the manufacturer closes his factory. His ma- 
 chinery speedily rusts into uselessness. Your farm 
 quite as speedily runs wild. Both are ruined. 
 But men must live; the laborer must labor, and 
 every man is or ought to be a laborer. The 
 farmer must farm, the manufacturer manufacture, 
 or "chaos and dark night." 
 
 Laboring, working, is not only the result of a 
 8 113 
 
ii4 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 state of industry but of a state of mind. After all 
 it is a psychological question. And here it is best 
 to see clearly and straight. Labor is the supreme 
 necessity of the fruit-farm. The wage of the 
 laborer is his return for the use he makes of him- 
 self. What is his most profitable use? Is it as 
 he sees himself or as you see him? Essentially it 
 is as world-conditions regulate matters. We are 
 all prisoners of conditions, limitations, needs. 
 Neither he nor you alone determines these. You 
 as a fruit-grower depend upon the world-market; 
 he as a laborer depends the same, through you, or 
 whoever employs him, or gives him an opportunity 
 to contribute to that market. The market condi- 
 tions regulate the number and the wage of laborers 
 in any activity. Farm work requires judicious 
 planning in order to be successful. Horticulture 
 is special farming. It is not "light farming, " — 
 one room and a fireless cooker. Its risks are 
 greater than those of general-farming; its returns 
 are larger. Its labor shares in its conditions: 
 greater skill and larger returns. But all labor on 
 the fruit-farm is not expert. Indeed, most of it 
 is unskilled, or at least is labor which any person, 
 physically able to work, may readily do. It is of 
 its kind and is regulated by demand and supply 
 of its kind. Being unskilled, it is in general de- 
 mand and therefore brings a general wage. But 
 fruit-culture, being a special form of agriculture, 
 requires labor of general skill for a special purpose, 
 which tends to the limitation and selection of the 
 
Getting along with Help 115 
 
 labor and therefore to a higher wage. Being a 
 regular and acknowledged form of agriculture, it 
 gives regular employment, but while, in the aggre- 
 gate, continuously, few of the laborers are required 
 all the year round. It is labor of its kind in season. 
 In spring, the cultivation begins in April and runs, 
 say, till mid-August. In late June, in July, 
 August, September, October, November, there 
 is fruit to pick, pack, and market. In winter, that 
 is between harvest and spring, there is the trim- 
 ming of vineyards and orchards, cutting out old 
 berry brush, and tying grapes; also the applica- 
 tion of some commercial fertilizers to the land. But 
 much of the work on the fruit-farm concentrates 
 within well-defined limits of plant growth, fruit 
 growth, and harvest, adding the pruning season 
 which varies somewhat according to the pressure 
 of work on the farm. The work is of different 
 kinds. Only an expert can trim orchard or vine- 
 yard, but children can pick berries, and any person 
 of ordinary skill can pick grapes, plums, cherries, 
 peaches, prunes, and apples. Horticultural work 
 therefore demands a relay of labor, but not con- 
 tinuously; consequently the laborer must do much 
 within a brief working period. This means piece 
 work and relatively high wages, or no one will 
 find such work desirable. To the owner of the 
 fruit-farm all work is desirable, because if success- 
 ful it is profitable. 
 
 The labor question is largely one of locality. 
 A fruit-farm near a populous center can always 
 
n6 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 secure labor. It may not be, it usually is not, 
 skilled, or even experienced labor, but the art 
 is soon learned. Transportation of the laborers 
 must be provided ; they expect to be carried to and 
 from their homes to their work. If this is not pro- 
 vided, they straggle in at all hours and the work 
 is delayed. Transportation means teams and 
 wagons, drivers and expense. The fruit-farm may 
 house the laborers during the season, as of berries, 
 cherries, grapes, or peaches. This means conven- 
 iences for bed and board and social and moral 
 responsibilities. If the fruit-farm is favorably 
 located for a supply of labor, it has not only in- 
 dependence but additional monetary value. Its 
 owner may the more insist on skill, conduct, 
 promptness, which otherwise he could not hint at, 
 save at the risk of suddenly losing his help. There- 
 fore in selecting a site for a fruit-farm, primary 
 attention should be given to the problem of the 
 supply of labor. On the well-managed farm the 
 same workers find employment year after year. 
 They are treated fairly and generously and, if 
 honest and square, will take a deeper interest in 
 the farm as a permanent source of income. It is 
 transitory help that costs most and is least produc- 
 tive. The ideal fruit-farm has its clientele of help 
 which accounts it a steady asset. There is mutu- 
 ality of interest between fruit-grower and fruit- 
 worker. 
 
 Here may be realized the wisdom of fair, open, 
 just, generous dealing, — not of course wasteful, 
 
Getting along with Help 117 
 
 nor the payment of spasmodic prices which always 
 cause the small fruit-growers apprehension. Labor 
 always prefers the larger field as well as the higher 
 price. Yet workers know a good thing and will 
 come to the man whose fruit-farm is best managed, 
 best equipped, and most productive. It is always 
 the poor manager, the poor fruit-grower, the man 
 of light crops, who has greatest difficulty to secure 
 adequate help. Things breed after their kind; 
 the best workers will always be found on the best 
 farms. 
 
 The whole matter hinges on the character of the 
 manager and the conditions he imposes. You 
 yourself decide the labor question. If labor cannot 
 be had "for love or money" then you must close 
 out. But love of money will work the farm. 
 Right here, however, is the fundamental: Is 
 there enough money in fruit-farming to pay the 
 labor bill, the expense of administration, and to 
 leave enough for a fair interest on the investment? 
 This is more than a local question in the Lake 
 Erie Valley. Railroads, canals, corporations, legis- 
 lation, tariffs, employers' liability acts, combi- 
 nations in restraint of trade, strikes, epidemics, 
 wars, disasters by sea and land, the market, — all 
 affect the fruit-farm. One may be able by reason 
 of location to raise tons of fruit, yet be precluded 
 by adverse conditions from realizing a penny on 
 his crop. This may be said of any business. So 
 far as concerns labor, we all hang or fall together. 
 We cannot escape the conditions of industry. 
 
n8 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 Fruit-growing is a plunge into the game of living ; it 
 is sometimes a gamble. We can only play accord- 
 ing to the rules and abide results. The laborer 
 in the field or the President in the White House 
 can do no more. 
 
 The young man who is contemplating fruit- 
 growing as a vocation will find himself in the same 
 world as he who takes up manufacturing, engineer- 
 ing, or one of the black arts — law, medicine, or 
 theology. The fundamental question with each 
 is, "Am I supplying anything the world must 
 have? " It is the problem of securing a dependable 
 clientele, or, in other words, a steady market. 
 
 Does the world want apples, cherries, grapes, 
 currants, strawberries, prunes, peaches? 
 
 Can you raise them? 
 
 Can you deliver them to the market? 
 
 Do you want to raise them and deliver them? 
 
 Do you want to do this more than you want to 
 do anything else? 
 
 Or would you just as soon make shoes? Or 
 clerk in a store? Or keep books? Or ring up 
 fares in a trolley-car? Or practice law? Or 
 preach? Or run for office? 
 
 " 'Tis in ourselves, not in our stars, that we are 
 underlings." 
 
 The world will always eat fruit; indeed, in 
 America the fruit-eating habit is spreading. Our 
 hundred millions will soon become hundreds of 
 millions of inhabitants, and each will eat fruit. 
 The land area is not increasing. Fruit regions 
 
Getting along with Help 119 
 
 are limited both in extent and in number. The 
 proportion of demand of fruit to supply must in- 
 crease. Fruit-growing as an industry is as stable 
 as any branch of farming. Contrast it to fox- 
 raising as undertaken on Prince Edward's Island. 
 Will black fox always be in fashion? Will fruit 
 always be in fashion? May fashion change in 
 preference for silver fox skins? Will people drop 
 out fruit for meat and cereals? Or will they con- 
 sume fruit for health as well as because of the 
 cost of cereals and meat? 
 
 Here are some of the fundamentals to be weighed 
 by the would-be fruit-grower. At present every 
 vocation that can be called old is crowded and 
 the rush for the new portends a speedy supply. 
 There is now a rush for the land — a "return to 
 the soil." The explanation lies in the ceaseless 
 struggle for existence. The land question is the 
 great question for all the world — the very great 
 question in every civilized country. Land-grab- 
 bing is the history of nations. The land means 
 a livelihood, therefore, get land. Old-fashioned 
 farming lingers somewhat in ill repute; new- 
 fashioned farming means millions of money in- 
 vested by syndicates and mere stock-holding, as 
 evidence of claims to participation in profits from 
 the land. "A fruit-farm for me ; a neat sort of life ; 
 a bank account," is the dream of many a young 
 man now surveying his hopes. 
 
 Farming, like many another large activity, is 
 breaking up into special activities: dairying, stock- 
 
120 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 raising, poultry-raising, duck-farming, truck-farm- 
 ing, mushroom-raising, fruit-growing. In the old 
 days one farm attempted to do all of these; to-day, 
 one farmer raises wheat; another, vegetables; 
 another, berries ; another, peaches ; another, grapes ; 
 another, cherries ; another, apples. The day of the 
 division of labor has reached the land, just as it 
 long since reached engineering, law, and medicine. 
 Each new agricultural specialty is an undiscovered 
 country; a new world, which the young man, alive 
 to his opportunities, hastens to exploit. Turn to 
 the catalogue of one of the great universities and 
 note the division and subdivision of instruction. 
 The story is told of Cornell University that in an 
 early day, President White, who was far ahead of 
 his times in matters academic, wrote to a certain 
 professor at Brown inquiring whether he would 
 accept the chair of History, or Political Science, 
 or Economics. Promptly came the reply, "Yes, 
 all." The President is said to have informed the 
 accomplished professor that the Trustees had 
 established a chair, not a settee. Farms are be- 
 coming chairs and ceasing to be settees. Speciali- 
 zation in farming is only one aspect of modern 
 industrial life. Whatever the specialization on the 
 farm, it is a vocation which demands expert 
 knowledge, and because it demands such knowl- 
 edge it is a vocation. Old-fashioned farming was 
 a general occupation ; the new farming is a special 
 labor. And deeper than this, farming, as the 
 world is beginning to realize, is a very difficult 
 
Getting along with Help 121 
 
 business, demanding other knowledge than mere 
 rule of thumb. The earth, the soil, is a chemical 
 laboratory whose operations must be understood 
 if the supply of food is to equal the demand. The 
 world must starve on old-fashioned methods of 
 farming. Here again it is "grinding necessity" 
 that calls men back to the land. The truth is that 
 we know very little about the land as the producer 
 of food. We have here and there slightly scratched 
 its surface, exhausted its vitality, and ignored its 
 chemistry. By chemistry we do not mean a shelf 
 of dirty bottles filled with mysterious fluids which 
 burn, or of boxes of curious salts which unexpected- 
 ly explode. It is not a case of freshman chemistry. 
 We mean that the earth is a storehouse, a labora- 
 tory of infinite resources. Everything from the 
 soil; everything back to the soil, — this is the cycle 
 of the world before our eyes. Whence follows the 
 fundamental importance of the soil. And this 
 importance, recognized however partially in our 
 day, explains the present interest in all forms of 
 farming. 
 
 Then too, in our day, our country is no longer 
 isolated, or its numerous business centers and 
 local markets inaccessible; the railroads, the trolley 
 lines, the automobile bring the American world 
 together. Youth loves companionship, not soli- 
 tude, and the fruit-farm of to-day is a suburb. 
 Women set the pace of life and diversion is within 
 reach of the farmer. Excessive urbanity, if I may 
 use the word as meaning city-ness, wearies, yes, 
 
122 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 wears out its votaries, and human nature revolts 
 against too much — or too little — evening dress. 
 The strain and stifle of big business, filtering down 
 upon clerks and employees, leaves an insatiable 
 yearning for the poise of the country. Nature 
 will have her own. Yet there is quite as much 
 sanity in city as in country life; the lines of least 
 resistance lead to the country rather than to the 
 city; to the fruit-farm rather than to the clerkship 
 in a down-town office. Salaries are low; the cost 
 of living, high; promotion, slow; the prizes few 
 and mostly bespoken by favorites of fortune rather 
 than by the Girards, the Stewarts who to-day are 
 keeping books or handling the yard-stick. The 
 freedom of the country has greater charm than the 
 freedom of the city. 
 
 Then, too, there is profit in fruit-farming, — not 
 the sudden profit of the oil-regions in the old days; 
 or of the mines; or of the Stock-Exchange, but the 
 steady, reliable profit of a sound business eminently 
 respectable. Thus the fruit-farm seems along the 
 line of least resistance to the young man of energy 
 and specially to him of uncertain health. Wealth 
 accumulates and men decay, and the delicate sons 
 of fortune now seek health in orchard and vineyard. 
 America is now old enough and rich enough to turn 
 to fruit-farming. The Old World has been trying 
 it for centuries. Cato, who wrote on farming 
 nearly two centuries before the Christian era, 
 reads like a modern horticultural writer; and this 
 because farming, real farming, never grows old. 
 
Getting along with Help 123 
 
 It is a classic labor, and the classic, whatever its 
 form, is immortal. Before many years the avail- 
 able fruit-land of our country will have been taken 
 up. Chemical and horticultural knowledge will 
 in later times, and yet at no very distant time, turn 
 to land now ignored, and convert it into fruit - 
 plantations. It is improbable that any fruit-land 
 will be abandoned. On the contrary, the best 
 located fruit -lands will increase in value, though 
 not, relatively, in productive power, save as 
 intensively cultivated. This is the condition on 
 the continent of Europe, and notably in Germany. 
 Pressure of population means necessary intensive 
 cultivation of the land. The problem of fruit- 
 growing is therefore one of knowledge, increasing 
 with experiment and experience. 
 
 The fruit-grower depends upon labor; without 
 it, soil, productivity, location, are as nothing. 
 Fruit-growing is a special business and requires 
 expert knowledge in the grower. Here it is the 
 attitude of the grower towards labor that largely 
 determines the labor question. In America, as 
 the years pass, there is less and less disposition 
 for one man to work for another. The relation 
 between employer and employee is more or less 
 strained and the tension makes or mars the crop. 
 As yet labor has not learned that it may not 
 become the employer rather than the employed. 
 The very easiness of life in America has bred our 
 labor difficulties. No man is willing to settle down 
 for life as a laborer. The rise from poverty to 
 
124 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 riches, of employee to employer; of day laborer 
 to owner of the plant, is a familiar tradition; infre- 
 quent in fact, and more familiar in the past than 
 it can be in the future. Fundamentally it is a 
 question of natural resources. So long as there 
 remain undeveloped resources, of magnitude, in 
 America, such as was the entire continent for 
 generations, the transition from poverty to riches, 
 conspicuous in the iron and steel, the lumber, the 
 copper, the coal, lead, and oil interests in past 
 times, may confidently be expected. The chances 
 diminish in geometrical proportion as population 
 increases. This is the history of all older countries. 
 All men in America believe, or profess to believe, 
 that they are born free and equal, but no man 
 believes that he was born to remain a mere, un- 
 skilled laborer. Granting full scope to the doctrine 
 of equality, we know by observation, and doubtless 
 by experience, that all men are not born to be 
 employers of labor. In other words, it does not 
 appear that all men in America are born, industri- 
 ally considered, very differently than are all men 
 in other civilized lands. But it does appear, in 
 every country, more and more as time passes, that 
 the station in which a man is born is the station 
 in which he will live and die. This is inevitable. 
 All the phenomenal rise of captains of industry, 
 multi-millionaires, favorites of fortune and of 
 Congress, characterize this our earlier national 
 history, — if the word national can be so applied. 
 The trend, the world over, is toward fixidity of 
 
Getting along with Help 125 
 
 conditions. There remain no continents to ex- 
 plore; the opportunities which were distinctively 
 American, cannot recur. Democracy moves ever 
 towards the goal of fixidity of privilege, because it 
 moves toward equality. 
 
 Fruit-growing is one of the opportunities of the 
 present, as was the conquest of Mexico by Cortes 
 and his band in the past. Specialization always 
 means an opportunity for labor as well as for capital. 
 In a new specialty wages are always high. They 
 are high to-day in horticulture. So long as fruit 
 sells for good prices, the "labor question," as the 
 phrase goes, will not embarrass the fruit-farm. 
 Break and scatter the fruit-market and wages on 
 fruit-farms must fall. Strengthen the market; 
 establish the fruit-eating clientele; get all our 
 people to consume many times their present 
 consumption of fruit, and wages on fruit-farms will 
 rise. The wage problem on the fruit-farm is the 
 problem of supply and demand; of expert service 
 and of unskilled labor; of widening or decaying 
 markets ; of the habits of our people, whether they 
 become and remain notably a fruit-eating people. 
 The laborer is but one cog in an immense wheel; 
 he is not his own master no more than is the fruit- 
 grower. World conditions crib, cabin, and confine 
 both employer and employee. 
 
 Facing present conditions, or the aspect of these 
 which we interpret, the prospect is of betterment. 
 As yet we have not begun to raise, much less to 
 consume, fruit. Our climate compels us to eat 
 
126 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 fruit as an essential food. Ours is a stimulating, a 
 trying, an exhausting climate, variable, change- 
 able, capricious, wet, dry, hot, cold, — a climate of 
 sudden extremes. In some American valleys a 
 change of forty degrees in forty-eight hours is not 
 uncommon at any season of the year. This is due 
 to location, — the valley lying, for instance, like 
 that of Lake Erie, along the edge of two vast 
 basins, — the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. 
 But America as a climatic world is the home of 
 petty tumult, revolts, revolutions of heat and 
 cold, of drouth and rainfall. Grinding necessity 
 will keep us a temperate — that is, a non-alcoholic 
 people. The alcoholic peoples inhabit the British 
 Isles, Scandinavia, Russia at the north. These 
 regions are not a fruit-land as is ours, or as is 
 southern Europe. Germany, France, and Italy are 
 less alcoholic than England, Scotland, and Ireland. 
 Switzerland resembles England, as does Russia, 
 Finland, and northern Hungary. But all Europe 
 is less a fruit-country than is all America. The 
 time is not far away when our country will be ex- 
 porting to Europe all our fruits that bear carriage. 
 Europe will import wines from America, — an 
 importation already begun. Paradoxical as this 
 may seem, it is written in the law of climate. 
 Florida, Texas, California, and other vast and 
 favored fruit-regions of America will monopolize 
 the world's production of oranges, lemons, grape- 
 fruit, figs, olives, raisin-grapes, wines, dried and 
 canned fruits. Already America, including Canada 
 
Getting along with Help 127 
 
 and its neighbors, monopolizes the apple-trade of 
 the world. 
 
 This means that our fruit-market is a world- 
 market. There will be no exception: apples, 
 peaches, prunes, cherries, apricots, English wal- 
 nuts, chestnuts, pecans, hazel-nuts, and berries of 
 all kinds. The outlook therefore is encouraging 
 for the fruit-grower. Labor seeks opportunity, 
 and fruit-raising will give more and more employ- 
 ment to labor, at fair, if not at high wages. Fruit- 
 growing will become more and more a profession, 
 a business, demanding expert preparation and 
 service. And expert labor of any kind is always 
 well paid. The market being the world-at-large, 
 the demand for fruits must increase. Americans 
 who have traveled in all lands have remarked 
 again and again on the presence of American food- 
 stuffs, — canned goods, prepared fruits, of familiar 
 brands. The Arab in the desert breakfasts on 
 fruits prepared and preserved in American fac- 
 tories. Sailors in seas most remote are served 
 American-made foods. Savages — the curious few 
 who remain — barter skins, feathers, and totems for 
 a jar of Pittsburgh pickles. The price of fruits as 
 compared with that of other foods must remain 
 fair, and the fruit-grower must therefore pay fair 
 wages for labor. 
 
 All transportation companies will consider the 
 fruit-grower, not altruistically unless compelled 
 to; but the aggregate freight to be hauled from 
 orchards, vineyards, from berry and truck fields 
 
Getting along with Help 129 
 
 to include quite all sorts and conditions of men. 
 Directly the fruit interests of the country are 
 imperilled by insect or fungus, or by commercial 
 discriminations, or by governmental folly, or by 
 the even greater folly of ignorance among fruit- 
 growers themselves, then it appears how important 
 are these interests to the world of labor. And yet 
 there are always men and women to be found who 
 are in a hurry to kill the goose that lays the golden 
 
 egg- 
 In recent years both Congress and the State 
 Legislatures have enacted many laws vitally affect- 
 ing farming in all its branches. Granting that 
 the general purpose of this mass of legislation is for 
 the betterment of all people, nevertheless some of 
 this legislation has been distinctively hostile to the 
 farmer. He is the basis and foundation in our 
 economic structure. It is right and proper that 
 he put up sound fruit, that he give full measure, 
 that he mark his products so that the consumer 
 may know precisely the quantity, quality, and 
 variety he is buying. The so-called "Pure Food" 
 "Employers' Liability," and "Package" laws 
 have this desirable end in view. But these 
 laws are not infrequently drawn by men who 
 have no practical knowledge of farming, what- 
 soever branch may be affected by the law. It 
 follows that hostile legislation — perhaps unwit- 
 tingly enacted — places the farmer at a great dis- 
 advantage. For instance, it is desirable to have 
 an employers' liability act for all occupations more 
 
1 30 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 or less dangerous. But as our Supreme Court has 
 read the word "reasonable" into the Sherman Act, 
 we may conclude that an unreasonable law is no 
 law. Farm labor is entitled to protection. The 
 negligence of employers, when farmers, must be 
 checked as among other employers. Rotten 
 ladders, vicious horses, rotten harness, wagons, 
 barn-floors, and the like exist by the culpable 
 negligence of the owner. But the laborer must 
 also take care. Is the farmer responsible for the 
 accident which befalls an employee who ignores all 
 counsel as to danger? Should the land, the farm 
 itself, be made answerable for such culpability 
 and the farmer by law be denied any defense? Has 
 the farmer a right to show that he was not in any 
 way contributory to the injury received? Should 
 it be the presumption of the law that the farmer 
 is guilty of contributory negligence and, as in the 
 old English law of libel, — "The greater the truth, 
 the greater the libel," the more serious the injury 
 received by the employee, the greater the negli- 
 gence of the employer? Farmers seem incapable 
 of organizing for their own interests. The labor 
 question is, after all, the great practical question 
 in fruit-farming. 
 
V 
 
 THE CULTIVATION OF THE FRUIT-FARM 
 
 CULTIVATION of the soil is keeping its drain- 
 age system — that is, its circulation — in order. 
 The circulation of the blood in our bodies ceasing, 
 life ceases. The circulation of soluble plant-food 
 in the soil ceasing, plant-growth, plant-life cease. 
 So long as the plant is growing and ripening its 
 fruit, cultivation furthers growth. But we must 
 remember that we do not raise plants as does 
 Nature in the wild. We demand as food the 
 fattened leaf, root, bulb, tuber, stem, stalk, or 
 pulp. The grape-seed, or fruit proper, is useless 
 to us; the juice and pulp are food. We culti- 
 vate- the fruit orchard, or the vineyard, not for 
 seed, but for pulp. Therefore all our labor is 
 concentrated upon doing, quite abnormally a 
 mere part of the whole which Nature under- 
 takes. We eat the pulp of the fruit and cast 
 the seed away, as of cherries, peaches, plums, 
 prunes, apples, pears, apricots, grapes, berries of 
 all kinds, currants; not the fruit or seed of po- 
 tato, turnip,* beet, or radish, but tuber, or root. 
 The whole problem of fruit-culture is to con- 
 
 131 
 
132 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 centrate plant-growth at one stage, or in some 
 part of plant-development. 
 
 We are fattening the goose, not for eggs, but for 
 swollen, overgrown livers. We raise ostriches for 
 feathers; we grow vineyards for juice and pulp, 
 not for grape-seeds. Our problem then is to deflect 
 the vitality of the plant toward the abnormal over- 
 production of a particular part or organ. We 
 are ever breaking the balance of the plant's life. 
 This emphasis on the part accounts for many, if 
 not for most, of the diseases of our cultivated 
 plants. Rarely is a plant in the wild diseased. 
 There, it is true, only the fittest and favored sur- 
 vive, but the millions that perish die of starvation, 
 not of disease. Cultivated plants die of disease 
 brought on by overfeeding, or weakening one 
 part at the expense of another. Thus dwarf 
 varieties of fruit are always less hardy than the 
 normal stock, and shorter-lived. The three hun- 
 dred and more varieties of grapes are three hun- 
 dred and more times as susceptible to disease as 
 the wild vine. There is a law of compensation 
 that runs through all fruit-growing: the more 
 delicate the quality and gross the quantity of a 
 fruit, the more liable is it to suffer from disease. 
 The so-called "finest varieties" are rarely hardy. 
 
 It is best to understand at the very outset in 
 fruit-growing, that we are engaged in a somewhat 
 artificial business. We seek to produce our kind of 
 fruit, whether or not it is Nature's, and yet we 
 demand that the tree or vine shall maintain its 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 133 
 
 health. We stimulate men to propagate varieties 
 of fruit which emphasize, exaggerate, overdevelop 
 some quality or aspect of the plant at the cost of 
 atrophy of some other part, and usually of all as- 
 sociated parts. In other words, in fruit-growing we 
 are aiming at a very fine, possibly a very obscure, 
 mark on the bull's eye, and insisting that this is 
 our true center. We are particularizing, specializ- 
 ing, propagating leaf, stalk, or seed-pulp, at the 
 expense of the rest of the plant. We must there- 
 fore follow strictly a particular procedure, or we 
 shall fail of our particular purpose. 
 
 In fruit-culture all is included in the care of the 
 plant. This care means the concentration of the 
 plant's energies upon the production of what we 
 want. We are tampering with the plant's balance 
 of powers. This we do by budding, grafting, 
 trimming, and feeding the plant. But in order to 
 make plant-food available we must keep the soil 
 drained. This we do by cultivating the surface. 
 There is only one rule in cultivation: Early and 
 often. 
 
 Budding and grafting are expert work done at 
 the nursery, rarely on the farm. The fruit- 
 grower's work begins with trimming, or pruning, 
 as a means of concentrating the vitality of the 
 plant upon the production of such fruit as he 
 wants. The best orchard or vineyard or berry 
 patch always looks young, thrifty, strong in latent 
 vigor. The orchardist trims with a sharp knife 
 and a fine saw and never cuts off a large limb save 
 
134 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 of necessity. A storm breaks down the tree or 
 disease infects a limb. Then we do as best we 
 can, and may be obliged to cut away a large limb. 
 This shocks the tree, possibly even to death. 
 Disease in the form of myriads of spores of fungi, 
 at times floating in the air, promptly enters the 
 wound. To prevent this we seal it against such 
 invasion by a coat of tar or paint, which will resist 
 wind and weather. If the scar is not too great, and 
 the tree too old or too weak, the wound will heal 
 over under an ample growth of bark. But we 
 must not keep the tree ever healing scars. It is 
 like keeping a man in hospital. In cutting the 
 limb we make the cut at an angle to shed water, 
 and as close to the body, or main stalk, as may be 
 so as to give the tree as little healing to do as we 
 may. Bad trimming kills as many trees, or makes 
 them unfruitful, as do fungi or insects. The art of 
 pruning cannot be learned wholly from books. 
 It is the tree we are conserving. Nowadays we 
 train our fruit-trees to head and fruit low, for ease 
 in harvest. We head them back at every trim- 
 ming; we admit sunshine from circumference to 
 center and seek constantly to secure short, straight, 
 strong trunks, with branches well balanced to the 
 four winds. The rule is to keep the top in balance. 
 The time to trim is when your pruning knife is 
 open and sharp and you see what should be done. 
 Winter, the leafless time, is usually when the 
 trimming is done, and chiefly because the orchard - 
 ist can then best attend to it. In summer the 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 135 
 
 chapter of accidents is written by wind and storm 
 (even as in winter) and you must cut out bruised 
 branches. Doubtless the best time to trim is at 
 any time after the fruit is picked and before the 
 tree starts growing in the spring. The order in 
 trimming is sprouts, twigs, branches, limbs. Note 
 the order. In cutting off either, you concentrate 
 what remains upon the work you want done. 
 
 Do you want quantity or quality of fruit? You 
 trim accordingly. Trimming off branches or 
 thinning the newly-set fruit is the same thing in 
 kind. Nothing is gained by over-fruiting. Some 
 trees, under our artificial orchard life, will fruit 
 themselves to death. Nature takes a preventive 
 hand in the game by blowing off thousands of 
 blossoms, later, by cutting out thousands of newly- 
 set fruit, and latest, by covering the ground be- 
 neath with rejected apples, cherries, peaches, and 
 pears. No tree can mature all its blossoms. As 
 a last stroke, the wind winds up the tree in a crash 
 of ruin. If you want fruit of first quality and size, 
 thin out to taste, which means that you fill more 
 baskets with fewer peaches or prunes and get a 
 larger price than were you to let all the fruit that 
 forms struggle toward an unattainable maturity. 
 
 Some trees require but little pruning, as cherries 
 and the plum family generally; others require 
 much, as apples and peaches. Of grape-trimming 
 I have already spoken. The safe rule for all fruit- 
 plants is to cut out dead and superfluous growth. 
 But the difficulty is to determine what is superflu- 
 
136 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 ous. Orchard trimming begins at planting and 
 continues during the life of the tree. During the 
 first five years the shape of the tree is fixed. Avoid 
 the two-limbed or Y-shaped trunk, which is a 
 constant invitation for the wind to split. Three 
 or four limbs in balance give the true form. If you 
 cannot avoid the two-limbed trunk, and wind or 
 snow or ice or heavy crop split the tree, you may 
 perhaps save your tree, even for years of service, 
 by bolting the split limbs together and holding the 
 limbs above the split by a few wire strings, care- 
 fully protecting the bark against the wire by means 
 of pieces of wood. By twisting the wire like a 
 tourniquet you may ease the strain on the bolt. 
 The tree may grow together and serve you many 
 years; but you will have to watch the wire, insert 
 new blocks of wood, and favor the tree by rather 
 heavier trimming than usual. A hoop, or chain, or 
 wire should never be allowed to come directly 
 against the bark; it will girdle the limb. The 
 crevice in the split may well be filled with grafting 
 wax or tar or paint to keep out water. If the tree 
 is one in a large orchard and is young, prudence will 
 root it out and set another in its place. The 
 supreme rule of the orchard is to have only strong, 
 healthy bearing trees. Weaklings take all the la- 
 bor and amount to nothing. It is best to supplant 
 all old trees, which are past their prime, by new 
 ones. The added profit of the new tree will com- 
 pensate for the loss of the old one. Remember that 
 it is the best trees which pay all the expenses of the 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 137 
 
 inferior ones. Therefore have as few poor ones as 
 possible. Strawberries are best trimmed by setting 
 a new bed every year. Raspberries, dewberries, 
 and blackberries must be trimmed annually by 
 cutting out the old canes. Currants require some 
 trimming, but chiefly of dead wood, broken canes, 
 and superfluous sprouts. Gooseberries must be 
 trimmed to keep them within bounds. 
 
 Of tree fruit the peach ever tends to overgrowth 
 of foliage and therefore bears vigorous trimming; 
 no other tree so much. "Heading back" is the 
 rule with peaches. Such trimming prolongs the 
 life of the tree and prevents its reaching an un- 
 manageable height. Trimming the tree low pre- 
 vents wind-break and all its evils. But greatest 
 care must be taken to make clean cuts, close to the 
 body of limb or trunk, and, if possible, to paint all 
 large wounds. The tree, if healthy, soon grows a 
 cover of bark over small cuts. When the tree has 
 been lacerated by wind-breakage, the bruise 
 should be cut down smooth and painted over 
 against rot and disease. Sweet cherry trees are 
 brittle, are subject to the borer and to rot. High 
 winds play havoc with them, and ice storms are 
 their great enemy. It is always perilous to risk 
 much weight on the limb of the tree. I do not 
 speak here of tree-diseases but of trimming. One 
 can soon discover which of his trees grow slowly, 
 which rapidly. The rapid growers require heaviest 
 pruning. Fruit of quality means abundant sun- 
 light ; therefore the rule is for open centers. Earth 
 
138 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 and sun will do the rest. An open center does not 
 mean a cave, or a shell-like top. It means ventila- 
 tion and sunlight : no more. Pruning and trimming 
 may be perennial. Carry your pruning-knife in 
 your pocket and trim at any time; tar and paint- 
 pot are not needed when you use the knife. 
 
 Grapevines must be tied as well as trimmed. 
 They must hang in the air, not lie on the ground. 
 Grape-trimming, in the Lake Shore Valley, is the 
 winter job. It may begin as soon as the grapes 
 are picked and the leaves have fallen; it must be 
 finished before the sap starts in the spring. But 
 every wind brings down the vines and calls out 
 men and women with their bunches of string, cut 
 in length, to tie up the vines again to the wires. 
 When the vineyard is trimmed and the canes — 
 three or four in number — are fastened to the 
 wires, short lengths of a fine wire are used. No 
 small part of the expense of running a vineyard is 
 caused by the trimming and tying of the vines, 
 particularly the tying after a high wind. When 
 the vines are trimmed and tied and the brush has 
 been hauled out from the rows and burned, the 
 vineyard is ready for cultivation. This begins as 
 soon as you can work the land ; whence the desira- 
 bility of having "early land" — that is, light 
 gravel, or loam, as against a stiff, heavy clay. Yet 
 the heavy clay land, though it cannot be worked 
 early, produces grapes fine in quality and abun- 
 dantly. But it is hard ground to work and there- 
 fore the more expensive. In the Lake Shore Valley 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 139 
 
 it is cheaper in price and lies along and near the 
 summit of the hills. It is higher above the sea 
 level than the gravel and loam lands of the Valley ; 
 higher by from one hundred to a thousand feet. 1 
 
 The manner of cultivating a vineyard is not a 
 matter of common agreement among fruit-growers. 
 They are unanimous that the vineyard should be 
 cultivated, — but of details let no man speak, ex- 
 pecting every man's approval. Following the prin- 
 ciples of plant -growth, it is evident that the time 
 in which to cultivate a vineyard is while the 
 vines are growing. We cultivate both for vine 
 and for fruit. When vineyards were first planted 
 in the Valley, from 1855 to i860, and for some 
 thirty years later, fruit-growers thought only of the 
 fruit, taking the growth of vine for granted; but 
 since 1890, the vine food, so to speak, in the soil 
 has decreased and the vines have been stimulated 
 
 1 The mean level of Lake Erie is 572.8 feet above mean sea level. 
 The land of the Lake Erie Valley rises rapidly from the lake level; 
 indeed the beach is narrow, — rarely more than three rods, and most of 
 the shore is a series of bluffs, quite steep, overhanging the beach from 
 fifty to two hundred feet. From the top of the bluff the land rises in 
 successive waves which form the floor of the Valley. This is from two 
 to two and one half miles wide to the foot of the hills, at the south. 
 The hillside is a gradual rise, attaining to the crest, or fruit-limit, at 
 the south, a height of from seven hundred and fifty to thirteen hundred 
 feet. There are fields of gravel and of clay both in the Valley proper 
 and on the hillsides. The gravel and loam is common south of the 
 fruit-limit. This limit coincides precisely with the area ventilated 
 by the lake winds. Practically all land from which the lake is visible 
 is fruit-land. The frost line mentioned in the third chapter marks 
 accurately the line along which the lake may be seen. In later years 
 fruit-culture has been pushed well up to this line and somewhat dis- 
 astrously to the south of it. 
 
140 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 to bear fruit, often at the expense of the vine and 
 to the serious injury of the vineyard. We hear, 
 therefore, nowadays of "the growth of wood" 
 as little or great, and men are learning "no vine, 
 no wine." 
 
 First, last, and all the time the fruit-grower 
 needs a strong, healthy vine. Stable manure 
 in quantity is needed, or its equivalent. This 
 means, with the disappearance of cattle and hogs 
 and stock from our fruit valleys, that resort must 
 henceforth be had to cover-crops plowed in, — 
 the clovers, vetches, beans, and turnips. If you 
 can begin the cultivation of your vineyard by 
 plowing in a heavy cover of barnyard manure, or 
 a heavy growth of some cover-crop, you are taking 
 no uncertain step towards profit. Which clover 
 you shall use, — crimson, mammoth, or Alsach, or 
 whatsoever this crop may be, you sowed it the 
 season before, directly you had completed your 
 year's cultivation of the vineyard. This means 
 not later than the opening days of August, or even 
 two weeks earlier, — as the season may permit. It 
 is a stiff job plowing a vigorous growth of clover, 
 in bloom, and the more complete the growth the 
 more valuable as fertilizer. The requisite is 
 perfect turning of the sod so as to make a clean 
 job. Then follow in succession, the season 
 through, disc-plowing, horse-hoeing, hand-hoeing, 
 cultivating with the two-horse cultivator, — the 
 number of times all this is done depending upon 
 the capacity of the fruit-grower to raise grapes. 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 141 
 
 What is needed is thorough stirring (drainage) 
 of the ground. If your land is like an ash heap and 
 is full of humus, you have done your work right. 
 You keep down the weeds in order to stir and drain 
 the soil. You stir the soil so as to keep its food 
 supply in circulation. Grapes root both wide and 
 deep; they tap the soil at top and bottom. They 
 endure moderate heat (75°-90°) and protracted 
 drouth, provided your soil is like an ash-heap and 
 filled with humus. The color and size of leaf and 
 the length of vine of the summer's growth test the 
 health of your vineyard. The grape blossoms in 
 mid- June, in the Lake Shore Valley; in mid-July the 
 growth of vine is sweeping the ground between 
 the rows and the leaf is of full size. In mid- August 
 the grapes are two-thirds full size and the leaves 
 are shading into brown and curling at the edge. 
 In mid-September the brown has darkened, the 
 leaves are becoming brittle, the fruit is of a tint 
 of red. In mid-October the leaf has ceased its 
 functions and here and there lies dead beneath the 
 rows; the fruit is purple and odorous. The pickers 
 are in the field and the harvest is on. If your 
 vineyard turns brown in July, or early August, 
 you may know that your land lacks humus and 
 nitrogen; that your vines have not enough to eat. 
 You will discover that the feeble vines have stunted 
 and scraggly bunches. "Feed your vine and make 
 your wine, " is the old German proverb. 
 
 If you have made your soil aright, you have fed 
 the vineyard both for vine and fruit. You have 
 
142 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 kept your team and men at work till late July, ever 
 cultivating the soil. Then, when the ground is 
 like an ash-heap and cultivation is over, you sow 
 (or drill) your cover-crop, to be plowed in for 
 nitrogen next year. If you are fortunate and get 
 in your clover seed just before a rain, it will germi- 
 nate in three days, under an August sky. By the 
 time snow flies, your clover will quite cover the 
 ground and stand nine inches high. Whatever 
 nitrogenous cover-crop is used, its value depends 
 upon the growth it has made when plow-time comes 
 in the spring. This means as early as possible 
 sowing the previous season and this cannot be 
 earlier than the last cultivation of the vineyard. 
 It is not the clover top but the clover root that 
 stores up the desired nitrogen in the soil for avail- 
 able use. Really the cover-crop is under ground, 
 though we commonly measure its value by leaf, 
 stem, and blossom. In order to get an early sowing 
 of this cover-crop, the fruit-grower must have 
 begun his spring plowing as soon as the weather 
 permitted. Early begin, early win. It is the late 
 summer and the fall growth of the clover that gives 
 it worth ; or, if let grow and blossom in spring, all 
 haste must be made in order to get in the culti- 
 vation necessary during May, June, and July. 
 August cultivation is largely merely marking 
 time. While we do not raise fruit in order to 
 raise a cover-crop of clover, vetch, or turnips, 
 these must be raised and must sufficiently mature 
 to be of use, or we must apply barnyard manure. 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 143 
 
 There is no other way of securing humus in the 
 soil. 
 
 It is therefore on schedule time that the cultiva- 
 tion of the vineyard must be done. Delays here 
 are not merely dangerous, — they are fatal. As you 
 ride through the Lake Shore Valley inspecting 
 fruit-farms in July — the best time to judge their 
 condition — you will discover that orchards and 
 vineyards — indeed all crops, in soil like an ash- 
 heap and filled with humus — deep, moist soil — 
 are always of a dark green color; the growth of wood 
 is abundant as their canes, well-fruited, will attest. 
 The presence of weeds does not always show neglect 
 of the orchard or vineyard. It is the hard, baked 
 soil, the old stubborn sod, the wire and quack- 
 grass, the goldenrod and the milkweed, the sour- 
 dock and the sorrel at which you take warning. 
 If the ground beneath the grape-row is green with 
 chickweed you may know that the soil is rich and 
 mellow. Chickweed is potash growing and has no 
 superior as a friend to the fruit-grower. It never 
 is seen on poor soil. Were I asked to name the 
 simplest, surest test of a well-fed soil, I would ask, 
 Does it grow chickweed? July is rather early 
 for this little friend, but if you have cultivated your 
 vineyard aright, it comes of itself. In September 
 the soil seems surcharged with its tiny seeds (Who 
 ever saw one?) eager to germinate, to cover your 
 land with a thick, green cover, which will be a 
 winter blanket protecting your plantation. And 
 there are other weeds which are good signs, — as 
 
144 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 pigweed and burdock which mean rich, moist 
 soil. But the daisy, the gypsumweed, mean 
 hard, lean land, neglected, and the brown grass 
 on untilled land means soil-starvation. Nature 
 abhors naked earth, and hastens to cover it over 
 with a blanket of green; grass if she can, weeds 
 if she must. I believe in a well-covered soil in 
 winter ; a well-cultivated soil in spring and summer ; 
 a food-filled soil in autumn. Left to herself, 
 Nature grows grass and weeds on our plantation. 
 Then come November winds and December snows, 
 and freezing and thawing of the earth in January 
 and February, and the weariness of March and its 
 desolation. If the earth is well covered by a 
 matting of straw, dead grasses, weeds, even a 
 blanket of snow, — shrub, tree, or vine will suffer no 
 harm. Raw, uncovered land in winter is leached 
 by storm, by rain, snow, and ice, and so loses its 
 virtues. The snow is our friend if we can get it to 
 lie still, even to the depth of a foot on the ground. 
 But if it blows hither and yon and the land is 
 swept by the besom of the storm, now covered with 
 snow, now bare-blown, the surface freezing and 
 bleaching, vast injury is done. The surface 
 drainage of the soil is quite destroyed and alternate 
 freezing and thawing of the earth means death to 
 many a tree and vine. In some vineyards, planted 
 in stiff, strong clay, the vines will be quite thrown 
 out of ground, so that the first horse-hoeing quite 
 completes the ruin, if the tool is held by a careless 
 hand. It is usual, all over the Valley, to horse- 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit- Farm 145 
 
 hoe a last time just before sowing the cover-crop. 
 This raises a ridge of earth against the vines to a 
 height of eight or even ten inches and protects them 
 against too severe extremes of wintry weather. 
 
 The stock of tree or vine is small part of its 
 feeding organs. These are the rootlets, deep in 
 the soil, or spread a few inches beneath the sur- 
 face. It is these surface roots, within the reach of 
 the frost, which we protect summer and winter. If 
 the snow overlays them to a depth of a foot or 
 more, and remains all winter long, the soil never 
 bared to the frost, it will keep an even temperature, 
 and if the snow is deep enough the ground will not 
 freeze. A permanent snow cover is one of Nature's 
 means of protecting the soil. Weeds, grass, and 
 cover-crops generally catch and hold the snow and 
 keep it quiet the winter long. The scantier the 
 snowfall the greater the need of the cover-crop. 
 Thus the clover and the vetch serve as faithfully 
 in winter as in spring when they are plowed in 
 to feed the plant. It is like an overcoat in winter 
 and a loaf of bread the rest of the year. I attach 
 greatest importance to blanketing the soil in winter 
 with snow and a matting of straw, clover, vetch, 
 grass, weeds, and especially chickweed. Nearly 
 every fruit-farm has some hillock or slope that is 
 swept by the winds and washed by the rains. It 
 washes rather than drains. The snows never cover 
 it in winter and it is difficult to get a "catch" of 
 any cover-crop in summer. It is the hard, barren, 
 unprofitable spot on the farm. The only thing to 
 
146 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 be done with it is to cover heavily with stable 
 manure to secure humus, and to apply the com- 
 mercial fertilizers more generously than elsewhere 
 on the farm. It is the most expensive spot on the 
 plantation. If such spots are many, you better 
 own some other land, for this spot is expensive to 
 work, difficult to keep in health, unfriendly to 
 tree or vine, and productive, if at all, of fruit small 
 in quantity and poor in quality. Some fruit- 
 growers choose such hillocks for orchard sites, 
 under the unreasonable tradition that trees like 
 hillsides and hilltops. Doubtless you can raise 
 trees — rather poor trees, — but you will have 
 difficulty in raising fruit on such spots. Some 
 fruit-growers, knowing no better, and owning many 
 such barren cones, think they are raising fruit. 
 As a man thinks so is he, and, it may be added, so 
 he believes his fruit to be. In selecting land for a 
 fruit-farm, one must remember the true value 
 of hillocks. A hillside is different, for an entire 
 fruit region may be a hillside. 
 
 I have reached the conclusion that in fruit- 
 growing all cultivation should obey the advice 
 of the old Greeks. "Much but not too much." 
 But a Greek maxim, like Greek morals, must be 
 taken in a Greek sense. Much but not too much 
 is another way of saying "Enough." The test of 
 the whole matter is simple : The tree is known by 
 its fruit. In horticulture luxurious growth of 
 wood-stock and abundant fruit mark "Enough." 
 Any tree, vine, or shrub on a neglected fruit-farm 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit- Farm 147 
 
 will produce one apple, one plum, one bunch of 
 grapes fit for the county fair, but does it produce 
 fruit all of which you would enter for a premium? 
 First prizes have been given for fruit culled from 
 a neglected tree, and were the tree before the judges 
 they would not award the prize. Some fruit- 
 growers use packages with two faces: the upper, or 
 top, for big bunches of grapes of fine quality; the 
 lower, or bottom, for odds and ends, culls, even 
 stones, leaves, and weeds. This means that culti- 
 vation is on the surface, — at least of the basket. 
 But the fruit-farm is more truly mirrored in the 
 bottom of the basket. It is easier to cultivate 
 the fruit-farm to quality and quantity than to 
 cultivate the fruit-grower. There is that about 
 horse-trading that affects the morals of the man 
 and the appearance of the horse. Even a deacon 
 deteriorates in the process. There is that also 
 about fruit-growing which affects the fruit-grower; 
 he may run to culls like his trees and vines. In- 
 deed, it is somewhat of a strain on some men to be 
 fruit-growers. Yet, happily, there are growers and 
 growers. All do not neglect cultivation of their 
 plantation; all do not raise a preponderance of 
 culls, or top off the scraggly fruit with a thin layer 
 of "selected fruit," as the label on the basket 
 bravely, not to say effusively, informs the pur- 
 chaser. It is a case of human nature; the fruit 
 of the garden is no better than the gardener. You 
 can read the character of the fruit-grower in the 
 condition of his fruit -farm. 
 
148 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 There is difference of opinion as to the best 
 cultivation of orchards: Shall they be kept in 
 grass? Plowed, dragged, cultivated, sown to 
 cover-crops, and treated like the vineyard? This 
 means: Can the tree feed, grow, bear fruit of as 
 good quality and of the same quantity in sod as in 
 cultivated ground? My own experience favors 
 cultivation. Feed the cherry tree and it will feed 
 you. Now any tree can feed in sod ground, but 
 can it get enough food to produce what we want it 
 to produce? A tree in sod is not unlike one in the 
 wild. By stirring the surface of the land you drain 
 it, ventilate it, open up the pores, and accelerate 
 the circulation of soluble plant-foods in the soil. 
 Moreover, you by cultivation destroy innumerable 
 enemies of the tree, as grubs, worms, even toxics 
 in the soil which otherwise would feed on the tree 
 to its injury. A hayfield is apparently a clean 
 place, but a hayfield is a hayfield, not an orchard. 
 Much of the virtue of fertilizers scattered over a 
 hayfield vanishes, in air, into thin air. Plow your 
 hayfield and the fertilizers get into the laboratory 
 of the soil and are transformed into plant-food. A 
 tree in a meadow gets "root-bound." Yet, let us 
 not forget, we have set a standard, an artificial 
 standard, for the fruit-tree. Not merely apples, 
 pears, cherries, plums, but finest apples, pears, 
 plums, and cherries, all pulp, and, if possible, seed- 
 less or, at least, seeds little. Nature has her eyes on 
 the apple seed; we have ours on the apple pulp. 
 An apple tree in sod will grow apples ; one in culti- 
 
I^HIHHH 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 149 
 
 vated soil will grow finer apples, by our standards. 
 The cherry tree in sod tends to black bark and 
 decaying limbs; the tree in cultivated soil tends to 
 reddish bark, and tough, vigorous limbs. Each 
 will fruit, but the larger, finer fruit will be found on 
 the cultivated land. 
 
 Orchard soil is made like vineyard soil or garden 
 soil. Cover-crops, or stable manure, for nitrogen; 
 potash for fruit: phosphoric acid for both; a soil 
 as loose as ashes, and full of humus; these in your 
 soil your orchard will grow healthy stock and fine, 
 abundant fruit. And in winter, it is well if in your 
 orchard the snow lies deep, and beneath the snow a 
 thick matting of clover, vetch, grass, or chickweed. 
 The time for cultivating the orchard is during the 
 period of vigorous yearly growth, from opening 
 spring when, as we say, the sap starts, till the 
 fruit is ready to pick. Winter trimming, spring 
 and early summer cultivation, winter covering, — 
 and the cycle is completed. This is the orchard 
 calendar. The more vigorous the growth of the 
 tree, as the peach, the more cultivation and 
 feeding are required. Not that any fruit-tree can 
 live without food and care, but peach trees are 
 rapid growers and heavy feeders, especially in their 
 youth, — and wise management will keep them 
 young. In the Lake Shore Valley they are always 
 rapid growers and heavy feeders; in less degree are 
 cherries, prunes, and apples, in the order named. 
 Many fruit-growers plant the young orchard 
 and then treat it like trees in the wild, — now and 
 
150 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 then, however, cutting out the underbrush, briers, 
 and weeds. You can recognize these orchards (?) 
 as you drive about the Valley. Perhaps such 
 cultivated wilds may be found in other fruit 
 sections of America, for it is not to be supposed 
 that all the funny fruit-growers are concentrated in 
 one Valley. It is true, though paradoxical, that 
 these are the highest-priced orchards, just as 
 neglected vineyards are always the highest-priced 
 vineyards in the Valley. 
 
 The more neglected the plantation, the higher is 
 its true cost. The cheapest plantation is always 
 the best one. In the cultivation of fruit, trees, 
 shrub, and vine must be protected from enemies, 
 as well as be trimmed and fed. These enemies are 
 insects and fungi. Nature, the law of things and 
 men, in a measure, looks out for her own and sees 
 to it that every insect and fungus too shall have its 
 enemy, fungus and insect feeding on insect and 
 fungus. This is Nature's fine balancing which 
 makes possible the perpetuation of each tree after 
 its kind. For this end Nature does not find it 
 necessary to exterminate every enemy of plant 
 life, or animal life would vanish, including man 
 himself. If the plant manages to reproduce itself 
 by the maturity of a few seeds, and by their ger- 
 mination and continued growth, the cycle of life 
 is made complete. We as nature-mongers, as 
 fruit-growers, are more exacting. We demand fruit 
 of the kind that suits us and far more abundantly 
 than does Nature, therefore insects and fungi are 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 151 
 
 greater perils to our orchard than to Nature's 
 wild trees. It is not enough for us that the apple 
 or cherry tree merely fruits; it must fruit abun- 
 dantly and of the quality we desire. Then, too, in 
 concentrating the energy of the vine or tree upon 
 some particular part, as pulp in cherry or prune, 
 and liquid in grape, we disturb the balance of the 
 plant's life and so weaken the plant against its 
 enemies. The cherry tree which bears our best 
 fruit, in the stern economy of Nature is a weakling, 
 unable to withstand disease, and this cherished 
 fruit invites insects and fungi in myriads. 
 
 What must we do? 
 
 We may so feed the tree that it grows and bears 
 fruit in such quantity that, despite the ravages of 
 insects and fungi, we have an abundance of perfect 
 fruit left and the tree also survives. Or, we may 
 destroy the enemy and save the fruit, also relieving 
 the tree of its enemies. Our supreme purpose is to 
 keep the tree healthy and to raise an abundance 
 of perfect fruit of finest quality. A tree may be 
 withered by fungus or eaten of insects and for a 
 time seem healthy and able to resist the attacks, 
 but at last it succumbs. To save it we poison the 
 enemy without killing the tree or injuring the fruit. 
 This is the purpose and the art of spraying. 
 
 Now spraying is a preventive and a remedy, 
 not a fertilizer; it is medicine for the sick, not food 
 for the well. Like all medicine it disturbs the 
 system. Usually medicine to the fruit-grower is no 
 more than a stimulus to some organ or tissue of the 
 
152 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 body. Spray for the fruit-tree is a mixture which 
 smothers, drowns, heats, chills, or, when taken as 
 food by the insect or the fungus, poisons the enemy 
 yet does not injure (at least seriously) the plant 
 that is sprayed. 
 
 The enemies of the fruit-farm attack root, bark, 
 stock, leaf, bud, flower, and fruit, — that is, the 
 whole plant, but rarely every part at one time. 
 The rootworm strips the grape-root of bark in 
 a spiral from end to end, beginning seemingly at 
 the tip. For a few days it lies inert in transition 
 from worm into larva when (about mid- June) it 
 emerges as a beetle, deposits its eggs close to the 
 ground beneath the loose bark of the vine-stock, 
 climbs or flies to the leaf and begins its zigzag 
 course of eating its way through life, marking the 
 leaf as it moves. It flies from leaf to leaf and for a 
 time enjoys quite a sociable life with its kind. It 
 is very prolific. The deposit of eggs is not made 
 directly it leaves the ground but at some time after 
 it has flown about. It cuts the leaves into shreds. 
 The leaf hopper sucks the leaf from the under side, 
 leaving the whole vineyard as brown and sere as if 
 a fire had passed through it. Fungi, or mildew, 
 black rot, brown rot, grow on the fruit and absorb 
 its juices. The rosebug eats the buds of the grape 
 blossom, leaving the vineyard fruitless. The 
 curculio lays its egg in the blossom of the apple, 
 the cherry, the peach, the pear, the plum, and the 
 worm feeds on the young fruit, poisoning, defacing, 
 shrivelling it to a hard, skinny cover stretched over 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 153 
 
 pit or seeds. The moth lays innumerable eggs 
 which, hatching on leaf or bark, feed in armies, strip 
 the orchard of its foliage, choke the trees and pre- 
 clude all hope of fruit. The borer pierces the bark 
 and kills stock and limb ; the scale shingles over the 
 bark with its wretched shields, sucking up the sap, 
 and leaving the tree as dead as if scorched by fire. 
 So every plant known to the fruit-farm has its 
 enemies. Not a tree or shrub, not a vine or root, 
 not a tuber or leaf of any sort escapes, — no, not 
 one. 
 
 The fruit-grower is confronted by legions of ene- 
 mies ready to swoop down upon his plantation and 
 consume it from the face of the earth. As the 
 country becomes more thickly settled, as forests are 
 destroyed, prairies broken up, the vast wild made 
 a habitation for man, insects and fungi, deprived 
 of their feeding ground in the wild, have turned to 
 our feeding ground, the cultivated field, to our 
 wheat, our cotton, our orchards, our vineyards, 
 our gardens. It would be presumptuous to attempt 
 to catalogue these enemies. The Bulletins from 
 the Experimental Station, State and National, and 
 the innumerable books by experts trace the life 
 history of these pests and tell how to combat 
 them. It is an appalling task but it cannot be 
 escaped. * 
 
 •As an example of timely and practical contributions, see "Fall 
 Manual of Practice in Economic Zoology, " Ohio Agricultural Experiment 
 Station, Wooster, Ohio, IT. S. A., November, 191 1, Bulletin 233, 164 pp.; 
 Index, vii. pp. Illustrated. This tells the fruit-grower the name, habits, 
 ravages, and methods of destroying every insect, worm, grub, moth, 
 
154 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 Regions free from pernicious insects and fungi 
 yesterday are infected to-day; those free to-day 
 will be infected to-morrow. As the price of liberty 
 is eternal vigilance, so the price of fruit is cease- 
 less spraying. It must from henceforth be counted 
 an essential part of fruit-growing. 
 
 Now fruit-growing is not only special farming 
 but itself breaks up in specialties. One must know 
 his orchard and his vineyard. In spraying the rule 
 is, Each tree after its kind. For this reason alone 
 the fruit-grower should beware of many varieties as 
 of grapes, and many kinds of fruit, in petty sec- 
 tions, this of plums, that of peaches, a third of 
 
 beetle, bug, borer, — whatsoever its character, — that injures the fruit- 
 farm. Of similar value are "Important Insecticides: Directions for 
 their Preparation and Use," Farmers' Bulletin No. 127, United States 
 Department of Agriculture, by C. L. Marlatt, M.S., Washington, 
 Government Printing Office, 1901; and "Insecticides and Fungicides: 
 Chemical Composition and Effectiveness of Certain Preparations," 
 Farmers' Bulletin, No. 146. By J. K. Haywood, Washington, Govern- 
 ment Printing Office, 1902. These may be had for the asking. 
 
 The Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station issues a "Spray Calendar," 
 for the treatment of diseased conditions in plants, — a Bulletin for plant 
 diseases and insect pests, prepared by W. J. Green, A. D. Selby, and 
 P. J. Parrott. This sheet is of extraordinary practical value. It gives 
 specific formulas for all fungicides, telling exactly how to prepare them 
 and apply them; specifically states the seed or plant that is attacked by 
 insect or fungus; for what it is treated; how to be treated; and an elabo- 
 rate spray calendar for each plant, shrub, tree, vine, stating the exact 
 time of successive applications of spray and how much to be used. 
 There are also "remarks and cautions" for the benefit of the inexperi- 
 enced. 
 
 The fruit-grower will wisely correspond with, or at least secure these 
 and like valuable publications from, whatsoever Experimental Stations 
 are within his reach. Both the General Government and the State 
 Governments now expend vast sums for the benefit of farmers whatever 
 special branch of farming be pursued. 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 155 
 
 apples, another of cherries. . Sixty acres of Mont- 
 morenci cherries are far more valuable than sixty 
 acres subdivided into small plantings of apples, 
 currants, gooseberries, plums, peaches, and so on 
 through the list. The care of an orchard of one 
 kind of fruit differs from that of another kind. If 
 all is of one kind, or if the fruit- farm is given over to 
 subdivisions of respectable size, in different fruits, 
 the administration is more economical and profit- 
 able than many trees, plants, shrubs, vines of many 
 kinds. The would-be fruit-grower is attracted by 
 names, sounds, and memories of fruit he has seen 
 in market or at fairs. Let him concentrate; let 
 him specialize. Avoid bewildering varieties. They 
 are wholly unprofitable and multiply the evils of 
 farming. If he has secured land within the proper 
 climatic belt he may securely specialize in fruit- 
 raising. 
 
 The Lake Shore Valley is adapted to grapes, 
 cherries, peaches, prunes, plums, apples, berries 
 of all kinds, currants, melons, and some add English 
 walnuts; yet it is not a profitable apple country 
 because of the winds which sweep down from Lake 
 Superior, two thousand miles away, across the 
 continent, and play havoc with the apples. There 
 are apple sections in America where destructive 
 winds do not break through and tumble the fruit 
 prematurely to the ground. Yet there are profit- 
 able apple orchards in the Valley. One must 
 assume a wind-risk there if he attempts to raise 
 apples. It is not a pear country, though thousands 
 
156 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 of bushels of pears are raised. The trees grow 
 luxuriantly, blossom freely, and set abundantly for 
 fruit; suddenly the blight burns the foliage to a 
 crisp. The scale too affects the pear. When 
 the blight can be prevented, — the scale can now be 
 successfully treated by spraying, — the Valley will 
 become one of the most profitable pear sections 
 in the country. The fruit-grower must move 
 along the line of least resistance; hence he must 
 raise fruit best in quality, greatest in quantity, 
 and with least possible labor. This means that 
 he must utilize the privileges of climate by utiliz- 
 ing all means and methods of fruit-raising known to 
 experience. I believe that the Valley, — or any 
 other fruit section, — can be made to be the profit- 
 able home of all fruit possible to its climate. The 
 problem is for the fruit-grower himself to solve. 
 
 Of enemies of the plum and the prune the name 
 is legion and the list lengthening every year. 
 Black knot, scale, curculio, brown rot (fungus), 
 and other enemies swarm down upon trees of this 
 family. Bordeaux mixture holds the fungi in 
 check; shaking the tree brings down the curculio; 
 the scale must be killed by spraying; moths and 
 insects generally can be routed also with the 
 sprayer. It is not a difficult task. Pruning of the 
 tree seems to increase its power to resist disease. 
 But too many plum trees of mixed varieties are like 
 an overcrowded hospital. No one in the Valley 
 need fear to attempt a plum or prune orchard 
 because of its insect or fungi enemies; the spray 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit- Farm 157 
 
 bulletins and calendar and the active, resolute, 
 sensible man will speedily rout them. 
 
 Peaches like plums invite enemies, and of a 
 different sort, — yellows, curl-leaf, root-gall, and of 
 course the borer, the fungi that cause rot of tree 
 and fruit and some obscure diseases of which as yet 
 we know practically nothing. Despite these dis- 
 couragements, peaches are raised with profit in 
 the Valley. But as yet spraying peach trees is 
 somewhat uncommon there. He who sprays has 
 fine peaches and many. The freezing and thawing 
 of the soil undoes the peach tree, but this fatality 
 may easily be avoided by proper management of 
 the soil, — winter protection by cover-crops, and 
 vigorous feeding of the tree. Peach trees are 
 beneficiaries or victims of climate, but oftener, are 
 victims of the fruit-grower's neglect. Peach cul- 
 ture is bound to confine itself to what may be 
 called the natural peach regions of the country, of 
 which the Valley is one. 
 
 Sour cherries are less liable than sweet cherries to 
 disease and to insect and fungi pests. Mildew, 
 brown rot, the curculio, the slug, the borer, partly 
 exhaust the list. These attack all cherry trees, 
 sweet or sour. But remedies are known, are 
 available and the fruit-grower need not fear to 
 undertake cherry culture provided he is clearly 
 within the climatic cherry-belt. Follow the borer 
 with a wire; Paris green kills the slugs, — and men 
 also if carelessly handled; the Bordeaux mixture 
 checks the ravages of most cherry enemies. The 
 
158 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 trees, notably the sour varieties, are not subject 
 to scale. But the tree is a particular plant and will 
 not fruit everywhere in the Valley, as along the 
 crest of the hills near the frost line. Here it is 
 only a shade-tree. The Valley is however a cherry 
 section even though a small one. 
 
 The diseases of the grapevine yield to culti- 
 vation and spraying. The fungi, but not all 
 insects, are killed by the Bordeaux mixture. The 
 rootworm must be attacked with spray above 
 and cultivation below. The arsenical preparation 
 is effective, but the stirring of the ground as the 
 rootworm emerges, or transforms itself into a 
 beetle, — while yet in the larva state is his most 
 certain destruction. A time comes in June when 
 this change is made, when the larva is slowly work- 
 ing its way from earth to air, — a small, white, 
 viscid, wriggling creature, shaping into a beetle. 
 Sun, wind, or disturbance of the earth destroys it. 
 Therefore cultivate thoroughly at this time. The 
 birds will help, — if you have birds; possibly 
 they have been exterminated by pot-hunters and 
 idle boys. Perhaps you kill birds! If so, you 
 deserve the rootworm! A patient file of educated 
 hens greatly helps at this juncture. So spray for 
 the beetle; horse-hoe, away from the vines, for the 
 larvae ; you will have your reward. In the Valley, 
 so persistent and thorough has been the campaign 
 against the rootworm, it no longer gives the 
 fruit-grower anxiety. 
 
 Of far greater peril is the thrip, or leaf hopper, a 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 159 
 
 small white moth which sucks the life out of the leaf 
 of the vine. Happily this destructive insect, which, 
 unchecked, will transform a vineyard into a ruin of 
 seemingly fire-swept rows, with withered grapes, 
 is completely destroyed by the Bordeaux mixture 
 with nicotine added in small quantity. Its ravages 
 are no longer feared. 
 
 The composition of spraying material for various 
 specific purposes and the machine that shall be used 
 sooner or later compel the fruit-grower's attention. 
 The preparation of the spray; the ingredients, 
 the particular application, and the proper time of 
 spraying are adequately set forth in the Bulletins 
 to which I have already referred. The selection 
 of a machine is a matter of some difficulty. The 
 qualities desired in a machine are efficiency and 
 cheapness, but as yet no machine is inexpensive, 
 and all are not effective. The types on the mar- 
 ket are run by horse-power engendered by the mo- 
 tion of the wheels of the sprayer, or by steam power, 
 or gasoline power producing steam. Either coal 
 or gasoline is preferable to horse-power and the 
 steam-power machines work when the machine is 
 stationary as it must be for the spraying of trees, 
 or when the team is drawing the machine along the 
 rows of trees or vines. The fluid must be ejected 
 as finest mist or spray and must thoroughly drench 
 the plant. While spraying is a labor, it is not, with 
 the best type of power machine, a prohibitive 
 labor. So far as I know there is not on the market 
 a machine which is first-class in every particular — 
 
160 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 that is, thoroughly made, material strong, and whole 
 equipment durable. Spraying machines are made 
 to sell to farmers at a profit. Yet we cannot get 
 along without them. They are certain to be im- 
 proved, to be made more durable, more effective, 
 and to sell at a price proportioned to their strength 
 and efficiency. 1 
 
 1 Considering fruit-culture in all its aspects, for the Valley, spraying 
 resolves itself chiefly into a timely application of three kinds of spray: 
 
 The Bordeaux Mixture: 
 Copper sulphate (blue vitriol), 4 lbs. 
 Quicklime (not air slaked), 4 lbs. 
 Water to make 50 gallons; 
 
 or, if too strong, all the water and half the other ingredients. The 
 
 mixture must be used fresh. 
 
 Arsenate of Lead: 
 Arsenate of soda, 4 oz. 
 Acetate of lead, 1 1 oz. 
 Water, 16 gallons. 
 This is sometimes called Disparene and may be had commercially. 
 
 Nicotine Solution for Leaf Hopper: 
 Water, 100 gallons, 
 Nicotine, 1 pint. 
 This is an irritant, deadly poison and must be handled carefully. 
 
 Lime, Sulphur and Salt: 
 Stone lime, 15 to 30 lbs. 
 Flowers of sulphur, 15 lbs. 
 Water, 50 gallons. 
 Specific for scale. 
 
 The making of these mixtures requires an adequate equipment: an 
 ample supply of water; facilities for heating any of the ingredients, 
 and for complete intermixture of them. The Bulletins and "Spray 
 Calendar" already cited, or similar authorities, should be consulted. The 
 beginner may profitably examine some working spraying equipment 
 before undertaking this part of fruit-farming. There are now some 
 twenty-five specific preparations used in spraying; the three given above 
 are the most widely used and may be called standard. In all mixtures 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 161 
 
 That there has been a depletion of the soil under 
 fruit-culture cannot be doubted. The wonder is 
 that the land produces as heavily as it does. We 
 have no exact record of the amount of soil-exhaus- 
 tion, we only know that the growth of wood in the 
 vineyards is not so great as it was twenty years 
 ago, and that many vineyards have fallen off 
 heavily in production. We know also that the 
 Erie Valley is naturally a region for grapes. 1 Only 
 one conclusion can be drawn: that of soil depletion. 
 This is true of all American fruit valleys. Com- 
 plaint is made of destructive insects and fungi, of 
 late years, — an enemy that proves weakening of 
 stock. Two resources are available: feeding the 
 soil, and its cultivation. Since the introduction 
 of grape-culture in 1855, the Valley has not known 
 a failure of the grape crop. Few sections of the 
 country have made such a record. In the Valley, 
 during that time, other crops have failed. The 
 steady service of the Concord grape is quite with- 
 out parallel in horticulture. Vineyards fairly 
 planted, not as wisely as we would now plant 
 them, have for upwards of thirty years averaged a 
 
 the lime is added to prevent burning of foliage. In combination with 
 the Bordeaux mixture Paris green may be used at the rate of one pound 
 to 175-200 gallons. The whole subject of combinations of chemicals 
 and ingredients generally as fungicides and insecticides requires par- 
 ticular care and special Bulletins, or treatises should be consulted. 
 Professor Bailey's Principles of Fruit-Growing, and The Spraying of 
 Plants, by E. G. Lodeman, edited by Bailey, are invaluable to every 
 fruit-grower. 
 
 1 The grape crop, alone, of the Lake Erie Valley, — the Lake Erie- 
 Chautauqua Grape Belt, for 1914, sold for $2,607,415. 
 
1 62 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 gross product of from eighty to one hundred and 
 fifty dollars per acre. This income, year after year, 
 may be set against the larger but less dependable 
 income from berries and orchards of from two 
 hundred and fifty to six hundred dollars per acre. 
 These are extraordinary returns. But all land in 
 the Valley is not adapted to berries, to orchard, or 
 to currants. The climate encourages all the fruits I 
 have mentioned; therefore the problem rests wholly 
 with the fruit-grower whether they shall be raised. 
 The making of the soil and the cultivation of the 
 fruit are his problem. Cultivation includes drain- 
 age, spraying, trimming, and fertilization. But if 
 all these be attended to and cultivation be omitted, 
 there can be no crop. 
 
 The care of the fruit -plantation is both an art 
 and an instinct. Instinct ranks first. Let no man 
 attempt fruit-farming who does not like it. Let 
 him not be tempted by reports of large financial 
 returns. He will be disappointed. In fruit-grow- 
 ing Pope's famous line seems true: 
 
 " Man never is but always to be blest." 
 
 Let him who likes horticulture, and who has 
 symptoms of moderate capacity for success, not 
 hesitate to attempt it ; some succeed ; many fail, as 
 in every other vocation. Experience alone breeds 
 the fruit-farmer. If you trim cherry trees as peach 
 trees, you will not raise cherries. If you get your 
 spray solution too strong, you will burn your foliage. 
 All sprays are water and something, and the " some- 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 163 
 
 thing" is a poison — poisonous to the plant that 
 receives, to the grower who grows, and to the eater 
 who eats, unless properly applied. While we 
 must handle poisons as it were with gloves, we must 
 always mix them with common sense. Here we 
 cannot safely go by rule of thumb, but by scale, 
 weight, and measure. Never entrust the prepa- 
 ration of the spray to an inexperienced hand and 
 trust to luck. The fruit-grower himself is the 
 responsible man and must know how to prepare the 
 spray, how to apply it, and what results to expect. 
 He must of course be able to decide what sort of 
 spray is particularly needed. So too must he be 
 present, at least constructively, when orchards and 
 vineyards are planted, trimmed, and cultivated. 
 There must be no work of any kind on the place 
 that he does not understand how to do, and prefer- 
 ably can himself do if necessary. That valiant 
 heathen, Cato the Censor, wrote more than two 
 thousand years ago the first principle of sound 
 farming' 
 
 "The face of the master is good for the land." 
 
 In fruit-farming, "The hireling flees because he is a 
 hireling. " There may be exceptions, but they are 
 always on some other fruit-farm than yours or 
 mine. 
 
 While "book-farming" is still held in contempt 
 by most farmers, it has in late years come into 
 respectability by sheer evidence of value. We do 
 not condemn medical schools, law schools, schools 
 
164 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 of engineering, nor do we longer condemn agri- 
 cultural schools or experimental stations. Even 
 some seeds sent out by Congressmen actually 
 grow. We are discovering that the plain, every- 
 day, bread-winning farmer cannot afford to make 
 horticultural experiments, even were he so inclined. 
 The State must experiment for the general welfare. 
 This it does at the Agricultural Station. The 
 results are printed and distributed free to all. 
 This is not mere "book-farming" but scientific 
 farming; it is based upon experience. But other 
 people's experience in horticulture, whether told 
 by lip or by the printed page, counts for little with 
 most fruit-growers. He is successful, if at all, 
 after many clostly blunders, most of which he 
 might have avoided. The serious aspect of a 
 blunder in fruit-farming is the difficulty of correct- 
 ing it to the advantage of the corrector. It takes 
 many years to get a fruit-farm in perfection, — if 
 that stage can ever be reached. Few can afford to 
 lose fifteen or twenty years by a blunder in setting 
 out the wrong varieties, or planting a section to 
 the wrong fruit. The supreme knowledge for the 
 fruit-grower is how to raise fruit. This means 
 knowledge of climate, of soil-making, of soil-feeding, 
 of setting out the fruit -farm, and of caring for it 
 when set out. 
 
 The fruit-grower is constantly confronted by 
 difficulties, even by obstacles in the form of prob- 
 lems of soil-making, of selection of varieties, of 
 cultivation, trimming, spraying, new enemies in 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 165 
 
 insects and fungi, new tools, market risks, trans- 
 portation, and the like. The list is of indefinite 
 length. No agricultural station runs his fruit- 
 farm, he cannot always obtain specific answers to 
 his inquiries; he must rely upon himself. To 
 many of his questions no satisfactory answer can 
 as yet be given. They have not been worked out. 
 That we are reaching a higher plane of fruit- 
 raising is indicated by the increased efficiency of 
 every department of horticultural effort; we are 
 becoming scientific by grinding necessity. Legis- 
 latures make increasingly large appropriations for 
 the investigation and treatment of every agricultur- 
 al question, and, as never before in human history, 
 farming in every branch is becoming an exact 
 science. The agricultural schools do as much for 
 the farmer as the law schools for the lawyer, the 
 medical schools for the doctor, and the engineering 
 schools for the engineer. Yet these agricultural 
 schools are not and cannot be the equivalent of 
 experience on the fruit-farm. The man who runs 
 a fruit-farm wholly according to bulletins of 
 Agricultural Stations, will cultivate, as Pliny said 
 centuries ago, "in the very highest style" but "in 
 mere extravagance," or, as Cato puts it, he will 
 have a farm "with the spending habit" and "not 
 much will be left over." In brief there are two 
 ways to run a fruit-farm: keep a bank account in 
 order to run a fruit-farm, or a fruit-farm in order 
 to have a bank account. No farm is faultless; no 
 orchard, vineyard, or section given to whatever 
 
1 66 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 plant, but some poor plants are there. The 
 accumulated experience of the neighborhood, of 
 other sections of country, and notably your own ex- 
 perience — usually very expensive — taken together 
 with the wisdom of bulletins and reports from 
 Agricultural Stations, contribute toward a closer 
 realization of the perfect fruit-farm. 
 
 This all means that the fruit-grower to-day has 
 access to aids and facilities in his vocation hitherto 
 unknown. Fruit-raising is a science, a branch of 
 chemistry, just as chemistry itself is an aspect of 
 Nature, — a peep into her operations which we dub 
 with a technical word. Countless millions of dol- 
 lars are now capitalized in fruit-farms and related 
 interests. We try to do precisely what Hesiod 
 and Varro and Cato of old, and all horticulturists 
 and farmers since their day have tried to do, and 
 we do much as they did. There are no more bones 
 in the human body than in the days of ^scula- 
 pius or Galen; no more ingredients of fertile soil 
 than when Cato was farming at Tusculum. The 
 names of common diseases may be found in medical 
 books four hundred years old. But while the 
 names are identical, both surgery and medicine 
 are more scientific now than then. Horticulture 
 too has become scientific. We know very little 
 about raising fruit as compared with the unknown, 
 and we are working out knowledge all the time by 
 experiment as well as by experience. For example : 
 Cato advises to "manure pastures in early spring 
 in the dark of the moon, when the west wind begins 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 167 
 
 to blow." This strongly reminds us of advice we 
 still hear about sowing beans in the new moon, till 
 we learn that the shifting of the wind from out the 
 west, on the Roman Campagna, and of course at 
 Tusculum, marked with remarkable precision the 
 shifting of the season. The wind makes, as it 
 were, a "spray" or "fertilizer" calendar for the 
 region. Cato dealt wholly with slaves, totally 
 ignorant of letters, — creatures who, however cap- 
 able as laborers, were guided by sight and sounds 
 in Nature. A slave, were he the trusted overseer, 
 would know "when the west wind begins to blow," 
 just as by the color of the olive he would know 
 when to pick the fruit for the oil-press. Our 
 science of farming, worked out by retort and cru- 
 cible and chemical test, agrees with the large 
 conclusions of simple experience, — as "when the 
 west wind blows" it is time to do a particu- 
 lar work. Nature herself is a great clock, and 
 her hands point to the hours when things must 
 be done opportunely. But Cato also prescribes 
 for a sick ox: he should be given a raw hen's egg 
 immediately; next day, a measure of wine from 
 a wooden bowl in which the head of an onion has 
 been scraped, and "both the ox and his atten- 
 dant should do these things fasting and standing 
 upright. " 
 
 If a bone is dislocated [continues Cato] it can be made 
 sound by this incantation: Take a green reed four or five 
 feet long, cut it in the middle and let two men hold the 
 pieces against your hips. Begin then to chant as follows: 
 
168 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 In Alio. S. F Motas 
 
 Vaeta, 
 
 Daries Dardaries Astataries Disunapiter, 
 
 and continue until the free ends of the reed are brought 
 slowly together in front of you. Meanwhile, wave a knife 
 above the reeds, and when they come together and one 
 touches the other, seize them in your hand and cut them 
 right and left. These pieces of reed bound upon a dis- 
 located or fractured bone will cure it. But every day, 
 repeat the incantation, or in place of it this one : 
 
 Huat Hanat Huat 
 Ista Pista Sista 
 Domiabo Damnaustra. 
 
 This you promptly say is nonsense and superstition, 
 but turning to another bit of advice from Cato, you 
 will discover that he tells you precisely how to 
 plant and care for an olive orchard, how to make a 
 bake-oven, how to raise figs, how to manage old 
 vines, how to feed stock in winter, how to make, 
 store, and when to sell olive oil, how to make bread 
 and to cure hams, how to manage chickens and 
 ducks, how to make wine, and to remove any 
 unpleasant odor from it, how to select a farm, 
 how to drain land, and what are the duties of the 
 overseer. This all sounds modern. The matter is 
 well put by Fairfax Harrison: "On questions of 
 preventing malady, he had the wisdom of experi- 
 ence, but malady once arrived, he was a simple 
 pagan." 
 
 What would we think of the fruit-farmer who, 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 169 
 
 instead of keeping the team moving in cultivation 
 of his land, spring and summer, should cut three 
 green wythes, cross them over his little finger, take 
 his stand at the corner of his vineyard and chant: 
 
 Eeney, meeney, meiny, mo, 
 Ikery, eikery, tinkery, toe, 
 Concord, Cherry, Peaches grow ! 
 
 His wife (if he was so fortunate as to have one) 
 would promptly send him to a lunatic asylum, and 
 hire some sane man to run the farm. 
 
 We know as yet comparatively little about the 
 mysteries of raising fruit, — soil-making, planting, 
 plant-feeding, — and have much to learn about 
 cultivation; therefore we turn eagerly to every 
 service of agricultural school, experimental station, 
 or actual experience however acquired. All as- 
 sociations of fruit-growers for exchange of ideas 
 contribute to the general welfare, — local, county 
 and State societies, which, as now conducted, 
 bring together experts in every branch of horti- 
 culture, and thus extend the benefits of experience. 
 
 He who would raise fruit will soon learn by 
 experience that fruit-growers, as a class, are men 
 fixed in their traditions, jealous of association, 
 and almost immovable in their individualism. 
 Practically it will be extraordinary that fruit-grow- 
 ers of their own motion in any specialty unite and 
 long cooperate to any end. They tie ropes of sand 
 when they bind themselves to cooperation. They 
 complain bitterly of excessive freight-rates, of 
 
170 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 dishonest commission men, of high cost of labor, 
 of low prices and poor markets for fruit, of wind 
 and weather, of man, beast, and corporations. If 
 you decide to become a fruit-grower and come into 
 the land a stranger, or, being acquainted, or even 
 to the manor born, are an innovator, you are 
 looked upon somewhat askance, — not wholly with 
 enmity, but with a delicately tempered derision. 
 When the college president turns politician, the 
 bosses 
 
 "First loathe, then pity, then embrace." 
 
 So too when the man turns fruit-grower, the very 
 old cherry trees nod their heads and wink their eyes 
 and wrinkle the very toes of their roots, but gladly 
 take the food the new master gives them and prick 
 up their leaves and take on a new lease of life. 
 The newcomer will find kind neighbors, but none 
 who quite share with his vivid ideas of improve- 
 ments. Fruit-farming has one traditional motto: 
 
 In statu quo, 
 
 which freely translated means, 
 
 As it was, is, and ever shall be. 
 
 The only incentive here is greater profit. Will it 
 pay? I have never known a fruit-grower who 
 deliberately declined an additional dollar of profit. 
 If he sees that improved cultivation will produce 
 the dollar, he will improve his cultivation. The 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 171 
 
 neglected vineyards and orchards, in all fruit 
 sections, belong to blind, deaf, and unreasoning 
 men: for none are so blind as they who will not see. 
 He may say that he sees, but he is merely repeating 
 words he does not comprehend. 
 
 In our day the isolation and individualism of the 
 farmer are vanishing; he is affected, as never 
 before, by the world at large. Railroads, trolleys, 
 motors bring fruit-growers into association. See- 
 ing is becoming believing, and the presence of a 
 well-managed estate in a fruit section works better- 
 ment of the whole region. Thorough cultivation 
 tells its own story. No fruit-grower now lives far 
 from the market; it is measured by accessibility, 
 not by intervening miles. Necessity makes farm 
 and market neighbors. Even if the market be a 
 thousand miles from the farm it is no farther than 
 the time taken to reach it and the cost of transpor- 
 tation. In the Lake Shore Valley the fruit-grower 
 picks cherries, say a hundred or more bushels 
 a day during the cherry season. Every afternoon 
 at 3 o'clock he ships to New York; at 6 o'clock, to 
 Pittsburgh. At 7 o'clock next morning his fruit 
 is selling in these markets; by noon he has tele- 
 graphic returns. This means reduction of distance 
 to lowest terms; it means more than this, — more 
 cherries, better fruit, both on the farm and in the 
 market; the grower better satisfied, the consumer 
 too than ever before. It means a more careful 
 selection of varieties; a closer study of the soil; 
 a more thorough cultivation of the orchard. It 
 
172 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 means systematic and profitable farm manage- 
 ment ; a larger body of laborers, better wages, best 
 type of packages, and highest profits possible. 
 Not merely a bank account but a real fruit-farm; 
 and a bank account because there is a fruit-farm. 
 Sifted to real substance, it means raising cherries, 
 and that depends upon cultivation. Feed the 
 orchard and the orchard will feed you; care 
 for the vineyard and the vineyard will care for 
 you. 
 
 Thus the fruit-farmer now touches elbows with 
 the rest of the world. He finds the whole in the 
 soil beneath his feet. The world looks for cherries 
 in the cherry tree, but the fruit-grower knows that 
 he must first raise them in the soil and then culti- 
 vate them out of it. He must be ever in active 
 copartnership with four associates: 
 
 Nitrogen, Potash, Phosphoric Acid, and Humus, 
 
 but his partners are helpless unless he drains the 
 earth in which they work. He must drain top and 
 bottom, and he must keep his partners busy. He 
 makes his soil and it makes fruit for him. He trims, 
 sprays, cultivates; he blankets the ground with a 
 soil-feeding crop; he keeps it like an ash heap and 
 filled with humus. Having climate on his side, 
 his fruit-farm conveniently located, accessible, a 
 well-made and a well-managed machine, an operat- 
 ing, chemical laboratory; his mind open to ideas 
 from every quarter, — neighbors, journals, books, 
 experiment stations, and he himself does a little 
 
The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 173 
 
 thinking on his own account, — he will succeed in 
 growing fruit in abundance, and the world will 
 demand his fruit. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I select a few available publications of practical value in the matter 
 suggested by their titles; similar publications are issued by other Ex- 
 perimental Stations, in various parts of the United States. 
 
 "Report on Tent Caterpillars." M. V. Slingerland, Bulletin 170, 
 Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 
 
 " The Codlin Moth." Bulletin 160, Ohio Agricultural Station, Wooster, 
 Ohio. 
 
 "The Palmer Worm." M. V. Slingerland, Bulletin 187, Cornell. 
 
 "Notes upon Plums for Western New York." S. D. Welland, L. H. 
 Bailey, Bulletin 131, Cornell. * 
 
 "Treatment of Leaf-Spot in Plum and Cherry Orchards in 1896." 
 S. A. Beach, Bulletin 117, New York Agricultural Experimental 
 Station, Geneva, N. Y. 
 
 " Soybeans and Cowpeas. " Bulletin 237, Wooster. 
 
 "Maintenance of Soil Fertility." Circular 120, Wooster. 
 
 Circular 131, Wooster. 
 
 "The Maintenance of Fertility. " Bulletin 182, Wooster. 
 
 "Soil Depletion in Respect of the Care of Fruit Trees. " I. P. Roberts, 
 Bulletin 103, Cornell. 
 
 "The Liming of Soils." Bulletin 159, Wooster. 
 
 H. J. Wheeler, R. I. Agricultural Experimental Station, Wash- 
 ington, Government Printing Office. 
 
 "The Maintenance of Soil." Bulletin 141, Wooster. 
 
 "Fall and Early Winter Injuries to Orchard Trees and Shrubbery by 
 Freezing." Bulletin 192, Wooster. 
 
 " Peaches for Home and Market. " Bulletin 170, Wooster. 
 
 "Varieties of Strawberries." Bulletin 154, Wooster. 
 
 "Strawberry Notes, 1910-11." Bulletin 236, Wooster. 
 
 "Varieties of Strawberries and Raspberries." Bulletin 146, Wooster. 
 
 "Orchard Culture." Bulletin 171, Wooster. 
 
 "Orchard Practice: Starting an Apple Orchard." W. J. Green, 
 Circular 108, Wooster. 
 
 "Pollination in Orchards." S. W. Fletcher, Bulletin 181, Cornell. 
 
 "Spraying Apples." Bulletin 191, Wooster. 
 
 " Spraying for Fruit Diseases. " B. T. Galloway, Bulletin 38, Wash- 
 ington, D. C. 
 
 " Spraying Experiments against the Grape Leaf Hopper in the Lake 
 
174 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 Erie Valley." Fred Johnson, Bulletin 97, Pt. I., Washington, 
 
 D.C. 
 
 Johnson, Bulletin 116, Pt. I., Washington, D. C. 
 
 " Spraying Machinery. " Bulletin 216, Wooster. 
 
 "Spraying Machines and Accessories. " Bulletin 248, Wooster. 
 
 "The Regeneration of Orchards." Bulletin 124, Wooster. 
 
 "Seed and Soil Treatment and Spray Calendar, for Insect Pests and 
 
 Plant Diseases." (Very valuable.) Bulletin 147, Wooster. 
 The Grape Root-worm, with Special Reference to Investigations in the Erie 
 
 Grape Belt (Lake Erie Valley), 1907-1909. (Illustrated; very 
 
 elaborate.) Fred Johnson, A. G. Hammar, Washington, D. C. 
 Grape Growing in the South. S. M. Tracy, Mississippi Agricultural 
 
 Station, Washington, Government Printing Office. 
 "Principal Insect Enemies of the Grape." C. L. Marlatt, Bulletin 
 
 70, Washington, D. C. 
 "The Grapevine Flea Beetle." M. V. Slingerland, Bulletin 223, 
 
 Cornell. 
 A New Grape Enemy: The Grape Blossom-Bud Gnat. Fred Johnson, 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 " Self -Fertility of the Grape." S. A. Beach, Bulletin 157, Geneva, N.Y. 
 "Fertilizing Self-Sterile Grapes." S. A. Beach, Bulletin 169, Geneva, 
 
 N. Y. 
 "Experiments in Ringing Grapes. " W. Paddock, Bulletin 151, Geneva, 
 
 N.Y. 
 Fertilizers. (A most valuable treatise.) Edward B. Voorhees, (late) 
 
 Director of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Stations, and 
 
 Professor of Agriculture in Rutgers College. The Macmillan Com- 
 pany. 
 Cyclopedia of American Horticulture. 4 vols. (Illustrated.) L. H. 
 
 Bailey. Macmillan. 
 The Fertility of the Land. I. P. Roberts, Macmillan. 
 The Soil. F. H. King. Macmillan. 
 Irrigation and Drainage. F. H. King. Macmillan. 
 The Horticulturist's Rule Book. L. H. Bailey. Macmillan. 
 
VI 
 
 FEEDING THE LAND 
 
 AS all land is rock, more or less broken up, 
 pulverized, moistened by water and impreg- 
 nated with what the chemists call "the elements, " 
 evidently, productive soil is plant-food stored in 
 available form. Pure rock, solid or pulverized, 
 cannot be called soil, yet a heap of sand, saturated 
 with plant-food in liquid or gaseous form, will sup- 
 port plant life. This means that while man cannot 
 make rock he can make or assemble soil. The 
 process is simple enough in theory: to mix any 
 earth with plant-food, such as may be needed. 
 Nature is carrying on this process all the time. 
 Heat, motion, electrical force (whatever that may 
 be), break up the rock. Geological change, move- 
 ments of water, ice (the glacial action), subsidence, 
 rise of strata, the indescribable cataclysms of past 
 ages, have transformed rock into earth and earth 
 into soil. We cannot account for the elements. 
 Mingling and commingling, they make life on the 
 globe possible. The wisest thing we can do is to 
 imitate nature. The process, in so far as we are 
 
 175 
 
176 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 co-workers, is physical. The great object with us 
 is to get humus in the earth, — decaying vegetable 
 matter in abundance. In other words, in order to 
 have live plants, we must fill the earth beneath our 
 feet with dead and decaying plants. The tree of a 
 century's growth crashes to the earth in a tempest 
 and, decaying, feeds a greedy vegetation, till it in 
 various form matures, drops in death to the ground, 
 decays, and feeds another round of plant life. The 
 transformation of the dead and decaying oak into 
 the wild vine, the dogwood, the artichoke, the 
 hibiscus, the anemone, is a chemical, not a mere 
 physical process. We cannot explain it. We 
 witness the phenomenon and imitate it in orchard, 
 vineyard, and field. 
 
 Soil for food purposes, — human food, — is no 
 longer in the state of nature. The cultivated 
 differs from the wild soil in degree rather than 
 in kind. The wild soil is not so productive as the 
 cultivated; the drain upon it to support plant life 
 is less. This drain is dual: partly for the plant 
 itself, the stock; partly for the fruit. The food 
 for the stock is not the food for the fruit. In 
 a wild state the plant stock gets more food than 
 does the fruit. Our chief purpose in fruit-grow- 
 ing is fruit, not stock or foliage. In a wild 
 state, the purpose appears to be the propaga- 
 tion, the continuation of plants, each after its kind. 
 Nature does not raise fruit for market. We grow 
 the fruit as it were at the expense of the plant; 
 Nature grows fruit solely to perpetuate the kind 
 
Feeding the Land 177 
 
 of plant. Contrast the wild grape, or cherry, 
 with the cultivated; the fox-grape with the Dela- 
 ware; the black cherry of the woods with the 
 Montmorenci or Morello or Tartarian of the 
 orchard. We seek quantity and quality; Nature 
 is satisfied with a fruit that will reproduce itself, 
 irrespective of quality or quantity. She has 
 done her perfect work when she has matured 
 a seed that will grow and that actually does 
 grow. 
 
 In brief, we use the land by converting it into 
 soil that will produce plant or fruit (stem, leaf, 
 root, berry, nut, seed, tuber, or pulp) finer in 
 quality, larger, more abundant in quantity than 
 will the wild soil. This means that fruit-growing 
 is an artificial procedure. On one acre of culti- 
 vated soil we produce many times as much as will 
 grow, in a state of nature, on wild soil. Therefore 
 the supreme problem with us is how to make soil. 
 We cannot change climate, but we can change, we 
 can make, soil. Climate, soil, and the man make 
 the fruit-farm. Given a climate which permits 
 a plant to grow, man by manipulating the soil may 
 bring the plant to what he calls a "state of perfec- 
 tion" — -that is, to a quality and a quantity desired 
 by him as food. In this process he may greatly, 
 modify, and usually does modify, the original plant, 
 even to sterility of fruit-seed, and to gross abnormal- 
 ity of plant stock. The supreme purpose is the 
 production of food; or, viewed as truly from 
 another angle, the supreme labor is the assem- 
 
178 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 bling of a soil and its constant use, care, and 
 cultivation. 
 
 Stupid indeed is the would-be fruit-grower who 
 ignores the soil, neglects cultivation, and yet expects 
 fruit. He leaves the land wild yet demands fruit 
 possible only from highly cultivated soil. As the 
 supreme purpose in fruit-growing is fruit, the su- 
 preme rule is to do the things that end in fruit. 
 Climate fixes the site of the fruit-farm. This 
 site is never undrainable land, unless one intends 
 to raise aquatic fruit, such as fish, ducks, or geese. 
 A plant has two periods, ever in succession during 
 the life of the plant: one of activity; one of repose. 
 Its active period is the fruit-grower's opportunity. 
 During this growing period, and then only, can it 
 feed, assimilating food of such kind and in such 
 quantity as shall produce leaf, stem, flower, root, 
 tuber, seed, or pulp desired for food. Nor can the 
 period of the growth be changed: there is a time, a 
 limited, defined time in the year, during which the 
 plant grows, if it grows at all. Spring and early 
 summer are the period. The plant starts vigor- 
 ously in spring but gradually ceases growth that 
 fruit may mature and the plant be ready to renew 
 activity another spring. This means that the 
 plant is capable of feeding and growing only during 
 a brief part of the year and, indeed, a brief part of 
 its own life. Unlike an animal, a plant feeds 
 continuously part of the year and rests the re- 
 mainder. I mean, of course, plants of the temperate 
 zone. For instance, no fruit plant cultivated in 
 
Feeding the Land 179 
 
 the open in the United States, such as peach, 
 apple, cherry, grape, currant, or berry, grows the 
 year round. That the plant while in a seemingly 
 inactive state, as in winter, continues vital func- 
 tions, there is no doubt. We do not yet under- 
 stand them. Disturb these functions on a winter's 
 day and the plant perishes as quickly as when they 
 are disturbed in summer. 
 
 During the brief growing-period of the plant we 
 make soil for its benefit, — or, more correctly speak- 
 ing, make the food for the plant available in the 
 soil. We cannot do this in winter or late autumn; 
 we must feed it in spring or summer when it will 
 take food ; in spring rather than in summer because 
 it then feeds most vigorously. Plainly then it is 
 the fruit-grower who feeds his plants, he who 
 makes his fruit. Begin as soon as the weather 
 permits to feed your plantation. This means 
 having your plant-food ready for the plant as soon 
 as it awakens from its winter rest and begins to 
 feed. This plant-food is not needed in the barn, or 
 the packing-house, or on the truck wagon, but in 
 the soil in available form. Plants have roots; 
 roots and cells wonderfully organized and associ- 
 ated as it were lengthwise, beneath the skin or bark 
 of the root. These cells have thin walls, which, if 
 alive, have the power of absorbing moisture or gas. 
 If this moisture is food, the roots take it up by a 
 process known as absorption (endosmosis) , new 
 cells form, the plant grows; for a plant in earth 
 below or air above is an assemblage of cells. When 
 
180 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 spring opens and the feeding process is active again 
 (it doubtless goes on less actively during the winter), 
 if food is available, the plant fattens fast. But 
 this plant-food must be in liquid or gaseous form, 
 for the plant-cell cannot absorb solid matter. It is 
 the food already in the soil when spring opens that 
 feeds the plant; therefore it is the food which the 
 fruit-grower has made available long before the 
 feeding process begins. 
 
 It is, as it were, food stored in the soil that feeds 
 orchard and vineyard this year; for this year and 
 next, and years afterward, do we reap the benefit 
 of feeding the soil last year and years before. We 
 feed the soil to-day that it may feed the plant 
 to-morrow. How long will it take the plant-food 
 you scatter on the ground to become available to 
 the plant? Just as long as may be required to 
 make this food supply soluble, — provided it really 
 is plant-food. Iron is an ingredient of wood, but 
 we do not fertilize an apple orchard with nails. 
 The whole problem of soil-making is a problem of 
 available, soluble plant-food. How long does it 
 take a fertilizer to dissolve into invisible moisture 
 and gas? If you can tell, then you know accur- 
 ately when the fertilizer you apply to the land in 
 form of ashes, lime, salts, barnyard manure, a 
 green crop plowed in as clover, turnips, vetch, 
 soybeans, grass, or weeds, will be fit to feed the 
 plant. We can give a general answer: It will take 
 as long as may be necessary for the fertilizer to 
 become fluid or gas, and this is a chemical process 
 
Feeding the Land 181 
 
 within the laboratory of the soil. Heat and mois- 
 ture are chief agents in this process. The sun really 
 does the business. As well feed ingots of steel to a 
 plant as an insoluble fertilizer. In perfectly cold, 
 dry earth the process of change into soluble form 
 is impossible. This explains the wonderful preser- 
 vation of innumerable articles in Egyptian tombs 
 for thousands of years, as honey, bread, seeds, 
 cloth, wood, and other articles commonly perish- 
 able. During the winter the fertilizer we have 
 already placed in the earth is rapidly becoming 
 soluble. The earth is not so cold nor so dry, 
 ordinarily, as to check this process. In coldest 
 winter it is warmer than the air above; and in 
 fiercest drouth it is moister, — otherwise, plant life 
 as we know it could not exist on the earth. 
 
 Evidently soil-making is a constant process, 
 though we are apt to think of it as going on only 
 while we are applying fertilizers to the ground. 
 The ignorant fruit-grower thinks of himself fertiliz- 
 ing the ground only while he is spreading some sort 
 of manure over it. Foolish man! The alchemy 
 of Nature never ceases. He may scatter a few 
 pounds of fertilizer in the spring but his orchard 
 will feed, can feed, only on the food then available 
 in the soil and near the roots of the trees. Very 
 possibly this food has been a century becoming 
 soluble and this fertilizer he is now scattering may 
 not become available for many years. 
 
 He may scatter a fertilizer, say nitrate of soda, 
 which speedily becomes soluble ; or, say lime, which 
 
182 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 becomes soluble only in centuries. The hills 
 which wall in the Lake Shore Valley along the 
 south (and this Valley may be used as a basis for 
 comparison with other favored fruit regions in 
 America) are, as I have said, based on sedimentary 
 rock filled with fossil shells of the Devonian and 
 Carboniferous ages. The entire body of hills is 
 raised land so that the layers of sedimentary rock, 
 composed largely of these shells, are some seven 
 hundred feet above the plane of the Valley. For 
 untold millions of years the waters from the 
 springs high among these hills have been seeping 
 through these thick layers of shells, dissolving 
 them and, flowing northward across the Valley, 
 both along the surface of streams and through 
 wide, subterranean rivers, have impregnated the 
 whole Valley with lime. Where this ooze of water 
 trickles over the rocks along the bluffs that face 
 the lake, the impure lime is deposited in fantastic 
 shapes. Only a few days ago, in company with two 
 friends, I was revisiting the largest of the gulches 
 that cut the hills from south to north and northwest. 
 This is known as Gage's Gulf and, lying partly in 
 New York, partly in Pennsylvania, runs some six- 
 teen miles, in all its turnings and windings, from 
 the crest of the hills, where it starts in a meadow 
 by the roadside, to its mouth, and discharges into 
 Lake Erie. All day we enjoyed its wonders of 
 formation, and fossils — animal and vegetable. In 
 the bed of the creek we picked up these vestiges, 
 millions of years old, washed down by the fierce 
 
Feeding the Land 183 
 
 currents of breaking spring; tossed down from the 
 dizzy sides of the gulf by frost and trickling stream. 
 Nature is still dissolving this immeasurable mass of 
 dead oysters, clams, and snails, creatures of the 
 dawn of time. Corals too in profusion, some like 
 long lily stems, some like horns of plenty, all 
 imbedded in the rock — hard, igneous rock, — the 
 fires of chaos and old night having imprisoned them 
 forever. No labor of sun or rain can now dissolve 
 these corals, or free them from the embrace of flint 
 and sard. But the inexhaustible heaps of shell are 
 plant-food for ages to come, so long as the Valley 
 can be the seat of life. Sixty millions of years, yes, 
 for a hundred millions has Nature been dissolving 
 these beautiful shells, each the sheath and skeleton 
 of a mollusk of yesterday's yesterday. The pro- 
 cess is no speedier to-day in your cherry orchard 
 when you spread the lime. Scatter lime over your 
 fields and centuries hence Nature will still be at 
 work dissolving your lime and trying to make it 
 available for plant-food. 
 
 If we reflect but for a moment we can under- 
 stand that any application of fertilizer we may 
 give the land must be inert until heat and moisture 
 and air, both above and below ground, have 
 broken down the fertilizer, pulverized it, changed 
 it into liquid and gas, and so made it fit for absorp- 
 tion by the delicate cells of the plant root. 
 
 Soil-making consists then in putting on raw 
 material for plant-food, to be assimilated years, 
 centuries, perhaps ages hence; or, it has been put 
 
1 84 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 on ages ago. There is nothing new in the process. 
 Our trees, vines, orchards, and plants are growing 
 because plant-food, deposited in former times, 
 is now soluble and available. The plant feeds as 
 it were at both ends — top and bottom, root and 
 branch. We speak of the leaves as the plant's 
 lungs; of the roots, as its stomach, — rather strong 
 metaphors. The leaf is an arrangement of cells 
 which both receive and give out gas. Some 
 plants are "air-feeders," — not many however; the 
 mistletoe, commonly called an air-plant, sending 
 quasi-rootlets into the bark of the tree and so 
 feeding on the sap. Yet we know that a common 
 and trustworthy test of tree-health is foliage. An 
 abundant, well colored foliage means a healthy tree. 
 If we submerge the foliage in water or in a poison- 
 ous gas, the leaves, and usually the tree, die. We 
 have starved the tree by cutting off its supply of 
 food by means of gas or water. In like manner we 
 starve the tree were we to submerge the roots. 
 Cut them off from soluble food and they, as well 
 as, the tree, perish. Pack the roots in barnyard 
 manure, or ashes, or nitrate of soda, or iron filings, 
 or olive oil, or old clothes, and we starve the tree. 
 Fill a man's stomach with mustard, or roast beef, 
 or plum duff, or any like morsel of like solubility 
 for infantile digestion, and we starve the body, 
 though the process is somewhat accelerated "by 
 other symptoms setting in." Many a tree and 
 vine on the plantation dies of starvation through 
 "auto-intoxication," which, translated, means 
 
Feeding the Land 185 
 
 "self -poisoning." We do not commonly think of 
 a whole peach orchard going off on a spree, say on 
 brandy-peaches, but we may, and sometimes do, 
 in our ignorance, intoxicate the trees to their death. 
 The ignorant grower poisons or starves his own 
 orchard. Thus, seeking figs and finding none, he 
 condemns the tree as unprofitable, overlooking his 
 own contributory negligence. He insists that it do 
 double duty, — send forth new growth of wood and 
 fruit abundantly on an empty stomach, or, at least, 
 on short rations. 
 
 But some one may ask: "If it takes centuries 
 to get fertilizer into plant-food, what can the fruit- 
 grower hope to accomplish? He cannot go back to 
 the Devonian age, or to the time of the American 
 Revolution, and fertilize his ground." True, he 
 cannot go backward (though his orchard may), but 
 he can go forward. He can make soil faster 
 than does Nature in the wild ; he can apply fertilizer 
 which will dissolve and become available as plant- 
 food in far less time than the fossil shells which 
 seep as lime-water through his land, from the 
 hills. And herein lies the claim of all commercial 
 fertilizers, that they dissolve rapidly in the soil ; this 
 is their chief merit. All forms of decaying plants 
 as fertilizers, — such as grass, clover, vetch, beans, 
 weeds, straw, barnyard manure — which is largely 
 straw impregnated with animal excrement, — re- 
 quire considerable time to become soluble as plant- 
 food. "Considerable" may here mean from one 
 to five years, as the earth is warm and moist, or 
 
1 86 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 cool and dry. Heat and moisture break down 
 the cells of such fertilizers, hence the necessity of 
 burying them. Spread over the surface and left 
 there, they decay more slowly than when plowed 
 in, — as every farmer knows. He also knows that 
 a heavy application of such fertilizer well plowed in 
 produces more effect the second than the first 
 year. Straw — the typical fertilizer of this sort — 
 decays as humus and helps keep the earth moist 
 and porous, and in chemical activity. But the 
 tons of such fertilizer become soluble plant-food 
 gradually and in a relatively long period of time. 
 In proof of this one may cite the effect for years 
 of applying barnyard manure to a field. This 
 means that it becomes soluble plant-food slowly. 
 The fertilizers help keep the soil making. Like 
 the miller, you merely keep the hopper full, the 
 grist grinds on and turns out flour. You keep the 
 soil filled with matter which will dissolve and be- 
 come available plant-food. This is all you can do. 
 You yourself cannot effect the chemical change. 
 All you can do is to supply raw material; Nature 
 does the rest. The earth is only a porous crucible 
 in which heat and moisture convert salts, acids, 
 grass, straw, weeds, — whatsoever is soluble, — into 
 plant-food. The plant itself is selective. "Each 
 after its kind" is the rule. Grapevines, straw- 
 berries, peaches, have each its appetite. The 
 art of fruit-growing is to know this appetite and 
 how to satisfy it. 
 
 Practically, whatever the plant, tree, vine, shrub, 
 
Feeding the Land 187 
 
 or root, the preparation of the soil for plant-growth 
 is the same — to conserve plant-food in form of 
 moisture. There is a difference between water 
 and moisture. Most plants will live for a time 
 seemingly on pure water, but in truth only so 
 long as the supply or stock of food already in circu- 
 lation in them lasts; for pure water is not a complete 
 plant-food. Each plant needs a continuing supply 
 of the elements of which it is composed. Thus, 
 stating the case broadly, the chemistry of feeding 
 the plant for fruit means a supply of soluble potash, 
 but for leaf, stalk, or stem, a supply of soluble, or 
 available, nitrogen. The air about us is composed 
 chiefly of nitrogen, but so firmly fastened to the oxy- 
 gen and hydrogen as to be unavailable to the plant. 
 Doubtless the leaf, during its growing period, has 
 power or, so to say, is functioned to disassociate the 
 nitrogen from its companions. As yet we have 
 no cheap, abundant, available nitrogen in form 
 of fertilizer, available as plant-food. Here is the 
 chemist's opportunity. Let us ask the men in the 
 great chemical laboratories, equipped by private 
 or by public means, at Berlin, at Washington, or at 
 the university, to discover, if they can, a form or 
 compound of nitrogen, abundant, cheap, easily 
 handled and applied to the land, and speedily solu- 
 ble in the soil as plant-food. This accomplished, 
 wheat and corn and potatoes and beef and mutton 
 and the long list of human foods will drop in price. 
 Man will go up and food will come down. Here is 
 the opportunity of the industrial chemist. He may 
 
188 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 not realize that farming is behind time. Food 
 must be kept cheap enough for every human being 
 to have enough. Not necessarily fewer autos and 
 victrolas and moving pictures, but more nitrogen 
 for farm use. 
 
 Who said "hardpan"? Did you discover, 
 before you bought your land, whether it rests on 
 hardpan and how far it is to the hardpan? You 
 may be buying a tight, shallow dish; a hardpan 
 basin covered with a few feet of earth in which 
 water collects and drowns the roots of orchard and 
 vineyard. A grapevine or a tree spreads as much 
 root below as foliage above ground. The vine 
 will shoot forth innumerable roots down into the 
 earth, some to the distance of twenty feet. If your 
 soil is shallow and rests on hardpan, it will flood 
 and drown at bottom and bake at top, unless you 
 keep the pores and capillaries open and also get rid 
 of the water. By piercing the hard layer which 
 forms the "pan" you may possibly reach coarse 
 gravel and so drain your land, or the dip of the 
 1 ' pan' ' itself may give ample drainage. Commonly 
 the strata beneath dip or incline and the super- 
 fluous water runs down hill and away. If you 
 expect to raise fruit, or indeed any field-crop, you 
 must get rid of the water. Moisture in the earth 
 is like oil that climbs up the lamp-wick and feeds 
 the flame; moisture rises by capillary attraction 
 in the earth and helps dissolve whatsoever it finds 
 into available plant-food; it feeds the flame of life 
 in the plant. If your land is hard, thin, poor, wet, 
 
Feeding the Land 189 
 
 undrained, this capillary movement of moisture 
 cannot go on. No tree or vine can thrive in such 
 earth; you must first convert it into soil. The 
 first step is drainage; the next step is drainage; the 
 last step is drainage. Whatever the aspect of 
 the fruit-farm, sooner or later we come to drainage. 
 No drainage, no soil; no soil, no plant; no plant, 
 no fruit. Perfect drainage means a responsive soil. 
 Plowing, spading, cultivating, fertilizing, are in 
 vain without drainage. Most lands have natural 
 drainage, but too sharp incline of strata means 
 wash and waste. Could a transverse section of the 
 land be made, on your farm, to a great depth, say 
 of three hundred feet, you would doubtless discover 
 a succession of rock strata at bottom, then coarse 
 gravels, clays more or less porous, then mixed 
 gravel and fine clay as loam, and, at top, the soil 
 as we commonly know it. The many gas wells 
 which have been sunk in the Valley give us this 
 knowledge. Land that can dispose of all ordinary 
 rainfall without washing or flooding is well drained. 
 Of two evils, a dry soil or a wet, the dry is prefer- 
 able; for cultivation gives moisture, but standing 
 water makes any land untillable. Land which, 
 untilled, is hard, dry, and bare, may be made 
 highly productive by cultivation, — stirring the 
 earth makes it porous, sets capillary action free, 
 converts the wild into a garden, By this break- 
 ing up, gases and liquids in the earth go down 
 and moisture and gases rise. In brief, circulation 
 sets in. Earth must be aired, aerated, like bread, 
 
190 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 in order to become light, or like a feather-bed, to 
 be kept wholesome. If you examine a well-tilled 
 field on a sultry day, or amidst drouth, you will 
 discover that the dusty surface covers a moist, 
 porous, warm, productive soil. Scratch but with 
 your finger and you reach moisture. This is an 
 ideal setting for plants. The ground cannot be 
 kept too porous, or circulation too complete. 
 We avoid peril to the plant, or to seeds, by setting 
 or sowing root or seed down moisture deep. The 
 moisture-gage measures all plant-growth. 
 
 It follows then that artificial watering is the bas- 
 est abuse of the soil. It gives wind and sun a 
 chance to bake the surface; it fills the earth-pore 
 and drowns the plant's roots. The best watering- 
 pot is a hoe, a cultivator that stirs the surface of 
 the ground. No thoroughly tilled soil needs 
 irrigation. Dry farming is best farming. Plants 
 differ in habits, but every plant on the fruit-farm 
 prospers by cultivation. Take the trouble to 
 overturn a stone, a bit of wood, an old carpet, the 
 board in front of the kitchen steps, even a bunch 
 of hay or straw lying on the ground over night — 
 the earth beneath is moist. Cover the soil with 
 fertilizer and you catch and retain the moisture as 
 it exudes from the land. You stop it on its way 
 from earth to air. You make a like cover when 
 you stir the surface with cultivator or hoe. The 
 thoroughly tilled soil stops the moisture on its way 
 to evaporation. So by stirring the ground fre- 
 quently, hoeing the garden often, running the 
 
Feeding the Land 191 
 
 cultivator through the corn, the orchard, the vine- 
 yard, the berry patch, you conserve moisture for 
 the plant-roots. This ordinarily, but the time 
 may come when cultivation is but stirring the 
 dust. Then water is in order, not a sprinkling, but 
 the soaking of the soil, deep, copious, complete. 
 Afterward, and as soon as you can work the land, 
 stir it thoroughly with cultivator or hoe ; you will 
 thus put a cover over it and prevent the thirsty 
 sun and the greedy wind from draining it as dry 
 as hay. This thorough cultivation is only a form 
 of surface drainage. Somewhat curious to say, 
 soil, to be most productive, must be drained top 
 and bottom. The composition of the earth is not 
 of great importance; loam, clay, gravel, stone, or 
 sand, if doubly drained, and supplied with soluble 
 plant-food, and located within the climate belt for 
 fruit, — such land, various in context, is ideal and 
 will produce fruit of finest quality and in great 
 quantity. Such a soil is a chemical laboratory 
 which turns out apples, cherries, grapes, peaches, 
 prunes, pears, currants, and berries of every kind. 
 Nature is economical and thrifty, ever providing 
 for her own at long range. In any fruit valley the 
 preparation for fruit-farming has been going on for 
 millions of years. What an inconceivable tonnage 
 of ripened foliage, leaf, stem, stalk, of fruit itself, 
 has fallen to earth in this Valley and become plant- 
 food ! What an immeasurable atmosphere has fed 
 this upper world of plant life! And what incom- 
 putable weight of mineral matter in the earth has 
 
192 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 disintegrated, dissolved, changed from solidity to 
 fluid and gas and has fed this spread of root! 
 Cycles of geologic time mean no more than leaf, 
 bud, flower, and fruit to the plant, and ever that the 
 same organ or part of the plant may be capable 
 of perpetuating its kind — of repeating its life his- 
 tory. Nature may not succeed, but ever essays 
 immortality of flora and fauna. Doubtless in 
 some later geologic age, seons hence, this planet 
 will be clothed with a plant life as different from 
 this we know as is this from the plant life of the 
 Age of Fishes or of the Coal Measures. 
 
 However, our business as fruit-growers is not 
 with palm trees and gigantic ferns which turn 
 into anthracite, or with trees of ages hence which 
 may turn into dynamos. Our business is with 
 the tree and vine of to-day; to respect its habits; 
 to feed it well, and ourselves to feed on it. Nature 
 teaches us how to mix our soil for what we call 
 profit. But Nature and we have somewhat differ- 
 ent purposes. She makes soil solely to perpetuate 
 plants, each after its kind; we make soil solely to 
 raise fruit — that is, what we call fruit, — not, as 
 Nature would say, the seed that will reproduce the 
 plant, but the fruit we use as food, which in our 
 apple, peach, grape, cherry, prune, currant, or 
 berry is not the true seed but the pulp that grows 
 or forms about the seed, primarily as nourishment 
 when the seed shall start to germinate. There- 
 fore a fruit-farm is really a pulp-garden. The 
 edible part of our fruits is the pulp. We throw 
 
Feeding the Land 193 
 
 away the true seeds of apple, peach, grape, berry, 
 — the pit, or stone. The plant-food we are seeking 
 is really pulp-food. We prefer seedless apples, 
 strawberries, currants, grapes; pitless cherries, 
 peaches, prunes; and we measure our horticultural 
 skill not by the size of the true fruit — the seed or 
 pit or, to be accurate, the kernel within the husk 
 or shell or skin, but by the quality, the color, the 
 quantity of the pulp which envelops the true 
 fruit. Nature, left alone, grows little pulp, but 
 expends her energies on kernel, shell, or husk. We 
 cultivate the pulp and try to make the kernel 
 atrophy. So we fertilize and cross-fertilize, bud, 
 graft, mix, and breed to secure the peach with the 
 smallest freestone and the largest, most luscious 
 and attractive pulp. 
 
 Happily barren, dead land is rare. Poor land is 
 comparatively rich. A fair test of land is the weeds 
 it will grow. A soil covered with tall, thick, dank, 
 glossy, blooming weeds means a rich soil. Change 
 weeds and you raise tobacco, tomatoes, trees, 
 potatoes, cabbages, vines. Barren land may be 
 rich in minerals of the kind which, in soluble 
 and limited form, feed plants. A bed of pure 
 nitrate or phosphate would not support plant life 
 any more than one of pure carbon, oxygen, or 
 nitrogen, salt or iron would support animal life. 
 Yet a sprinkling of nitrate of soda sets a plant 
 bounding into leaf and stem, and a pinch of potash, 
 soluble and fed to the tree or the vine, paints 
 peaches crimson and grapes purple. The soil 
 
194 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 seemingly dead, yet rich in minerals, supports a 
 luxuriant plant life by the addition of vegetable 
 matter — that is, of decaying plant fiber or humus. 
 This is the sign of the right sort of soil: abundant 
 humus. It is the essential which no commercial 
 fertilizer can supply. Dead trees make living 
 trees possible. Dead plants are the bed of vege- 
 tation. Lose the humus from your soil and the 
 earth is no more productive than a pit filled with 
 iron filings. Therefore, fruit-grower, in all your 
 getting, get wisdom and understanding as the Book 
 of Books advises, but be sure also to get humus. 
 We know little of the secrets of plant life. We 
 cannot see the grass grow or hear the doors of the 
 flower open. Yet we know that soil devoid of 
 humus is inert. The two components of the per- 
 fect soil are vegetable and mineral; the vegetable 
 includes the animal, but never the mineral, though 
 mineral ingredients enter into every plant. Per- 
 haps we are merely using words without meaning, 
 but what we really try to say is that the elements 
 known in nature in part compose the fruitful soil; 
 that in one familiar form these elements are humus 
 to us; in another form, they are mineral. Which- 
 ever way the truth is expressed, we know that 
 when we attempt to raise fruit our soil must 
 be rich in humus, which to us, plain fruit-growers, 
 seems to be the decaying vegetable matter in the 
 earth. If abundant, this humus keeps the soil 
 moist, porous, chemically active, and productive. 
 If humus be lacking and the mineral ingredients 
 
Feeding the Land 195 
 
 only abound, the land is hard, dry, lifeless. Com- 
 bine humus and mineral, heat and moisture and 
 cultivation, you will make the desert blossom like 
 the rose. 
 
 Now every tree, vine, shrub, and root is a con- 
 sumer of mineral matter, sending its roots down- 
 ward in search of food. Sideward also the roots 
 run, and often surfaceward also. The heat and 
 moisture in the soil break down humus and min- 
 eral matter, making both soluble and thus con- 
 verting both into plant-food. We have both 
 humus and mineral matter in tree and vine, shrub, 
 tuber, and root. Here again the law is working: 
 "Each after its kind." Trees and vines pierce 
 the soil to a great depth as compared with berries, 
 tubers, and cereals. This means that the depths 
 of the soil, not its surface, are the feeding ground 
 for orchard and vineyard. Here is the cue to the 
 fruit-grower's lines; the culture of orchard and 
 vineyard differs from that of grain-field or truck 
 garden. But how shall we get plant-food deep 
 down in the earth? It is not found there as abun- 
 dant as nearer the surface. Yet we know that 
 earth that is brought up from deep wells and shafts 
 will support plant life, and that germs, buried for 
 ages, burst forth into plant life when thus exposed. 
 We know that deeply buried seeds have great 
 vitality, not because they have been, deeply buried, 
 but because they are living germs, long carefully 
 protected by nature against decay, and in condition 
 to grow at opportunity. Doubtless all earth 
 
196 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 which constitutes the shell or husk of the planet, 
 the shell between the molten mass within and the 
 atmosphere without, will support plant life. But 
 neither tree nor vine penetrates these depths. All 
 our vegetation is superficial, keeping ever within 
 the range of the sun's heat on the surface of the 
 earth. Thus the active range of root-life is very 
 limited, as is the range of foliage life. Indeed, 
 foliage may be said to rise and roots to spread. 
 Trees and all vines and shrubs grow literally on 
 the surface of the earth. In Alaska the subsoil 
 remains frozen and marks the impenetrable limit 
 of root-spread. There roots grow laterally, not 
 deep downwards. All this hints at the proper 
 activity of the fruit-grower: to till the soil, not to 
 burrow in the earth, or to bury plant-food too deep. 
 Gravitation draws all supplies downwards; the sun 
 and capillary attraction draw them upwards. 
 Gravitation drains the soil below; the sun drains 
 it above. It is a perpetual game of shuttlecock 
 between these two forces which dominate all life on 
 the globe. 
 
 No man can utilize more food than he can assimi- 
 late, and plants are like men. All that is given the 
 plant more than it can absorb must lie dormant, or 
 waste. We can send tons of good fertilizer on a 
 profitless journey toward the centre of the earth, 
 and not one ounce of food for man be gained. The 
 fruit-grower must know what kind and what 
 amount of food to supply his orchard or vineyard, 
 just as the mother of the house must know how to 
 
Feeding the Land 197 
 
 supply her household. While doubtless in nature 
 nothing is actually wasted — that is, completely de- 
 stroyed and eliminated from our universe, the ig- 
 norant fruit-grower may put what he imagines is 
 fertilizer on his land and realize no benefits. Each 
 after its kind is the law. He may feed for tree- 
 growth and starve for fruit-growth. In other 
 words, his dietary may not be at all adapted to 
 his fruit-farm. 
 
 I have heard vineyardists declare that were they 
 to be offered as a gift enough barnyard manure 
 to cover their vineyards a foot thick, and it were 
 delivered and spread, they would decline the offer. 
 I have heard another say that he would not accept 
 as a gift a foot depth of commercial fertilizer on his 
 vineyard but would prefer even a light application 
 of barnyard manure. A third has shown me his 
 vineyard on which he said that for eleven years 
 he had not put a spoonful of fertilizer of any kind, 
 and that he declined six hundred dollars an acre 
 for it. A few years later he died and the land was 
 sold by the heirs for slightly more than half this 
 rate, the apparent fall in price being caused not by 
 any asserted deterioration of the land but because 
 the heirs did not care to have a vineyard. But 
 nevertheless this "spoonless" vineyard had not 
 maintained its original record for production; it 
 had fallen off in eleven years of starvation some 
 fifty -three per cent. One of the vineyardists who 
 so roundly rejected, or would reject, barnyard 
 manure, lately informed me that his vines were 
 
198 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 light ; the growth of wood scanty ; the leaf color bad ; 
 the fruit small and scraggly, and the production 
 about one third of the amount during the first five 
 years. There is never enough barnyard manure 
 to go round, save as is the case with the owner of 
 one estate, who being a high official of the Lake 
 Shore Railroad sends to his fruit-farm carloads of 
 manure from the Chicago stockyards and scatters 
 it a "foot deep" among his vines. These show 
 heavy growth of wood; rich, large, glossy leaves; 
 and produce abundantly. Hence, after some 
 experience, I abide by my judgment that, while 
 fertilizer factories doubtless bring blessings in 
 dividends to stockholders, we who try to raise 
 grapes get and keep healthy vines and raise grapes 
 abundantly as we cover our vineyards with barn- 
 yard manure as nearly a foot deep as may be. 
 Not being able to secure fertilizer in this form, we 
 substitute cover-crops, as of clover, vetch, or turnip, 
 which we plow in, and add phosphates, nitrates, 
 and potash in such quantity as in our selfishness 
 we may think necessary. 
 
 That soil is a chemical laboratory in which 
 Nature perfects the transformation of mineral and 
 vegetable matter into available plant-food makes 
 life possible on the globe. It is a vast and singular 
 conclusion of the oldest science — astronomy, — 
 that the life we know and see about us on this 
 planet and of which we are part, is limited to this 
 planet alone, — to this earth, this globe, this grain of 
 sand in the universe. Most awesome the thought 
 
Feeding the Land 199 
 
 that no other world, even if it has life, can have this 
 our life of flower and shrub, of orchard and vine, 
 of bird and beast and man. We are alone in the 
 vasty deep of space, coming whence, going whither, 
 living our span, thinking, doing, fitted for no other 
 habitation in the commensurable world than this 
 our home. And here the chemistry of the soil is the 
 physical basis of life. We are not the chemist ; ours 
 is not the laboratory. We may toss pigmy portions 
 of the elements about, scratch the surface of the 
 earth with a pin, drop seed in a hole, or plant a root 
 in a crack. The chemical processes go on despite 
 our petty activity or our valorous ignorance. If we 
 plant the seed or set the root with Nature, she 
 cares for it, feeding it bountifully; if we are indiffer- 
 ent to her, she treats us and seed and root as mere 
 elements to be agents or re-agents in her crucible 
 and to become available food for the perpetuation 
 of life on the globe, each after its kind. 
 
 Helpless, bold, carrying our lives in our hands we 
 must turn to the ground for our existence. It is the 
 laboratory in which every work of man is latent. 
 We discover that for our purposes and ends the 
 soil should be as it were charged with plant-food. 
 It is a case of intensive chemistry. For purposes 
 of perpetuating plant life, each after its kind, the 
 intensiveness is not required ; but for our purposes, 
 to secure food in the form we desire, the soil must 
 contain three elements in larger quantity than that 
 in which they are usually found in the wild: pot- 
 ash, phosphoric acid, and nitrogen. New land, 
 
200 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 as prairie or forest-clearing, river-bottom, or bed of 
 ancient lake, usually is seemingly rich in all three. 
 Ages of soil-chemistry — of disintegration of min- 
 eral and of decay of vegetable matter — have 
 stored up these foods. 
 
 The land newly put to human use is a depositary 
 of pent-up energy, which, set free on demand of 
 seed or root dropped into the soil, is transformed 
 into wheat, corn, oats, potatoes, roots, berries, 
 orchards, and vineyards. Every farmer knows the 
 superior crop- value of new land. He who has had 
 experience in clearing off timber, planting the 
 new land, the first year to potatoes, the second 
 year setting it to Concord grapes, will record an 
 extraordinary yield of potatoes, both as to quan- 
 tity and quality of fruit, and also a phenomenal 
 yield of grapes for several years. I have known a 
 production of nearly eight tons of grapes per acre 
 from such land for several years in succession. 
 This heavy production was the cream of the land; 
 the skim-milk followed when the foods, stored up 
 for ages in that land, had been exhausted. Soil 
 in the wild is soon depleted, — reduced to lowest 
 terms of productivity by cropping. Cropping is 
 wanton consumption of plant-food without 
 resupply. Happily, on this new land, the 
 grower grew clover to plow in, and applied 
 phosphates and potash, thus warding of! the 
 evil day of plant collapse. Cropping the land is 
 like drawing all your money from the bank and 
 winding up with an overdraft. If we will de- 
 
Feeding the Land 201 
 
 posit heavily of fertilizers we need not worry- 
 about cropping. 
 
 We must keep the true balance in our soil- 
 account by applying potash, phosphoric acid, and 
 nitrogen. So long as the soil is kept rich in these 
 elements, together with humus, — ever, ever 
 humus, — it remains practically inexhaustible. 
 When we clear land and burn timber, stump, and 
 brush, and scatter the ashes over the soil, we return 
 potash in the ashes, and ashes, as the farmer says, 
 last a long time in the ground. But wood-ashes, 
 unleached, from hard wood, are scarce. We can 
 supply potash by using commercial fertilizers, — as 
 muriate or sulphate of potash, a plant-food readily 
 becoming soluble in the soil. The amount to be 
 applied depends upon the need of the soil. A mod- 
 erate quantity every year is better than a heavy 
 application infrequently, — say once in three years. 
 Three hundred pounds of the muriate (the sul- 
 phate is stronger) to the acre is ample unless you 
 wish to force the plant and, possibly, to waste 
 your fertilizer. As it is insoluble in the air, it can 
 be applied in winter; drawing to field on the sled 
 and scattering about on the snow. It may well be 
 remembered that the roots of tree or vine extend 
 more than a mere foot from the trunk and that 
 the entire area between rows may wisely be scat- 
 tered over with the fertilizer. Moreover there is 
 danger of burning the stock if strong commercial 
 fertilizers are heaped around it. 
 
 Phosphoric acid may be had commercially in 
 
202 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 the ground-bone fertilizers, or in pulverized or 
 dissolved Florida or South Carolina rock. An 
 annual application of four hundred pounds to the 
 acre, or more as the soil may indicate its needs, is 
 ample. I incline to the heavier application, even 
 up to twice the amount named. Nitrogen, though 
 the most abundant element in earth and air, is 
 usually in an insoluble form. We get it from the 
 earth indirectly, through the clovers, vetches, cow- 
 peas, beans, turnips, and root-piercing crops gener- 
 ally. These absorb the available nitrogen in 
 nodules, as the clovers ; or store the element in the 
 fruit, as in peas and beans, and thus make the food 
 available. A piece of hard, barren land, if sown to 
 one of the clovers and securing a good "catch," — 
 that is, the seed growing, — with favorable weather, 
 becomes a green field. Plow in the clover, and 
 the land by so much becomes rich and tillable loam. 
 Sometimes these plow-crops are not practicable, 
 and resort must be had to commercial fertilizers for 
 a time, in the form of animal refuse, blood, tankage, 
 and nitrate of soda. But Nature herself comes 
 to our relief. What spot does she leave barren on 
 hill, or meadow, or beach of lake? The nakedness 
 of yesterday is clothed to-day with grass and weeds 
 and creeping vines. Nature not only abhors a 
 vacuum but also barren earth. 
 
 These foods — potash, nitrogen, phosphoric acid — 
 slip quickly through the earth and may wholly miss 
 the mark unless stayed in their flight, held up, as 
 it were, by humus. This delays them till the 
 
Feeding the Land 203 
 
 plant-cells can absorb them ; whence it follows that 
 the more soluble the fertilizer, the greater care 
 necessary in applying it at the proper time, and in 
 quantity precisely measured by the absorptive 
 and feeding powers of the plant. This means, feed 
 the plant most when it is capable of consuming 
 most. The nitrates feed stalk, stem, and leaf, 
 therefore feed them when leaf, stem, and stalk are 
 growing, when foliage cells are most rapidly form- 
 ing. Potash is fruit-food, therefore have it at 
 hand when the fruit is forming. Nitrate of soda 
 would be wasted in late summer, in autumn, or in 
 winter. Nitrates are spring foods, to be applied 
 when the plant is growing rapidly, whether in 
 spring or early summer. But fruit is forming while 
 the plant is growing, so potash must be applied 
 in time to feed the fruit ; it must be on hand, in the 
 soil to that end. How long nitrates or potash will 
 remain in the soil awaiting solution depends upon 
 the moisture and temperature of the land. These 
 being low, solution is slow; if very low, it proceeds 
 not at all. But as potash is more insoluble than 
 the commercial nitrates, it may be applied in 
 winter, or late autumn. All commercial fertilizers 
 are artificial and must be applied timely, evenly, 
 discreetly. They are like stimulants to the human 
 body, to be used with care. Dropped in lumps 
 and masses on the ground, they waste in sun and 
 wind, or remain inert, like rocks piled by the road- 
 side. Brought into raw contact with the roots of 
 the plant, they char, poison, burn, shock the root- 
 
204 
 
 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 cells, and are no more helpful to the vine or the 
 tree than hot coals or iron pigs. 
 
 I prefer the processes of Nature, on the fruit- 
 farm, to the laboratory at Cornell, or the factory 
 in Buffalo, or Chicago. Cover-crops, such as the 
 clovers, plowed in, supply nitrogen; ashes supply 
 potash and some other ingredients, as lime. Phos- 
 phoric acid is supplied by stable manure, by guano, 
 by South Carolina or Florida rock, or by ground 
 bone. x 
 
 1 The average composition of the most important farm manures and 
 of the commercial fertilizers is shown by the following tables: 
 
 
 
 
 
 Potash 
 
 Phosphoric 
 
 Farm Manure 
 
 Nitrogen 
 
 Ammonia 
 
 lent 
 
 (K 2 0) 
 
 Acid 
 (P2O5) 
 
 Cow manure (fresh) 
 
 0-34 
 
 0.4I 
 
 
 0.40 
 
 0.l6 
 
 Horse " " 
 
 0.58 
 
 O.70 
 
 
 o.53 
 
 0.28 
 
 Sheep 
 
 0.83 
 
 1. 00 
 
 
 O.67 
 
 O.23 
 
 Hog " " 
 
 0-45 
 
 0.54 
 
 
 0.60 
 
 O.19 
 
 Hen 
 
 1.63 
 
 I.98 
 
 O.85 
 
 1-54 
 
 
 Mixed stable-manure 
 
 0.50 
 
 O.60 
 
 O.63 
 
 0.26 
 
 
 Commercial Potash Fertilizers: Average Composition of Potash Salts: 
 
 Name of Salts 
 
 Average 
 
 % of Pure Potash 
 
 (A) Salts containing chlorides: 
 
 
 
 Muriate of potash 
 
 
 50 
 
 Manure salt 
 
 
 20 
 
 Kainit (crude salt) 
 
 
 12.4 
 
 (B) Salts free of chlorides: 
 
 
 
 Sulphate of potash 
 
 
 50 
 
 Sulphate of potash-magnesia 
 
 
 27 
 
Feeding the Land 
 
 205 
 
 While the grower is feeding the soil, the crops 
 are taking many tons of ingredients from it in the 
 form of straw, — that is humus, growth of wood, 
 twig, branch, and vine, leaf, stalk, and flower; 
 potash, nitrogen, and phosphoric acid. The amount 
 of material thus actually abstracted by the 
 
 Commercial Phosphoric Acid Fertilizers: Composition of Fertilizer 
 Materials Used as Sources of Phosphoric Acid : 
 
 
 Nitrogen % 
 
 Equivalent in 
 Ammonia % 
 
 Potash 
 
 (K20) 
 
 % 
 
 Available 
 
 phosphoric 
 
 acid % 
 
 So. Carolina acid phos- 
 
 
 
 
 
 phate 
 Florida acid phosphate 
 Tennessee acid phosphate 
 Bone black dissolved 
 
 
 
 
 13 to 14^ 
 13 to 16 
 
 15 to 18 
 
 16 to 19 
 
 Bone meal 
 Bone dissolved 
 
 2^ tO 4^ 
 2 tO 3 
 
 3 to 5K 
 2^ to 3K 
 
 
 6 to 9 
 13 to 15 
 
 Peruvian guano 
 
 6 to 10 
 
 7% to 12 
 
 \}4 to 4 
 
 7 to 8 
 
 The Nitrogen Fertilizers: Composition of Fertilizer Materials Used 
 as Sources of Nitrogen : 
 
 
 
 
 Potash 
 
 Phosphoric 
 
 
 Nitrogen % 
 
 Equivalent in 
 Ammonia % 
 
 (K20) 
 % 
 
 Acid (P2O5) 
 % 
 
 Nitrate of soda 
 
 15H to 
 
 16^ 
 
 19 to 19^ 
 
 
 
 Sulphate of ammonia 
 
 19% to 
 
 20^ 
 
 24 to 25 yi 
 
 
 
 Dried blood 
 
 ioyi to 
 
 14^ 
 
 \2y 2 to 18 
 
 
 2 to 3 
 
 Concentrated tankage 
 
 \2% tO 13 
 
 15 to 16 
 
 
 I tO 2 
 
 Tankage 
 
 7^to9 
 
 9 to II 
 
 
 7 to 9 
 
 Bone tankage 
 
 5 to 6 
 
 6to7K 
 
 
 9*A to 15 
 
 Dried-fish scrap 
 
 9 to 10 
 
 11 to 12 
 
 
 5^to 7 
 
 Cotton-seed meal 
 
 (>yi to 7K 
 
 7^to9 
 
 I^t0 2 
 
 2 to 3 
 
 Castor pomace 
 
 5 to 6 
 
 6 to 7 
 
 i to iyi 
 
 \yi to 2 
 
 Tobacco stems 
 
 2>^ to 3 
 
 3 to 3}^ 
 
 2 to 10 
 
 }4 to I 
 
206 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 crop from an acre of land varies, according to 
 the crop, from one to five tons of straw, or its 
 equivalent; from thirty to two hundred pounds of 
 potash ; from four to seventy pounds of phosphoric 
 acid, and from thirty to two hundred pounds of 
 nitrogen. Of course the greater part of every 
 crop is water, whether it be twenty tons of onions, 
 four hundred bushels of cherries, two tons of grapes, 
 or thirty bushels of beans. If, for example, thirty- 
 six tons of cherries be harvested from five acres, 
 this does not mean that in order to keep a right 
 account with the land you must return an equal 
 tonnage of fertilizer. We have rain 'and snow 
 for nothing; but the skies do not drop potash, 
 nitrogen, or phosphoric acid, or humus. These 
 the fruit-grower must supply in addition to what- 
 soever potash, nitrogen, and phosphoric acid may 
 fall to the ground as leaf, — for dropping foliage 
 contains some potash, nitrogen, and phosphoric 
 acid, — as much of these ingredients as are needed. 
 In practical fruit-farming, while undoubtedly 
 the laws of chemical action work precisely as in the 
 university, or the government laboratory, or at 
 the experimental farm, yet not every acre of cher- 
 ries is equivalent to every other acre in the country. 
 Trees vary in size, productivity, number per acre, 
 vigor, and so on in many details. But we know, 
 as a fair deduction from our own experience, and 
 from the record of the larger experience of others, 
 that to avoid cropping the land we must feed it, 
 not starve it; we must never take more from it 
 
Feeding the Land 
 
 207 
 
 than we give to it. In other words, we must keep 
 it up to a working strength, with a surplus of 
 resource ever on hand. I 
 
 It is entirely practicable for the fruit-grower, 
 by a comparison of commercial fertilizers, to deter- 
 mine those most economical for his purposes. 
 Because a fertilizer is cheap by the ton, as for 
 example Kainit, it may not be so cheap as a more 
 expensive kind which contains a larger proportion 
 of an ingredient sought. Kainit is not so valuable 
 as a potash food, as any farm manure. A ton of 
 muriate of potash is as valuable, for potash, as four 
 tons of Kainit. Common salt has many virtues on 
 the fruit-farm, and is used by some vineyardists 
 as a fertilizer. Experience does not support their 
 claim of its value as a plant-food. Farm manure is 
 worth more than any known commercial fertilizer 
 
 1 The Amounts of Fertilizer Ingredients — Potash, Phosphoric Acid, 
 Nitrogen — Contained in the Crop from One Acre of Land: 
 
 
 
 
 
 Phos- 
 
 
 Crop 
 
 Yield 
 
 Straw, etc 
 
 Potash 
 
 phoric 
 Acid 
 
 Nitrogen 
 
 Apples . 
 
 15 T. 
 
 
 60 lbs. 
 
 30 lbs. 
 
 39 lbs. 
 
 Grapes 
 
 2 " 
 
 7000 lbs. 
 
 39 " 
 
 11 " 
 
 32 " 
 
 Pears 
 
 16 " 
 
 
 26 " 
 
 10 " 
 
 32 " 
 
 Plums 
 
 8 " 
 
 
 40 " 
 
 4 " 
 
 30 " 
 
 Potatoes 
 
 200 bus. 
 
 1500 " 
 
 74 " 
 
 21 " 
 
 46 " 
 
 Tobacco 
 
 1600 lbs. 
 
 1400 " 
 
 200 " 
 
 16 " 
 
 76 " 
 
 Turnips 
 
 700 bus. 
 
 5T. 
 
 180 " 
 
 52 " 
 
 80 " 
 
 Wheat 
 
 35 " 
 
 3000 lbs. 
 
 3i " 
 
 24 " 
 
 59 " 
 
 Clover, crimson 
 
 
 15 T. 
 
 140 " 
 
 40 " 
 
 130 " 
 
 Onions 
 
 45,000 lbs. 
 
 
 72 " 
 
 37 " 
 
 72 " 
 
 Tomatoes 
 
 10 T. 
 
 
 54 " 
 
 20 " 
 
 32 " 
 
 Corn 
 
 70 bus. 
 
 3T. 
 
 55 " 
 
 48 " 
 
 83 " 
 
 Beans 
 
 30 T. 
 
 2700 lbs. 
 
 53 " 
 
 30 " 
 
 75 " 
 
208 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 for nitrogen or for phosphoric acid. By comparing 
 the percentages of nitrogen, ammonia, potash, and 
 phosphoric acid, of different fertilizers, together 
 with a comparison of their prices by the ton, 
 the fruit-grower may readily determine which 
 kind is most economical for him to use. There is 
 no need of rule of thumb here: the data are chemi- 
 cally known and definitely worked out. Com- 
 mercial fertilizers have a tendency to "burn" the 
 land, unless it contains sufficient humus to min- 
 gle with them in their solution. Burnt land has 
 the hard, barren, dry look familiar to all fruit- 
 growers. 
 
 No man can successfully run a fruit-farm by 
 mere book-knowledge. Experience, actual contact 
 with the problems of horticulture, must be the 
 basis of success; but the data of the business are 
 better established and are more available to-day 
 than ever before. The Department of Agriculture 
 at Washington, and every Experimental Station, 
 and most of the States now support such, issue 
 valuable bulletins and reports, special studies 
 and results of all sorts of investigations. These 
 documents may be had usually for the asking. 
 The works of Burbank are now being made avail- 
 able and Professor Bailey's have long been classic. 1 
 
 But the most impressive facts in fruit-farming 
 are the hard facts of our own experience. One 
 
 1 The reader is specially urged to utilize L. H. Bailey's The Principles 
 of Fruit-Growing, as well as other volumes of The Rural Science Series, 
 edited by him; published by The Macmillan Company, New York City. 
 
Feeding the Land 209 
 
 primary fact is that land must be fed, if fruit is 
 to be raised, — and fed generously. In the Lake 
 Shore Valley, a natural fruit-belt, the land is badly 
 fed. Cropping is the custom. Despite this abuse 
 of the land, crops are heavy and profitable. Pro- 
 per feeding of the land would greatly increase crops ; 
 increase profits, and in no important degree in- 
 crease labor. An acre of land that produces five 
 hundred dollars gross or, as oftentimes, net, in the 
 fruit Valley, is entitled to a full meal. If it feeds 
 you, you should feed it. We farm in the soil, 
 not in a book. Were the young fruit-grower to 
 depend upon the book alone, he might think that 
 he had only light farming to do ; that with a ferti- 
 lizer factory, a contract with a commission-house, 
 and an auto he would wind the machinery of his 
 farm and simply stand by, in dress-suit and kid 
 gloves, to take in the profits. He like all others 
 must follow the farming experience of the ages. The 
 world has been very slow to learn the art of fruit- 
 farming. The grand rule in farming is to accumu- 
 late humus in the soil, first, last, and all the time, 
 and to keep circulation of the moisture and gases 
 within the soil ever active. Plainly, the fruit- 
 grower is a soil -maker. He cannot change climate ; 
 he cannot change the habits of the plant ; he cannot 
 change the chemical laboratory beneath his feet ; he 
 cannot change the food of the plant and have any 
 plant left to feed.' All he can do is to align himself 
 strictly with Nature. The wind moves the ship, 
 but whether to port or to wreck depends upon the 
 14 
 
210 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 sailors. Nature produces plant and fruit, each 
 after its kind, but whether wild or cultivated 
 depends upon the fruit-grower working through 
 the soil. Having selected in the climatic belt 
 the site for your fruit-farm ; having selected your 
 fruit -stock, the varieties you purpose raising ; hav- 
 ing made your soil, learned its character, quali- 
 ties, strength, and weakness; knowing what your 
 plants need and how to supply the need, your 
 fruit-farm is an organism functioned for action 
 and service: a machine to be run. 
 
 More than two thousand years ago, Cato, writ- 
 ing on farm-management, asks: "What is the 
 first principle of good agriculture? To plow well. 
 What is the second? To plow again ; and the third 
 is to manure. " Translated into the experience of 
 our race, since man first ran a crooked stick over 
 the surface of the ground and scratched the soil in 
 cultivation, the old Roman's counsel is: "Feed your 
 land and cultivate your soil." 
 
VII 
 
 THE FRUIT-FARM AND THE YOUNG FOLKS 
 
 IT is a common saying among parents: "We 
 want the children to have something when we 
 are gone; we began with nothing and know how 
 hard life is"; and so they save for their children. 
 But what of the children? 
 
 The master built a ship for his children, but they 
 did not like the sea, neither could they sail a ship, 
 nor would they learn. A man built a fruit-farm 
 for his children, but they did not like fruit-farms, 
 could not run one, nor would they learn. There 
 are children who like neither sea nor land. Yet 
 there are many farmers and sailors, — but sailors 
 on the sea and fruit-growers on the land. 
 
 No parent, even the wisest, can account for the 
 tastes of his child. The mother explains that 
 perversity is inherited on the father's side; the 
 father, on the mother's side; aunts, uncles, cousins, 
 are cited. Nor can the wisest child explain the 
 tastes of his parents, for it is a wise son that knows 
 his own father. After all explanations have been 
 made, there remains between parents and children 
 a great gulf fixed, which cannot be bridged by the 
 
212 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 fruit-farm. What will become of it? What of 
 the children? Of the parents? "Each after his 
 kind." 
 
 There is no fruit-farm poor or good but thinking 
 makes it so. To be a fruit -farmer, one must think 
 fruit-farming, for as a man thinks so is he. Few 
 children think as their parents; few parents, as 
 their children. In America there are many fruit- 
 farms, but few fruit-farms occupied by the third 
 generation. In these days when statistics and 
 diagrams are devised to make knowledge plain and 
 conclusive, the diagram of the vocation of a family 
 in successive generations resembles a tornado 
 record, the line of movement marking leaps and 
 bounds, changes and variations and startling 
 extremes. Even in Europe, that imaginary land 
 of fixed, if not of steady habits, continuity of 
 calling in successive generations of the family is 
 rare. There is a famous Zurich family of mathe- 
 maticians, and a famous Geneva family of botan- 
 ists: son, grandson, and great-grandson, each 
 eminent, who have been working, generation after 
 generation, in the same field of science. Rare 
 as are such families in the old world, and quite 
 unknown in the new, they embody and represent 
 the true use of leisure, — the activity of accumulated 
 experience. I know few fruit-farms owned and 
 conducted by descendants of the original settler. 
 Shall I venture to compare generations of farmers 
 in America with generations of great mathe- 
 maticians or botanists in Europe? Fruit-farming 
 
The Fruit-Farm and the Young Folks 213 
 
 is a branch of applied botany, as Luther Burbank 
 has made plain. So too is it applied chemistry. 
 The significance, if any may be drawn from com- 
 parisons among vocations, is of continuity of 
 activity in the same family. Certainly it would be 
 easy to demonstrate in any valley that such con- 
 tinuity makes for wealth, influence, public order, 
 high character, and the general welfare. It would 
 be highly interesting were some economist of 
 practical tendencies to examine into the horti- 
 cultural interests of our country and bring into 
 common knowledge the effects of continuity of 
 ownership of land, of mastery of its uses, and of 
 contribution to the general welfare of the com- 
 munity. 
 
 In most valleys change is the law: new owners, 
 the flotsam and jetsam of cultivation, the extremes 
 of neglect, spasmodic care, hope, and disappoint- 
 ment. Three removals are as bad as a fire, says 
 Poor Richard. Usually it is the remover rather 
 than the farm that suffers. The son cannot see 
 the world through his father's eyes. To the young, 
 the call of the world is as the voices of the Sirens. 
 Youth likes or dislikes and chooses; age chooses 
 on the margin of gain or loss, or safety. To 
 the boy, it is ever something better beyond. Yet a 
 trifle may deflect him from one career to another: 
 missing a train; meeting a stranger; a chance 
 acquaintance, a streak of sunshine, or a blinding 
 snowstorm. Few are the men who are what 
 they are because of deliberate preparation and 
 
214 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 choice. The younger Mill's life was prescribed for 
 him, rigidly, by his father, yet the younger Mill 
 is not measured as a wholly normal man. 
 
 The tree drops its seeds and none can tell which 
 shall grow and which shall not. It is the seed 
 in the right environment that becomes the tree. 
 For the visible forest innumerable seeds perished 
 by the way. The planet on which we live is not 
 large enough to grow to maturity all the seeds that 
 fall to the ground. One pair of rats, unchecked, 
 in a few years, it is said, would overrun the globe. 
 Nature maintains the balance of life by a system 
 of survivals, — which we are wont to call evolution. 
 Nor is man exempt from the operation of the law. 
 It is this law which is recognized, quite uncon- 
 sciously, when the old folks say: " We want to 
 leave something for the children." What is really 
 meant is that the parents want their children to live, 
 to survive, to perpetuate the stock. The domi- 
 nant instinct of man, like the dominant force in 
 the plant, is to perpetuate each after its kind. To 
 be father of a line of kings was Macbeth's heart's 
 desire. Napoleon yearned to found a dynasty; 
 Sir Walter Scott enslaved his genius and worked 
 himself into senility to establish a family. Alex- 
 ander, Caesar, Napoleon left each a son, who each 
 came to an untimely end and dissipated an im- 
 perial dream. There is not now living a direct 
 male descendant of any one of the world's most 
 eminent men down to the time of Charles Darwin. 
 Who to-day has the blood of Plato? Aristotle? 
 
The Fruit-Farm and the Young Folks 215 
 
 Cervantes? Shakespeare? Newton? Washington? 
 And the list may be extended through the ages. 
 
 The trees of to-day are sprung from the trees of 
 ages past — that is, the trees of the wild. When we 
 turn to the trees of cultivation we find not one 
 variety which comes to us unchanged from the time 
 of the Caesars, or even of Shakespeare. Parton, 
 in his life of Franklin, written in the middle of 
 the nineteenth century, remarking on discoveries, 
 inventions, and improvements which would most 
 interest Franklin, mentions "the improved straw- 
 berry." Shakespeare mentions strawberries; they 
 were a common fruit in the days of Horace; 
 Lucullus, before him, served them frozen at his 
 feasts. Doubtless as a little boy Adam went 
 strawberrying, but he did not pick Brandywines, 
 Parkers, Earles, or Marshalls. Indeed, I suspect 
 that the Garden of Eden, in his day, produced 
 small, sweet, wild strawberries, like those that 
 grow under the hedge and among the shading 
 hollyhocks by the arbor. Possibly the original 
 strawberry was only a small, hard, sour bunch of 
 seeds. Forgotten Burbanks have added the lus- 
 cious, juicy pulp and cast out the seeds. Yet 
 despite all the cataclysms of the ages strawberries 
 were and are. But the survivals we know are 
 not of the Adam variety, but masses of scarlet 
 pulp of our making. Man has made the straw- 
 berry, the peach, the apple, the cherry, the prune, 
 the grape, the pear, the plum, the berry which we 
 know. Cross-fertilization and breeding assemble 
 
9l6 An Ann i II .in I i nil I .11 in 
 
 dominant qualities and elements. This, too, i:; a 
 
 ;.ui viv.il. So Nature win:; wi 1; 1 1 < \ « 1 man does a 
 wv w;nii oui children to live In comfoi 1 , not 
 
 to :..iv in al'llnenee, and so wi' laboi foi Mkiii. 
 
 vv<- make .1 h mi 1. 11 in i"i them, planl Ing orchardi 
 .in. I vineyards. Possibly 0111 fiunily runs to sons 
 in law, but we labor <>", hoping h>i the host, and 
 hugging to our hearts the motto, ".1 rose by any 
 othei name will smell as sweet." But whether 
 we have sons or sons in law, they have their own 
 
 ideal,;. It is the fi nil U as .1 commercial ai I icle 
 
 that may inLerest them, n<»l as a living organism, 
 01 as .1 home We would have oui children live 
 in the security <>l the old homestead; they yearn 
 i<» live anywhere else; or, possibly, the restless sen 
 Son u| hie over, one of them son <»r son in law 
 Lakes lh<- homestead as his portion and settles 
 down to the solution ol that common | n < »l .bin, 
 " What shall I d<> l<u a living?" If he can discover 
 
 nothing preferable, he remains on the farm, is 
 
 his estimate <>l its value his estimate ol assoein 
 Lions or ol possible profits? I li:; esl imate oi itl 
 value in. iv b<- ol emotions more justly to be 
 accredited to the world-at-lurge. lie may look 
 Upon the whole world us only .1 large fruil farm, 
 and this his corner to be his refuge and his home. 
 I rave you evei observed a lledgling leave the nesl ? 
 II seems oblivious ol dangers. II flies ofl boldly 
 
 .111,1 allghti i" boni ol the cat, or In a tub of wateri 
 or is helplessly enmeshed amidst s stubborn brush 
 
 heapi [fit alights In /OUI hands, il looks al you as 
 
The i'i nit Fai m and ih<- Voung Folks •'/ 
 
 il \<»ii vviiv ,i I .rir, <»i ;i. stone, < >i ;i telephone pole, 
 
 not casting even tlu; shy glance of fright i So when 
 the young folks start out in life, like fledglings, they 
 act {is il any place Ls a safe refuge and all the w«»i id 
 
 .'in old I I K ih I. 
 
 The prodigal son went to a far country: the fai 
 I.Ik r from home, the kecnei Liu? isolation. Ureal* 
 
 inj' home Lies means tin g youi l)a,cl< on old 
 
 associations. II yon leave home very early say 
 in infancy, yon are spared the break; it comes 
 later, li at all. We who are parents and have 
 
 formed associations and know/ that ;i l> lie ol 
 
 the lakes a human life, would secure om estate 
 
 I mm t heritage 01 not for our children. We know 
 the value of these associations and would have the 
 young folks know italso. Ihitas the fledgling can 
 not I. now where tt shall alight when it soars from 
 the edge of the nest, so the young folks cannot I- now 
 l.h< ii Inline when they hrcil. the home ties. 
 
 The first settlers in the American wild desired, 
 as earnestly as do the owners to day, to leave th< ll 
 
 children valuable Land as safest protection against 
 
 the day ol want. Yet, turning ovei the pages ol 
 
 the hooi, of the Pruit Valleys, we read ol ImmJ 
 
 gration and emigration, east, west, and south, to 
 pastures new, to callings and vocations more to the 
 liking than fruit fanning. So too read the pages 
 ol Lhc hoot: ol any community '" Amei [ca, We 
 a. re a restless, a migratory people, who, in the shoi I. 
 IpECe Of fi hundred years have overspread the con 
 tinent, making settlements, organizing territories, 
 
2i 8 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 founding States. Upwards of thirty millions of 
 people comprise this moving mass. Europe, Asia, 
 Africa, have sent millions. Their descendants, 
 called Americans, have swelled the stream, and 
 every year it is further enlarged by more than 
 a million who arrive from Europe alone. It fol- 
 lows that results long ago foretold are occurring. 
 The desirable lands have been taken up and no 
 longer can a farm be had for the asking. Very 
 rapidly, and notably since the Civil War, America 
 approaches the condition of Europe: scarcity of 
 land ; increase of population ; decrease of production 
 of food-stuff; cost of living rising; the traditional 
 ease of life in America vanishing. Never again can 
 the old-fashioned simplicity of colonial life prevail. 
 A hundred years in America have wrought changes 
 comparable to those of centuries in Europe. The 
 trend on both continents to-day is the same: 
 toward class distinctions, discriminations, com- 
 plexity of industrial conditions, elaboration of 
 innumerable wants, and diminution of means 
 and opportunities to satisfy them. In brief, the 
 machinery of life seems ever becoming more 
 complicated, and we are thinking, as it were by 
 compulsion, more of the machinery and the 
 machine, and less of the spirit who inhabits and 
 moves them. This means the ever sharper reali- 
 zation of the discomforts of life, real or imaginary, 
 and the greater risk of experiencing discomfort 
 than comfort. 
 
 Parents now, perhaps as never before, are yearn- 
 
The Fruit- Farm and the Young Folks 219 
 
 ing to leave something to their children that they 
 may escape discomforts and pain, the enforced 
 self-denials such as parents themselves have ex- 
 perienced. We would have our children journey 
 along the primrose rather than the thorny path of 
 life. In this yearning there is nothing new; it 
 is true of all peoples in all ages ; it is the touch of 
 Nature that makes us all akin. But the antiquity 
 of the touch does not diminish its humanity. It is 
 renewed in every parent and yet to him and her 
 seems as novel as a discovery. It may be ques- 
 tioned whether, as land and all activities connected 
 with it become more and more commercial, the 
 chance of its successive use by generations of the 
 same family does not diminish. The rural con- 
 stantly approaches the social and economic urban 
 state, though never seemingly actually reaching it. 
 In New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, At- 
 lanta, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, 
 in any of the thousands of our cities and towns, 
 the personnel of what is called "the business sec- 
 tion" changes twice each generation. Sons and 
 grandsons do not succeed to the business of their 
 fathers, much less in it. The business of a great 
 city as well as of a little town is done ever by new 
 men. "Old established houses" are new. For 
 many years in the Valley the sign over a well- 
 known store read: "B. C. Town." A drummer 
 who sold the firm sugar was wont to tell his other 
 customers that he did business with the oldest 
 town in the world. The date on the door may be 
 
220 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 old, but usually the business within has changed 
 hands repeatedly. So too in the country : ' ' This is 
 the same fruit-farm, but the A-y-l-s no longer 
 own it; the children did not care for fruit-farming; 
 the girls got married; the boys went to Chicago." 
 In city or country the boys do not follow the 
 vocations of the fathers ; farm-boys become bank- 
 ers; bankers' sons become fruit-farmers. The suc- 
 cession is as uncertain in the city as in the country. 
 In affairs of state we call it a revolution, when the 
 Bourbons cut off the young King of Rome from 
 the throne of Napoleon, or the Prince Imperial, 
 missing his seat in the saddle in Africa, is cut off 
 by a savage spear, and the Republic goes on. 
 There are like vicissitudes in private life; every 
 station runs the risk of exile. The parents would 
 prevent this but the young folks seemingly covet 
 it. The farmer's son hates the farm; the banker's 
 son hates the bank; the doctor's son hates the very 
 odor of his father's office. The mere mention of 
 orchard or vineyard brings up a picture in the farm- 
 boy's mind of February fingers fumbling to trim 
 interminable rows of interminable vines ; of ladders 
 of weary weight and height; of endless bushels of 
 apples swaying out of reach in a high wind, and 
 never a dollar for the boy himself. The boy was 
 thinking of how much pleasure that dollar would 
 give him; his father was thinking of how many 
 apples he was giving for a dollar, and quite forgot 
 the boy. What if the father had invested the 
 dollar in the boy by giving him a slight share in 
 
The Fruit- Farm and the Young Folks 221 
 
 the apples ! Would the ladder seem so heavy or the 
 apples so high, or the rungs so hard, or the wind 
 so piercing? Or had the father invested a few 
 bunches of grapes in the boy, would the rows seem 
 so long or the vines so many, or February fingers so 
 numb and cold? The father trims grapes all day 
 long and never a word about cold fingers. The 
 prospective profit in grapes keeps him warm. 
 Hopelessness is always cold. Age nor sex is 
 exempt. Here is the mystery of association. 
 
 The father must needs make possible the right 
 sort of associations. Every man pursues as best 
 he can his own substantial happiness; the boy 
 among the apple boughs sees his happiness in the 
 apples, if they are his apples. Otherwise they may 
 as well belong to the neighbors. It is a nice 
 question on every fruit-farm, — as to the young 
 folks, — whether the farm is really theirs or the 
 neighbor's. If the boy picks apples for a neighbor 
 he is really picking his own dollars from the apple 
 tree ; on his father's farm he picks his father's apples 
 for his father. At least this is the boy's version of 
 the facts in fruit-farming. 
 
 Shall the father then hire his own boy to pick 
 his own apples? It is not hiring, when the boy is 
 interested in picking apples. The family is the 
 ideal community and the boy has his part in its 
 communal work. But nowadays even the children 
 ''strike." Few seem willing to work for another, 
 children for parents, or parents for children. Yet, 
 in the Fruit Valley all the children have not 
 
222 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 "struck, " nor all the parents ceased to provide for 
 their children. At least children under fifteen still 
 stick to the old folks, but the youth of eighteen 
 or twenty, working on the fruit-farm for "the old 
 folks," is a rare bird in the landscape. Whether 
 there be one or several boys, the fruit-grower 
 usually runs his plantation by hired help. Not 
 one of the boys is at home. The bank, the post- 
 office, the grocery, the factory, the railroad, the 
 office, not the fruit-farm, holds them. But the 
 old folks still live on "the place," and the boys 
 occasionally come home and look upon the farm 
 as a distant asset. His business bringing him 
 through the ancestral Valley, the boy "stops off" 
 "over a train " and is a guest at the old home. He 
 is treated as a visitor and discovers what a quiet, 
 comfortable, pretty spot is the old farm. He sees 
 it at a different angle from that when he picked 
 apples from tossing boughs. He was not so well 
 treated when he was a boy on the farm. Perhaps, 
 had he been treated as well as the passing guest, 
 he would not have left the farm. He did not know 
 it was so comfortable. Bank, office, factory, seems 
 for the moment a prison-house, especially if this 
 visit be in summer. And he turns from the old 
 home back to his prison-house with a sigh. If they 
 had treated him as well twenty years ago, would he 
 have left the fruit-farm in disgust? The glamor 
 of office-life, clerical work, railroading, practicing 
 medicine, — whatever his vocation, — has faded. 
 Work is work whatever its name and wherever 
 
The Fruit-Farm and the Young Folks 223 
 
 found, on farm or in factory. As now his eye roams 
 up and down his native heath, to the hills, over the 
 lake, across the grand sweep of orchards and vine- 
 yards, comfortable homes among the trees, the 
 quiet of prosperity, he is saying: "What more is 
 there than this, but I did not know; I could not 
 know; my father never let me know. Hard work, 
 early and late; mud, and storm, and cold, and never 
 a penny to call my own. That is my memory of 
 the old farm. " Yet when this man was born, his 
 mother said to his father: "Now, Samuel, we want 
 him to have something when we are gone ; you and 
 I began with nothing, and we know how hard life 
 is" ; and so they saved for him, and in their zeal for 
 saving they forgot him entirely and thought only of 
 saving. They saved the money and lost the boy. 
 "For the life is more than meat and the body 
 than raiment. " Are the parents saving life or old 
 clothes? Did the mother say at her boy's birth: 
 1 You, son John, are born, delicious torment as you 
 are, and you are born for the sole purpose of ac- 
 cumulating $17,314.19; and you, Maria, — I forgot 
 to tell you, that you are to marry $19,413.71, and 
 mind you, both of you, not a penny less. So take 
 notice. Now leave the room and let me sleep ; but, 
 Samuel, don't forget to put on a kettle of hot water.' 
 Was it not the thrifty mother of George II., 
 "snuffy old drone from the German hive," who, 
 as Thackeray tells us, was ever saying to him, 
 1 ' George, be a king ! " ? And he played king till the 
 curtain was rung down. What fruit-grower says 
 
224 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 to his boy: "You were not born with a silver spoon 
 in your mouth but to get silver spoons." The 
 orchards and vineyards teem with prosperity; 
 many a fruit-farm grows a fine quality of grapes 
 and a poor quality of boys. In laying out the 
 farm, in making the soil, the farmer should plant 
 boys as carefully as he plants grapes or peaches. 
 Each after its kind. One of the contradictions in 
 country life, real country life, not city-country life, 
 is the splendid cherry trees, the strong horses, the 
 multiple-laying hens, the tons of grapes, and the 
 ordinary, not to say extraordinary, boys who turn 
 out less than a ton to the acre, which itself turns 
 out five. "The fathers have eaten sour grapes 
 and the children's teeth are set on edge." "No 
 grapes for me, thank you!" says the grape-grower's 
 boy; "I'll take (accept!) a clerkship in a grocery." 
 "What!" you exclaim, "and grapes at fifty dollars 
 a ton and live at home, and the grocery business so 
 overdone!" You think that you would take the 
 purple vineyard and let somebody else keep store. 
 But your father had a store — not a vineyard. 
 
 The fruit-farm produced fruit, not boys; they 
 were a mere bye-product; handy, if workers, but 
 often much in the way. Expensive as they get 
 older. Good as anybody's boys, but they will 
 never make farmers. And so the years pass; the 
 old folks become more economical, saving the 
 more eagerly that the children may have some- 
 thing to begin life with. When the children think 
 themselves ready to begin life for themselves, or 
 
The Fruit-Farm and the Young Folks 225 
 
 do begin it, ready or unready, — the old folks begin 
 talking of saving for the grandchildren. Doubt- 
 less Methuselah, in the last few years of his life, 
 began saving for his grandchildren of the thirty- 
 third generation. In every valley there are many 
 like Methuselah, only younger and possibly more 
 economical. It might seem there that posterity 
 stands in a fair way of being prosperous, — as 
 the world goes. These orchards and vineyards, 
 sweeping from the lake to the hills, who shall 
 inherit them? Yet, to-day, as for untold ages, 
 and notably for a century and a half past, the only 
 permanent resident of the Valley is the land. The 
 people emigrate. A few ancient families remain 
 on the old site their fathers chose, four generations 
 ago, prosperous fruit-growers, than whom there 
 are no better. It might seem that prosperity would 
 prove contagious, but many who have eyes see not. 
 For more than a hundred years young folks have 
 been born in the Valley with peculiar eyes that see 
 things far away but are blind to the world that 
 spreads about their feet. Many a farmer who 
 saw the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow could 
 not see a living on his own farm. Even fruit-farm- 
 ing requires the seeing eye. No man is larger 
 than his vision. The dream of the old folks is 
 that the young folks shall prosper, and the young 
 folks have dreams of riches. They are daily bred 
 to a creed of things. They will begin life where 
 the old folks left off: riches are the principal 
 thing, therefore get riches. But in the struggle 
 
 IS 
 
226 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 for riches both old and young may miss the mark. 
 The prize falls to another. Raiment and meat 
 become more than life. The folks exist for the 
 fruit-farm, not the farm for the folks. 
 
 Various crops are raised in the Fruit Valley: 
 grapes, apples, berries, peaches, prunes, cherries, 
 plums of all colors, tomatoes, corn, melons, and 
 people. Thousands of tons of grapes, cherries, 
 berries; soil at eight hundred dollars an acre, and 
 more; winters in Florida, California, Cairo; auto- 
 mobiles; journeys to the center of the earth; build- 
 ings shining with architecture and new paint; 
 railroads, trolleys, cities, towns, villages, lawyers, 
 doctors, newspapers, — the endless list of things 
 called America. But the heaviest crop of all is 
 expectation: "To-morrow! To-morrow!" Then 
 shall orchards and vineyards and fields run more 
 to the acre than "Yesterday!" or "To-day!" 
 Indeed, To-day is only a rabbit-run to To-morrow. 
 Gathering our crop To-morrow, we starve To-day; 
 and Shakespeare could not be first to discover that 
 "all our yesterdays have lighted man the way to 
 dusty death." 
 
 The fruit-farmer is saving for to-morrow, forget- 
 ting to-day. The young folks live to-day. For- 
 gotten by the old folks they live in their own world 
 of fancy, immeasurably remote from the fruit- 
 farm. They live where fancy breeds. Is it in 
 vineyard or orchard? Or in the city? On the 
 coast? In the office? The factory? Is it any- 
 where save on the fruit-farm? Anywhere save in 
 
The Fruit-Farm and the Young Folks 227 
 
 the Valley? "Yes," dreams the boy without 
 interest in vine or tree, "it is anywhere but here!" 
 Here is another chapter of the old, old story: 
 breaking home ties; leaving the nest; seeking pas- 
 tures new; going out into the world. Animals and 
 plants have their native regions clearly defined by 
 climate. The spice trees fruit only in the tropics; 
 apples do not grow at the equator. We mark off 
 the zones by the plants which grow within them 
 and the wild beasts which inhabit them. Climate 
 makes prisoners of all living things. Man alone 
 seems the exception in that he carries his climate 
 with him. To him it is food and clothing and so 
 he penetrates the corners of the earth and makes 
 most of it his habitation, and, save as moved by 
 overpowering curiosity, or thirst for fame that 
 comes from triumph over perils of heat at the 
 equator, or of cold at the pole, he migrates always 
 along the line of climate in which he was born and 
 bred. This is the long story of the movements of 
 nations and of individuals. The New West is the 
 Old East removed a little nearer the setting sun. 
 Even restless youth obeys the great law of mi- 
 gration. He goes whither he can stand the climate ; 
 it is his master and the racial instinct tells him this. 
 He will not contend against perpetual frost or 
 burning heat. He seeks ever to live under familiar 
 skies. Who of us feels at home under strange 
 constellations? Who of us knows what it is to be 
 far from home and see strange stars breaking upon 
 our vision? Restless as youth may be, it knows 
 
228 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 instinctively when it reaches a land in which it 
 cannot live. 
 
 It is instinctive in the animal world to migrate 
 for posterity. Most birds are migratory, journey- 
 ing far to nest and rear their young. All the birds 
 in the Fruit Valley come thither every spring from 
 the South, even the far South, Central America, 
 Brazil, and the islands of the tropic sea, and having 
 reared their young, return to the South in the au- 
 tumn. It is one of the amazing sights of Nature, — 
 the vast annual migration of the birds. It marks 
 the power of instinct common to the animal world, 
 — the instinct for the procreation and persistence 
 of life. Birds have their nesting-time and they 
 straightway seek their brooding grounds. Some 
 birds are not controlled by this impulse ; they never 
 leave the region of their nativity. 
 
 I remember a farmer who not only lived for his 
 boys but with them. When the nest-building time 
 came for one of them, he joined in helping by 
 building as a wedding-gift a pretty house, and giv- 
 ing with it a handsome portion of the old farm. 
 There the nest-builders live to this day — the third 
 generation on the old farm. Had the father never 
 read the signs aright, his boys — and he treated all 
 alike — would have flown to pastures new, leaving 
 the old folks forever. 
 
 After the children are born, the parents dream 
 dreams and see visions; there is more and more the 
 backward look; and as the children grow into youth 
 they too have visions, but their look is forward. 
 
The Fruit-Farm and the Young Folks 229 
 
 To-day is overlooked; all is to-morrow. When 
 nesting-time comes for the young folks they find 
 themselves in an uncongenial world, and migration 
 is escape. Acres of fruit, thousands of trees, but 
 no room for the new nest on the fruit-farm. So 
 the young people of the Fruit Valley fly to other 
 valleys, and there build up associations for 
 themselves. 
 
 That supreme dictator of every fruit valley, 
 climate, has never changed his methods or his 
 might. Storm and sunshine, heat and cold, frost 
 and snow, the gorgeous sunrises and yet more gor- 
 geous sunsets, the sweep of air from the hills 
 to the lake, from the lake to the hills, and up and 
 down the Valley are to-day as they ever have been. 
 All generations of men are prisoners of its climate. 
 
 Then there are two that remain, soil and the 
 man. Changeable or unchangeable? New men, 
 new minds. Each generation is itself, unique, 
 distinct, functioned unto its own day. The pioneer 
 was not the child of our to-morrow, nor can he of 
 the next generation be the pioneer. Each after 
 its kind is the law. The man with the ax building 
 the log-cabin cannot be the man with the check- 
 book building the country house. 
 
 What of the soil? It seems but yesterday that 
 I cleared away the primeval woods; cutting down 
 giant chestnuts and walnuts; trimming the logs, 
 hauling them to the mill for lumber. All the rest 
 burned — limbs, branches, underbrush, decaying 
 and falling trees, and the great stumps which first 
 
230 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 were wrenched from the earth by explosives. The 
 ashes I scattered, about and plowed the new land 
 and subdued it by cultivation. What a wonderful 
 crop that virgin year! Then the vines were set 
 and the primeval forest of yesterday became the 
 dark, dank, glossy vineyard bearing many tons of 
 purple grapes. Twenty years have passed. Now 
 it is half the tonnage. Have I robbed the soil? 
 Tons of plant-food have I spread upon it ; carefully 
 has it been tended, yet that virgin gift of the 
 purple grapes can never be made again. Fifty 
 years hence what shall the harvest be? Is the soil 
 depleting? The cornfields of the pioneers became 
 the vineyards of to-day. Those that remain no 
 longer bear their first weight of purple fruit. The 
 vineyards were torn away and orchards were 
 planted in their stead. No longer do the trees 
 bear their youthful weight of fruit, or withstand 
 the onslaught of their enemies, fungi and insects; 
 as the years pass, these enemies multiply. And 
 the history of the Valley is doubtless like that 
 of other valleys. 
 
 You will hear it said in the Fruit Valley: "My 
 grandfather could raise peaches without spraying 
 the trees"; but the enemies of those pioneer trees 
 are forgotten. We know that had the Valley then 
 been filled with peaches, it was so far from the world 
 they could not have reached it before they spoiled. 
 Sufficient unto each generation are the enemies 
 of its flocks and herds, its orchards and vineyards. 
 Yet, despite the fall in production as time passes, 
 
The Fruit-Farm and the Young Folks 231 
 
 the Valley to-day produces a greater tonnage 
 of fruit, and finer fruit of its kind, than is produced 
 on any equal area in Europe. 
 
 Is the soil failing? Are diseases of fruit, insect, 
 and fungous enemies increasing as the years pass? 
 It appears not. We have cut away the original 
 forest; we have changed the face of Nature; we 
 have destroyed the plants, trees, shrubs, flowers, 
 weeds on which these our enemies feed in the wild; 
 hence they are driven to our orchards and vine- 
 yards for a livelihood. There is nothing new under 
 the sun even among insect pests and fungi ; we are 
 reaping the harvest our civilization has sown. 
 And as the land is more and more deforested, as 
 the wild is more and more subjected to man, we 
 may expect discovery of new insect pests and new 
 fungi. The next generation must deal with these 
 evils, for surely it will be confronted by them. 
 More people, better markets, higher prices, — this is 
 the outlook for the country at large. There remain 
 the three dimensions of fruit-culture: climate, soil, 
 and the man. Climate is unchangeable; the soil 
 and the man remain. Man makes the soil. The 
 keeping of all the valleys is in his hands, — the 
 next generation and all that shall come hereafter. 
 "Remember, friends, to-morrow is another day," 
 runs the ancient Arabian proverb. That other 
 day may mean in truth another Valley than this we 
 see, for the man of to-morrow is not the man of 
 to-day. 
 
 We are come at last to the supreme interest of 
 
232 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 the next generation — the care of the soil. It must 
 ever remain the test of all fruit-farming. Soil- 
 cropping means the extinction of our race, and 
 the steady depletion of the soil means the ultimate 
 conclusion of the history of all fruit valleys. 
 Enormously profitable fruit crops are now raised 
 in many parts of America. The longer the land is 
 tilled, too often the soil becomes thinner and poorer. 
 The history of the production of wheat and corn 
 is of this depletion. Not only has the production 
 of corn and wheat removed to new land, westward, 
 ever westward, but all along the line of removals 
 production has fallen. From New York, Penn- 
 sylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, 
 Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, California, 
 Manitoba, the great wheat valleys of Canada 
 and British America, — whither next? The wheat 
 strength of the older States exhausted; of the 
 Middle West; of the old Northwest; of Minnesota 
 and the Dakotas; of Canada; a long, long line of 
 diminishing wheat-returns. And the day not far 
 distant when America must import wheat. There 
 are no more new lands in America. Will some 
 variety of wheat be originated that will produce 
 abundantly on lands hitherto unavailable for 
 wheat, as the vast reaches of aridity, of mountain 
 steeps in the West? All this means that farming 
 in America has passed, like my virgin vineyard, into 
 an older stage of less production and is becoming 
 like the farming in old countries. It means that 
 intensive farming must supplant extensive. If I 
 
The Fruit-Farm and the Young Folks 233 
 
 raise eight tons of grapes again on these acres of 
 vineyard, I must make the soil as I found it twenty 
 years ago. There are no more virgin soils east of 
 the Mississippi, and fewer each year west of it. 
 We are confronted by a problem of problems: How 
 to raise food of all kinds on a fixed acreage and for 
 an ever-increasing population? 
 
 Everywhere in America, the effect of this 
 tremendous "pull" on the land by orchards 
 and vineyards is plain. The best fruit-farms, by 
 following intensive cultivation, hold to their old 
 records and even surpass them, but hundreds of 
 farms are rapidly losing their strength through 
 under-feeding and over-cropping. Unquestion- 
 ably the next generation, and generations to come, 
 will receive a larger acreage of such worn lands, 
 and it is their problem of problems to bring the 
 soil back to, or forward to, or up to, its highest 
 pitch of fertility. The old methods of fertili- 
 zation, even of cultivation, even those practiced 
 half a century ago are abandoned. Then many a 
 valley was a vast stock farm, and barnyard manure 
 could be had sufficient to keep the land fairly with 
 humus. But we cannot longer build humus into 
 the soil in this day. As the best fruit-growers 
 interpret conditions, there was not, even fifty years 
 ago, enough fertilizer used to keep the land in best 
 order to feed plants. We feed the land better 
 than did our predecessors. Consider one example. 
 There are upwards of ten thousand tons of grapes 
 raised each year in the Valley, and this enormous 
 
234 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 output on a little less than four and one-half million 
 vines. In Chautauqua, the adjoining county, the 
 yearly product is sixty-six thousand tons, on some 
 sixteen million vines. Besides this yield of grapes 
 the Valley gives orchard fruits, apples, peaches, 
 pears, prunes, plums, cherries, quinces, and rasp- 
 berries, strawberries, logan berries, nuts, and much 
 garden truck. The federal census prints elaborate 
 tables, long columns of figures, and leaves values 
 quite to the imagination. Of interest to us is that 
 the average yield of each grapevine in the Valley 
 is a little less than seven pounds. Now the yield 
 to the vine depends upon many conditions: the 
 species or stock; the site; the trimming, and 
 the cultivation; but essentially it depends upon the 
 soil. The land that will grow the vine will grow 
 grapes. A basket, weighing eight pounds, the 
 usual size, to the vine, means six hundred baskets 
 to the acre, that is a little over two tons. On 
 virgin soil, or on soil kept in high fertility, eight 
 tons are raised. This is a maximum and an 
 unusual yield. There are hundreds of acres which 
 do not average half a basket to the vine, that is, 
 one ton to the acre. These are the neglected, the 
 worn-out vineyards. All this means soil depletion. 
 During the last fifteen years orchard fruits have 
 come into fashion and fruit-growers have turned 
 from viticulture to the raising of tree fruits — 
 cherries, prunes, peaches. This means that the 
 soil of an old vineyard may be virgin soil for a new 
 orchard. But this virginity will pass unless the 
 
The Fruit-Farm and the Young Folks 235 
 
 soil is well sustained for orchard fruits. If an acre 
 of land will produce one hundred and fifty dollars 
 in grapes, or five hundred dollars in cherries or 
 peaches or other crops, it feeds a voracious crop 
 and must itself be fed accordingly. 
 
 Soil making, which is soil-feeding, is the prin- 
 cipal problem which confronts the next gener- 
 ation. It cannot be set aside. Just how to solve 
 it, each generation presumes to know best. In our 
 day the solution is largely left to the commercial 
 fertilizer factories. This means an attempt at 
 scientific farming. The Experimental Stations and 
 Agricultural Schools, as well as the Institutes of 
 Chemical Industrial Research, are working at the 
 problem. The rule of thumb in horticulture is out- 
 worn; yet intensive horticulture has made slight 
 progress in America. Men cling to old methods 
 because it is easier to cling than to think. No man 
 has mastered the art and mystery of fruit-farming; 
 he who knows them is of the next generation. 
 Therefore it is undoubtedly true that the hardest 
 problem which the next generation must solve, 
 or help solve, or at least attempt to solve, is the 
 problem of soil-depletion. Land is limited; popu- 
 lation, unlimited. Subsistence depends upon the 
 use of the land. It must feed an ever-increasing 
 multitude. This means higher cost of living; 
 higher prices for food ; a better market as the fruit- 
 farmer would say. The number of bushels of cher- 
 ries or of baskets of grapes may decrease but the 
 number of people demanding fruit increases. The 
 
236 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 catalogue of prices for fruit is written not alone by 
 the depletion of the soil but also by the increasing 
 demand for fruit. Land is static; there are ever 
 more mouths to fill. The market is open to the 
 highest possible yield of fruit, and the yield per 
 acre may by intensive cultivation be increased 
 five hundred per cent., even more. The price falls, 
 if ever, not by reason of tonnage on old lands but 
 by temporary invasion of the products of new. 
 This ceasing, as practically it has ceased in Amer- 
 ica, prices become firm and tend to rise. The 
 problem then is to raise the fruit. There is ample 
 market for the largest possible production. The 
 increase of population consumes all the increase 
 in tonnage and demands more. And rich, well- 
 tended soil means perfect fruit in abundance. 
 
 America now is far less fruitful than were its 
 every farm maintained at the level of highest 
 possible production with present knowledge. Fruit- 
 farming in America can as yet be said hardly to 
 have made a beginning. Profitable as is this voca- 
 tion, its possibilities are as yet quite undreamed of. 
 All now done is but a hint of what might be done, of 
 what shall be done by the next generation. Poster- 
 ity will not neglect to move along the easiest lines. 
 As the struggle for existence becomes more and 
 more severe in America; as competition compels 
 men to exploit the possible vocations, fruit-raising 
 will become more and more a technical occupation. 
 Necessity as well as opportunity will bring about 
 a higher type and order of fruit-growing in this 
 
The Fruit-Farm and the Young Folks 237 
 
 Valley as in other valleys. To this use the owner 
 of to-day hands on his land to the next generation. 
 
 And what shall this generation and its successors 
 do with the Fruit-Farm? Of course they must use 
 it and pass the use along to others. It is to the 
 man we come at last. He is the soil as he is 
 the thinker. The harvest is his thinking. These 
 grapes, peaches, cherries, plums, prunes, berries 
 — Romeo's raspberries — are his thoughts. The 
 whole matter then is of thinking. Each gener- 
 ation must think peaches if it would raise peaches. 
 Ideas in the soil become plums on the tree ; no ideas 
 — no plums. 
 
 There are postulates, corollaries, and addenda 
 to the vocation of fruit-farming which the next 
 generation must duly consider. The grower is a 
 Producer; there remain three other factors in the 
 problem, — the Consumer, the Exchanger, the 
 Laborer. This classification is somewhat rough 
 and conventional, for we know that each factor has 
 functions in common with the others. The next 
 generation of fruit-growers must bear the burdens 
 of government and misgovernment. Immigra- 
 tion has passed the saturation point in America, 
 and the excess is a factor of unknown powers. 
 Certain it is that the individualism of the pioneers 
 cannot distinguish the next generation. Co- 
 operation, combination, convention, association, 
 must henceforth be the supreme quality of deter- 
 mining functions. Public opinion has ceased to 
 be merely local; no one fruit valley can control 
 
238 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 the world at large. It must accept its share 
 of service. It is to be expected that the mere 
 external clothing of the Fruit Valley will change. 
 On fruit-farms of forty years scarcely a vestige 
 remains of varieties first planted. The con- 
 spicuous survival is the Concord grape. If one 
 turns to a nursery catalogue of forty years ago, he 
 may read long lists of varieties now unknown, or 
 known by another name. The Fruit Valley is a 
 survival. So too is the fruit-farmer. Even the 
 fences of the grandfathers have disappeared. On 
 the site of the log-cabin stands the country man- 
 sion. The springs have dried up and the house is 
 supplied from public reservoirs, or from deep wells 
 whose waters are lifted by wind-mills or engines. 
 The age of ornamentation has begun and the next 
 generation will beautify its estate yet more. Here 
 and there is a plantation on which men, women, 
 and children are taking time to live. Necessity 
 breeds public and private health. But the next 
 generation inherits our nature and we shall be 
 present despite new kinds of peaches and cherries. 
 Contentment is a rare bird in the land and it lays 
 few eggs and few of its progeny survive. There is a 
 philosophy in discontent, for that way progress lies. 
 Quiescent satisfaction means petrifaction. Wis- 
 dom does not die with the fathers nor will it be born 
 exclusively with the next generation. The Fruit 
 Valley is a stage and all its men and women are 
 merely players. Our grandfathers could not know 
 the ecstasy of an automobile, — its skidding, blow- 
 
The Fruit-Farm and the Young Folks 239 
 
 outs, stalling, or "What in the world is the matter 
 now"? — nor can the next generation ever feel the 
 joy of going to church in an ox-sled. Yet the great 
 things of life are not necessarily summed in rapid 
 transit. And the next generation may miss some 
 of these things ; it may not be able to see them on 
 account of its Fruit Valley. Face to face with 
 climate and soil and itself, the next generation, 
 fighting for existence like all its forebears, will 
 become in turn the theme of criticism in the mouth 
 of its offspring; and as the day lengthens and the 
 shadows gather, it will cling, like its fathers before, 
 to the experiences of its own life, however bitter, 
 and like all its race will at last find herself a stranger 
 in a strange land. It too will have completed a 
 cycle, for in every Valley the cycle of life is from 
 the unknown to the unknown. 
 
VIII 
 
 TEN THOUSAND A YEAR 
 
 ""THERE may be inhabitants of the Fruit Valley 
 * who are "passing rich at twenty pounds a 
 year"; the common demand is for more. Indeed 
 many aspire to be catalogued among the half 
 million Americans whose yearly income is at least 
 ten thousand dollars. Comparisons grow in the 
 Valley even more vigorously than fruit. Time was 
 when money was a curiosity in the Valley — even no 
 longer ago than when Captain Dobbins and his 
 house-carpenters were building that immortal 
 fleet which bore Perry to victory and made the 
 Northwest American soil. It is no longer a curios- 
 ity, but is looked upon as a sign or specimen of 
 what the Valley might produce if it was thoroughly 
 worked. So oftentimes the Valley is spoken of as a 
 gold-mine. The millions that flow into the Valley 
 to-day shrink in the eye of expectancy. To- 
 morrow, — more. Like the grave, — more, more! 
 Fifty years ago the farmer was passing rich at 
 twelve dollars an acre from his land; to-day, his 
 successor thinks one hundred dollars from an acre 
 
 a small dividend. There are many rumors. One 
 
 240 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 241 
 
 hundred and fifty dollars from an acre of grapes; 
 two hundred from currants; three hundred from 
 raspberries; four hundred from prunes; five hun- 
 dred from cherries; six hundred from peaches; 
 seven hundred from — yes, that is what I was about 
 to plant. John Law and the Mississippi Bubble 
 could hardly stir the imagination to livelier fancies. 
 And when we can raise grapes, currants, raspberries, 
 gooseberries, prunes, cherries, and peaches on the 
 same acre, — intensive Dalmatian cultivation, — 
 why not "passing rich" on twenty-one hundred 
 and fifty dollars an acre, and possibilities for 
 lettuce, turnips, and cabbages between the rows! 
 But shut the eye, and you are a millionaire! 
 
 Were every owner of land in the Valley as 
 thoughtful and wise as he is eager for ten thousand 
 a year — and had he land enough — he might realize 
 his hopes. Nor need he own many acres. But he 
 must own ten-thousand-dollar land. Fifty-dollar 
 land will not do it; nor five-hundred dollar land. 
 Ten-thousand-dollar land and no other must be 
 had. And there must be the man. Climate abides ; 
 stubborn, friendly, hostile, freakish, helpful, domi- 
 nant. So we pass climate. But the man is a ten- 
 thousand-dollar man; not a thirty-dollar, or any 
 dollar below ten thousand. Like breeds like and 
 no man is greater than himself. And his fruit- 
 farm is his measure. It is easier to see him in his 
 farm than in his clothes, be it at mill or meeting. 
 But his farm blurts out the truth about him. Live 
 weeds keep no secrets. Dead ones tell tales. The 
 16 
 
242 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 fruit-farm is evidence on the spot, and he cannot 
 prove an alibi and also claim title to the fruit-farm. 
 He may say what he pleases; his farm speaks for 
 itself is his indisputable confession. We come to 
 the man at last. 
 
 And he makes the farm: soil, orchard, vineyard, 
 and the rest. He selects the varieties ; trims, tends, 
 harvests, markets. When he counts gain or loss he 
 merely takes an invoice of himself. He may charge 
 losses to the weather or to the wickedness of man, or 
 to the hunger of fungus or insect; he may credit 
 gain to the weather, or to the wishes of man and 
 cultivation; but somehow, as the years pass, it is 
 he himself who divides the account between loss 
 and gain. If he is the gainer there is gain; if the 
 loser, there is loss. Fruit-farming in all valleys 
 is a human invention. Nature cares no more for 
 filberts than for Canada thistles; man prefers 
 the filberts and roots out the thistles in order to 
 grow filberts. He invents filberts. He would 
 invent Canada thistles on provocation. 
 
 The man who produces ten thousand a year 
 from fifty acres has a secret which he may not be 
 able to impart. Usually it dies with him. His 
 successor, on the same acreage, makes a bee line for 
 bankruptcy. He understood how to do this, but 
 not to raise ten thousand a year. Nor can he be 
 told, or instructed; he is not the man for the job. 
 There is no more familiar sight in the Valley than 
 of a fruit-farm which was. ' ' While Jones was alive, 
 you should have seen that farm; it isn't the same 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 243 
 
 farm any more. Russell White knew how. That's 
 all there is to it." This is speech of the Valley. 
 The world knows a fruit-farmer when it sees one. 
 They are not numerous. And the new owner of 
 White's farm is a clever man, too, in his way. A 
 "nice" man, an obliging man, even a pleasanter 
 man, so the Valley says, than was old Jones ; but 
 he cannot run a fruit-farm as White did. True, 
 he can run it so that the sheriff wants it so badly 
 as to take it. But that is not considered just the 
 best kind of fruit-farming in the Valley. No it 
 was White himself that made the White fruit- 
 farm. When he died it ceased being a fruit-farm. 
 It became mere trees and vines and took a gallop 
 toward the wild. White transformed it from the 
 wild into a garden. The pendulum always swings 
 to one side or the other, or stops dead at the center. 
 The Valley has many acres which thus swing from 
 wild to garden; from garden to wild. Thus time 
 passes by the horticultural clock. But White was 
 a ten-thousand-dollar man. 
 
 There was another man — Neville also born a 
 fruit-grower. He inherited his acres and trans- 
 formed them from mediocrity into capacity, — he 
 really educated his land till had any Agricultural 
 College in the country been fully awake to its 
 opportunity it would have conferred on him the 
 honorary degree of Master of Fruit-farming. In 
 these days when colleges give degrees for stenog- 
 raphy, bookkeeping, and economics, it seems strange 
 that Neville missed recognition, for his genius 
 
244 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 made stenography, bookkeeping, and economics 
 possible for scores of people — at salaries. But 
 there is no accounting for tastes among colleges. I 
 do not doubt that any faculty would have eaten 
 Neville's peaches with relish and asked for more, 
 like Oliver Twist, but as yet the capacity to make 
 a thousand bushels of peaches grow where none 
 grew before is not considered sufficient evidence to 
 merit more from the Faculty than a modest order 
 for peaches. Nevertheless Neville was another 
 ten-thousand-dollar man. He could not have 
 learned it from his father, or from the neighbors, 
 and he never attended raspberry lectures. He 
 was born an M. F. 
 
 In talking with Neville I never quite secured his 
 secret, — if he had one; yet he never concealed his 
 methods, nor boasted of them. He knew wind and 
 weather, and could anticipate the market closer 
 than any other man in the Valley. He always had 
 something to sell. Somehow his crops never failed. 
 He would never suffer a poor plant to live on his 
 farm. At almost the first symptom of disease he 
 would root it out and replant healthy stock. He 
 had few varieties and somehow managed to have 
 the same kind together and always in paying 
 quantity. His principal idea in raising fruit seems 
 to have been to have fruit ripening all through the 
 season. Beginning early in June with strawberries, 
 he followed with berries, fruits, of tree and vine, 
 till snow was falling. His reputation for fruit 
 brought him buyers the year round, and he always 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 245 
 
 sold to the highest bidder. His fruit was precisely 
 as marked — never second quality with first, and 
 no third. He used the most attractive packages in 
 the market and some were made exclusively for his 
 fruit. Gradually all the fruit in the Valley was 
 good or poor, as it compared with his. His orders 
 for fruit exceeded the production of his own farm 
 but he would never fill in with that of another farm. 
 All he sold came from his own. Some thought that 
 he stood in his own light in thus refusing to act the 
 middle-man, but he always declared that he raised 
 fruit and did not handle any on commission. 
 
 His fruit -farm, which was known as "The 
 Neville Fruit-farm," was ideal in plan, location, and 
 equipment. It comprised sixty-three acres, and he 
 would never increase it though he might have 
 bought a score of farms had he pleased. "I don't 
 believe in walking too far for a cherry, " he would 
 say; by which he meant that an acre of cherry 
 trees, bearing to their limit, was preferable to a 
 greater number either less productive, or to a 
 greater acreage no more productive. He insisted 
 that there is a practical limit to highly profitable 
 fruit-farming; for example, that thirty-five acres 
 of grapes are enough for one man to care for — 
 that is, one owner. So not another acre would he 
 have in vines, but he raised eight tons of grapes 
 to the acre, which was equivalent, as the Valley 
 averaged, to a vineyard of one hundred and fifty 
 acres. He intensified the grape industry, and 
 produced as much on one acre as his neighbors did 
 
246 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 on six. This is what he meant by refusing to buy 
 more grape land. In walking over thirty-five acres 
 he traveled no farther and labored not much more 
 wearily than did the owners of six times his area. 
 And he would not grow varieties; his one grape 
 was the Concord. "I know the Concord and it 
 knows me," he would say; and this mutual ac- 
 quaintance, almost rising to friendship, yielded him 
 over two hundred tons of Concords quite every 
 year. "I have missed fire," he said one October 
 day. It had been a cold, rainy year; insects and 
 worms and fungus rampant and the market poor. 
 "I don't run the weather. " But I noticed that his 
 grapes were better than any others in the Valley 
 and few of them of second quality. Other vine- 
 yards stood out under the same sky, but he so 
 managed his that they showed slight effect of the 
 bad weather which had filled the Valley quite the 
 season through. On asking him how he managed 
 to escape the weather he replied: "I sail with the 
 wind, not against it." This meant that the engulf- 
 ing rains of the season damaged him not at all. His 
 land was so thoroughly drained that surplus water 
 could not remain long enough to harm the vines. 
 When other orchards and vineyards were eaten 
 by insects and stifled by fungi, Neville's, though 
 infested, were but slightly injured, for he fought 
 these pests every year, and, keeping his plantation 
 quite immune, anticipated their ravages. "I al- 
 ways do as if everything ought to be done," he 
 would say, and would spray his vineyards when his 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 247 
 
 neighbors considered spraying superfluous. But it 
 was not the spraying that was his sole protection. 
 "Feed the bugs too, " he would say, and enriching 
 his soil, he fed the vines so bountifully they could 
 be attacked by the pests and yet not seriously 
 suffer. 
 
 His orchards were like his vineyards — small in 
 area but intensively productive. When his neigh- 
 bors were picking two bushels from the cherry tree, 
 he was picking five; so his cherry orchard of ten 
 acres was equivalent to twenty-five of his neigh- 
 bors, and his peach orchard of eight acres equaled 
 their twenty. His prune orchard of eight acres 
 surpassed any other of four times the acreage in the 
 Valley. It was wholly a matter of intensive farm- 
 ing. " If the land gives me six hundred dollars an 
 acre, I guess I can afford to put a little back, " he 
 said, and would expend seventy-five dollars an 
 acre without hesitation in fertilizer. He had quite 
 old-fashioned notions, however, about fertilizers 
 and called the commercial ones "patent peaches." 
 So the cars of barnyard manure which he managed 
 to bring in from city stockyards — a very long 
 train they would make in a year — were of what he 
 called "the real thing," but I noticed that he 
 mixed "the real thing " with many a ton of "patent 
 peaches." Neville was always hauling fertilizers 
 and covering the land, though he never allowed the 
 cover to remain long above ground. "The wind is 
 a thief and the sun is always stealing," was his 
 comment ; so he plowed in his fertilizers as soon as 
 
248 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 possible. Winter seemed to be the favorite season 
 with him for feeding the soil. Not a row of grape- 
 vines or of trees was overlooked in the dis- 
 tribution, and seemingly his ground never froze, 
 for I have known him to plow when the snow lay 
 several inches thick. But beneath the snow lay 
 his last cover of fertilizer. 
 
 It was Neville who introduced vetch and soy- 
 beans into the Valley, and, possibly, cowhorn- 
 turnips as a cover- or soil- crop. The vetch and 
 the clovers often stood ten inches high at grape- 
 picking time. He would smooth the growth down 
 with a stone-boat and, sometimes, by paying a 
 little higher wage than usual. "Blanket the 
 ground and it will keep warm and be ready for 
 you, " he would say when putting in his cover-crop. 
 "Don't let the soil get cold feet, " was his prescrip- 
 tion for a large crop of berries in June. I never 
 quite agreed with him about sub-soiling — a soil- 
 treatment he always practiced if possible, but as 
 his orchards and vineyards became older and their 
 roots possessed the ground he abandoned sub-soil- 
 ing. If he had a fad it was for drainage. I think 
 he was always ditching and tilling his land; his 
 farm, as I remember it, was like a city street — 
 always torn up. Most farmers would have been 
 contented with the natural drainage, as those whose 
 property sloped to the North, but Neville must 
 improve on Nature and drain every pocket. 
 " More money in drains than fertilizers, " he would 
 say. And he drained deep, digging wells far 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 249 
 
 down into the very coarse gravel; laying them up 
 carefully with flat stone like an ordinary water- 
 well, and covering them with large stones, or, in 
 later years, with cement tops, below the plow- 
 point. To this well he laid tile drains and so kept 
 every foot of his land thoroughly ventilated and 
 dry. "I'll see to the watering if it doesn't rain," 
 he would say, which meant the constant stirring by 
 the cultivator, and not a plant on his farm was 
 ever known to wilt for lack of moisture. 
 
 He was rather a heroic trimmer of tree, bush, or 
 vine, but never was the excided limb thicker than 
 one's finger. "Cut them when they are little and 
 they don't feel it, " he said to me one day when I 
 remarked on his ceaseless trimming. "All you 
 want is sunshine and a penknife," he continued; 
 and he let more light into the tree. "Any time 
 when your knife is sharp," was his answer to my 
 question as to when to trim. So he had no special 
 time, like his neighbors, but all times. 
 
 Just how he could detect varieties before they 
 blossomed or fruited was a mystery to me; he 
 was born with the master-fruit-grower's eye. No 
 nurseryman could deceive him and none tried, — 
 the second time. Yet, despite his unerring skill in 
 distinguishing varieties, he never propagated them. 
 "I'm not running a nursery, but a fruit-farm." 
 There was more money for him in raising fruit 
 than in raising vines or trees. 
 
 So famed was his farm, nurserymen competed to 
 sell him choicest fruit-stock, for his word was their 
 
250 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 prosperity. Rarely would he recommend any 
 variety. "You can never tell what pranks a tree 
 will cut up, " he said to a neighbor who asked him 
 to recommend some variety of cherries. "I take 
 the kind I like best." He always spoke of his 
 orchards and vines as his friends. I think he 
 communed with them in their own tongue, for he 
 understood their secrets. They seemed to make 
 their wants known to him and he treated them with 
 as much consideration as a member of his house- 
 hold. For this reason I think he would not enlarge 
 his estate; he knew his own limitations, and was 
 wise enough not to attempt too scattered a friend- 
 ship. Hannibal is said to have known personally 
 all the members of his army; Neville seemed 
 to know each vine and tree as an individual 
 friend. While he ran a fruit-farm, he also made a 
 companion of each tree and vine on it. 
 
 Herein lay his secret, his incommunicable secret. 
 " If a man would have friends, " so runs a saying in 
 the ancient Book, "he must show himself friendly." 
 And again, "The tree of the field is man's life." 
 Neville knew how to be friendly with peach tree 
 and cherry, with prune and with grape-vine. I 
 do not know how he maintained this relation, 
 unless, as once he hinted to me, by association. 
 Trees and vines were part of his life and so he 
 understood them. Often have I seen him wander- 
 ing alone among the rows of the vineyard, fingering 
 the broad, swinging leaves; or under his peach trees, 
 feeling limb and bark, as it were caressing the tree. 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 251 
 
 And when the wind had twisted and lacerated one 
 of his trees, I think he was as hurt as had some one 
 wounded him. He would bind up the broken 
 boughs and never weary of helping the tree recover. 
 One of his fads was to have all his favorite trees 
 and vines photographed, and on winter evenings he 
 loved to sit by the open fire and look over the pic- 
 tures, just as one likes to look over the faces of his 
 friends. He would speak of "Sparta," "Athens," 
 "Utica, " "Rome" with fluency; these were his 
 names for favorite vines and trees. It seems that 
 in his boyhood he had become deeply interested in 
 ancient history and knowing no better names he 
 dubbed his best horses, "Castor" and "Pollux," 
 and one of his cows prospered under the name of 
 "Proserpine." "Old Ajax is doing nobly this 
 summer," he remarked to me, one July day, 
 amidst the cherry harvest. He meant the middle 
 tree in the third row, near the drive-way. How he 
 remembered his long catalogue of Greek and 
 Roman names I cannot surmise, unless precisely as 
 the captain of the company comes to know his 
 men by name — by association. But it sounded odd 
 to hear Neville gravely instruct the pickers to 
 "pick old Socrates clean," meaning a dumpy, but 
 very prolific Italian prune tree at the corner of the 
 orchard. I believe that he had a way of fighting the 
 world's battles o'er again, with the aid of his vines 
 and trees, for one afternoon, when I happened to 
 be riding with him along the north side of his farm 
 from whence it lays clearly spread out like a map, 
 
252 t An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 he suddenly drew up "Castor" and "Pollux" and 
 pointing with his whip-stock to this section and to 
 that laid out the battle of Marathon, and said that 
 the dumpy Italian prune tree was "old Socrates 
 running away." 
 
 I once ventured to ask him where were Welling- 
 ton and Napoleon, but he had no trees so modern, 
 nothing later than Julius Cssar. 
 
 These peculiarities of Neville, which I may 
 call his "classic shades," would have isolated him 
 from the community had he really lived apart from 
 it, but his look was forward, however backward his 
 search for pet names to his trees. He never em- 
 phasized himself — only his peaches and his grapes, 
 his cherries and his prunes. As some fond parents 
 thrust their children into the public eye on all 
 occasions, Neville planted his trees and marketed 
 his fruit. Had he not been a childless man perhaps 
 he might have cared less for his vegetable friends. 
 "They never quarrel," he said of his Concord 
 grapes, one morning to me. 
 
 It was the morning after that notorious day 
 when the local council had "sold out" to the 
 trolley company and had given them a lease, 
 running ninety-nine years, to extend their double 
 tracks through the village over the main road. 
 Part of Neville's fruit -farm lay within the village. 
 He had advocated a lease for not more than twenty- 
 five years, with restrictions favoring the village; 
 that the company should pave the street, keep it in 
 order at all times; stop its cars at designated points; 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 253 
 
 carry its feed-wire underground, and construct a 
 siding with freight-station and convenient ap- 
 proaches; but the council was found to belong to 
 the company, for all purposes. "They never 
 quarrel," was his solace as he again sauntered 
 among his trees and vines, "And they never cheat. " 
 "Ajax, " "Socrates," "Alexander," even the four- 
 teen "Pharaohs," a prune tree for each dynasty, 
 would not have voted the franchise. "But if 
 Socrates should do such a thing!" — he paused at 
 the brink of the awful thought — " I'd rip him out 
 if he had a million bushels of cherries on his back." 
 He was always talking in millions. " What is the 
 outlook for grapes this season?" Byron, one of the 
 buyers from New York, asked him the day he 
 received Neville's first shipment of strawberries. 
 "Oh, not a million tons, I guess," and there the 
 estimate stopped. It was "not a million quarts" 
 of raspberries; "little less than a million baskets of 
 peaches." Neville always gave himself an ample 
 margin in his estimates. "And Socrates and I are 
 not responsible," was his word of relief over the 
 trolley deal. The real Neville was his conscience 
 and his Calvinistic conviction that "whatsoever a 
 man sows that also shall he reap." This, you 
 would say, had you known Neville, came to him 
 by accident of birth, for his forebears were all 
 Scotch Presbyterians who had settled in the Valley 
 while Washington was President. Yet Neville 
 did not pose as a religious man; indeed, some of his 
 speeches, as is not uncommon among some denomi- 
 
254 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 nations, were rather flippant paraphrases and 
 applications of Biblical speech, but in his heart of 
 hearts Neville was a whole man, as one of his 
 neighbors described him, — "a fruit-grower with a 
 conscience and a bank-account. " 
 
 It was Neville's keen sense of responsibility 
 which made his fruit-farm the best in the Valley. 
 "I put the responsibility on the other man," was 
 his remark when his neighbors were complaining 
 of dishonest labor, tricky commission houses, 
 robbing railroads, and the crookedness of things in 
 general. "If I raise first-class fruit, pack it right, 
 label it true, and get it off my hands in sound condi- 
 tion, I am not responsible for results." This was 
 his philosophy. Again and again was he deceived. 
 Sometimes he lost, but his philosophy survived. 
 He learned what not to do. Somehow it was a loss 
 to a man to cheat Neville. If the commission- 
 house was the offender, it never again handled his 
 fruit. If the hired help offended, he never hired 
 the party again. If a picker put leaves or stones 
 in the bottom of the basket, he was never suffered 
 on the farm again. This rigidity of justice per- 
 vaded all that Neville did. He was as faithful to 
 his land as he would have the commission house, 
 the railroad, the consumer to him. "You can't 
 say I did not feed you," said he to "Socrates" one 
 May morning when he could find not one bud on 
 the tree. "You will have to do your duty next 
 year. " And "Socrates" did his duty, — fifty-seven 
 eight-pound baskets of cherries did the tree then 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 255 
 
 yield. I think that had "Socrates" delayed too 
 long, say three years, there would have been 
 another in the place of "Socrates." 
 
 I do not recall an aspect of the Neville farm 
 which did not reflect this fundamental honesty. 
 The roadway which passed midway through the 
 farm was made as carefully and thoroughly as the 
 king's road, and was kept in perfect order. Indeed, 
 travelers through the Valley seemed to hunt out 
 this private way for their machines, despite the 
 warning sign of privacy Neville erected at the 
 entrance to his estate. But a ride amidst vines and 
 trees, in bloom or laden with fruit, and cultivation 
 perfect, is a pleasure to the healthy mind, and 
 the tide of automobiles flowed on, to and fro, 
 through "Neville Farm." Posts, wires, stakes, 
 clean rows of grapes, of trees, of berries; soil like 
 an ash-heap; a carpet of chickweed in November 
 beneath the vines; a carpet of clover, vetch beneath 
 the trees; and save in mid-summer when the tools 
 were running up and down the rows, the land 
 always covered with green, because Neville's 
 first maxim in fruit-culture was, "Keep the ground 
 covered; a naked soil means an empty basket." 
 He would point to the woods as his master: "See, 
 Nature hides her nakedness with leaves." So he 
 covered the earth with fertilizer and as quickly as 
 possible grew a protecting cover-crop. "A warm 
 soil is my coat, " said he to me when I once ven- 
 tured to ask him, — it was a chilly April day, — 
 whether he had not forgotten his overcoat. We 
 
256 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 were just stepping into the carriage, behind 
 "Castor" and "Pollux," for a drive of some eight 
 miles up the Valley to examine some draining he 
 had heard about. I was doubtful as to going, for 
 the sky looked full of showers. "A red sun has 
 water in his eye," he remarked as he tucked the 
 robe about him. Now the sun was not red, and, 
 I may add, it did not prove a rainy day. 
 
 Of all men I have known, Neville could read the 
 weather best. He never lacked a bit of doggerel 
 verse to fit the day. It was from him I first heard : 
 
 Frost year, 
 Fruit year, 
 
 and, 
 
 January blossoms fill no man's cellar. 
 
 And after we were on the road, this April morning, 
 he began quoting the famous weather lines from 
 Richard III: 
 
 The weary sun hath made a golden set, 
 And by the bright track of his fiery car 
 Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow. 
 
 But Neville added, 
 
 If the sun set in gray 
 
 The next will be a rainy day. 
 
 Once started on a delivery of weather proverbs, 
 he would build up a whole weather bureau, drawers, 
 legs, casters, and all. 
 
So 
 
 Ten Thousand a Year 257 
 
 Clear moon, 
 Frost soon. 
 
 When the stars begin to huddle, 
 Soon the earth will be a puddle. 
 
 Somewhere from Scotland must have come his, 
 
 When the smoke goes west, 
 Gude weather is past ; 
 When the smoke goes east, 
 Gude weather comes neist. 
 
 And, 
 
 Remember it well 
 Your children to tell : 
 The wind in the west 
 Suits everyone best. 
 
 This uncanny prescience of the coming weather 
 brought Neville many a visitor. The Valley turned 
 to him for counsel, whether to plant, to pick, or to 
 trim, for sooner or later every fruit-grower wants 
 to know what the day shall be. 
 
 When Crawford, Neville's nearest neighbor, 
 came to ask him of the day, Neville replied: " My 
 boy, and you can see for yourself, have y' a pair of 
 ordinary eyes, 
 
 " The higher the clouds, 
 The finer the weather, 
 
 and you'll not be dripping with those clouds" — 
 
258 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 pointing to the blue — "these three days." So 
 Crawford picked his sweet cherries. But a few 
 days later, when I was worrying over the barometer 
 and had appealed to Neville, all I could get out of 
 him was, 
 
 Mackerel scales and mares' tails 
 Make lofty ships carry low sails. 
 
 And I decided to wait till the approaching storm 
 had passed. But I think that Neville, Calvinist 
 as he was, placed most confidence — or to speak 
 truly of him, placed supreme confidence — in the 
 profound wisdom of the answer to the Pharisees 
 and Sadducees recorded in St. Matthew: 
 
 "He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye 
 say, It will be fair weather ; for the sky is red. 
 
 " And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day: for 
 the sky is red and lowring. " 
 
 Neville liked to have scriptural authority even 
 for his weather. So he read the seasons, the sun, 
 the clouds, the colors of the sky, the stars, the 
 wind, and even the very hollows of the air. It was 
 an uncanny power — so it seemed to me — that 
 enabled him to anticipate bad weather. I do not 
 recall that he was ever caught napping in a storm. 
 Everything about Neville Farm was ever prepared 
 for the weather, be it good or bad. This wisdom of 
 his contributed immensely to his prosperity as a 
 fruit-grower. Just as he made friends with his 
 vines and his trees, he made intimacies with sky 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 259 
 
 and wind and cloud and the very colors of the 
 landscape. The weather always warned him and 
 he recognized the warning. So when his neigh- 
 bors — Crawford, Moorhead, McCord, Mottier, 
 Butt, Nash, Hampson, and so on for miles — might 
 be holding off, as they said, for bad weather, 
 Neville would be in full figure in his fields, pushing 
 his work vigorously. But when he hugged the fire, 
 most of his neighbors hugged theirs. I do not 
 doubt that his weather-wisdom largely accounted 
 for his bank-account. 
 
 His rigid honesty of course cost him, as it costs 
 anyone, what some of his neighbors were wont to 
 call "a pretty penny." Whatever detail of his 
 estate you looked at, the thing you saw was the 
 real thing. His teams were of standard stock, 
 powerful animals, each capable of pulling his full 
 share. He kept "Castor" and "Pollux" for the 
 road; his plow teams were never on the road, 
 save to haul loads. "A mile on the road for a 
 plow-horse," said he, "wears him out more than 
 five miles in the grape-rows." He would not 
 tolerate any misuse of his teams, though I have 
 seen him use the whip thoroughly and to advantage 
 on a stupid horse. But this was the last resort. 
 He never coddled his horses, but cared for them as 
 members of his household. I incline to think that 
 he attributed a sort of soul to a horse, and he cer- 
 tainly believed in a horse-heaven. But his curious 
 fancy for personifying everything which has life 
 may possibly explain this. He never sold a horse. 
 
260 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 When its working days were over he pensioned it — 
 so to say. He gave it the freedom of a stretch of 
 pasture land he had bought for the purpose, up 
 among the hills, and cared for it in winter. Some- 
 times he would drive up to this pasture with 
 "Castor" and "Pollux"; draw up by the gate, and 
 sit a long time watching the old horses in the field. 
 He remembered all their names and seemed to 
 have kept a strict ledger account of their deeds and 
 misdeeds. One of his neighbors said Neville drove 
 out to his horse lot to see whether any of his classic 
 stock had flown away like Pegasus. 
 
 All the farm-buildings were adapted to their uses. 
 There was nothing superfluous. His fruit -house, a 
 large central building, was convenience. Here the 
 handling of baskets, the making of crates, the 
 fastening of labels on covers, went on. Hither all 
 the fruit was brought, sorted, packed, labeled, 
 and from thence sent to the cars. All the lower 
 floor was of cement. He had running water in the 
 building; gas, both for heating and lighting, and 
 several rooms which could be used, and were 
 sometimes used, by extra help. The tool-house, the 
 chicken-house, the barn, were complete and always 
 in order. The place never seemed to get dirty, 
 or out of order. The house in which the family 
 that lived permanently on the farm dwelt, was 
 spacious, attractive, and a model of convenience. 
 Unlike most farmers, he believed that the family on 
 the farm should have conveniences as in his own 
 house. Now every fruit-farmer knows that the 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 261 
 
 tenant is usually a very careless man in the house 
 set apart for his use. Windows get broken; doors 
 get off the hinges; queer things accumulate in 
 corners; weeds grow about the house, and the 
 whole place has a shiftless appearance. Just how 
 Neville managed to prevent all this was his secret. 
 "I put the responsibility on the other man, " would 
 have been his explanation. He supplied an attrac- 
 tive house and expected the man and his family to 
 keep it so. He was always willing to make neces- 
 sary repairs, to paper, paint, and to improve so far 
 as was reasonable. His spirit was contagious and 
 all who worked for him or with him caught it and 
 carried it into their work. 
 
 Yet he found many critics. Some complained 
 of his brusquerie and independence, of his insist- 
 ence on petty details, of his being unnecessarily 
 particular, of his exacting the pound of flesh; of 
 his secret relations with commission houses, rail- 
 road presidents, politicians, farming-tool agents; 
 of his prosperity. I think that at heart the trouble 
 with Neville was that nobody else in the Valley 
 knew just how to do as he did. Year after year, for 
 upwards of half a century, he prospered. He never 
 seemed anxious to get rich, yet he was truly the 
 richest man in the Valley. He never volunteered 
 advice, yet no man was asked for more. He never 
 commented on his neighbors' omissions or commis- 
 sions as fruit-growers, yet all the Valley kept an 
 eye on his procedure. He never made a speech in 
 public, never would accept office, and only towards 
 
262 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 the closing years of his life would he consent to 
 become trustee of an estate, or executor of a will. 
 Yet his hand was felt throughout the Valley. 
 Many a barrel of flour, ton of coal, yard of cloth, 
 and comforts miscellaneous which the poor en- 
 joyed, could be traced to his hand. He stanchly 
 supported school and church, but his idea of the 
 press was summed in his devotion to the New York 
 Tribune, in which he learned to read and which he 
 subscribed to and read all his life. He believed 
 that Lincoln was a saint and that Andrew Johnson 
 was very much of a sinner. He voted for Horace 
 Greeley for President and for a time wore a Greeley 
 hat. He was never in New York, Boston, or 
 Chicago, and only once could be persuaded to go to 
 Chautauqua, and then to hear Bishop Simpson 
 preach. He owned a pew in the First Church and 
 was as regular as the minister in attending service. 
 He never got quite accustomed to the responsive 
 readings, or the paid quartette, nor did he believe 
 — as once he confided to me — in free pews. In 
 her way Mrs. Neville was an edition de luxe of 
 Mr. Neville, but as she did not run the farm, hers 
 is another story. 
 
 As I have recorded, he had no children, which he 
 took as a dispensation of Providence that he and 
 Mrs. Neville were not suitable persons to be in- 
 trusted with children, and he persistently and 
 successfully resisted the efforts of the Lake Shore 
 Society for the Care of Orphan Children to have 
 him adopt specimens of the generations within 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 263 
 
 their fold. And when the Society coolly requested 
 him to leave it his estate, he replied, "And I'll 
 not be doing when I'm dead what I'd not do while 
 I was living," and the Secretary retired in despair, 
 "for he had great possessions." 
 
 But what — I hear you say — has all this to do 
 with ten thousand a year? Many a man, probably 
 no man, would be Alexander Neville. This one 
 would object to his Calvinism; that one to his 
 exasperating sense of responsibility; a third to his 
 ignominious love of details. But few there are 
 who would object to his income. Nor — as time 
 proves — was this exceptional. There are others. 
 The Valley has its Nevilles, like Shakespeare's 
 plays. To-day his results are more than merely 
 possible. Any fruit-farmer who has selected the site 
 for his farm, has planted it to the right varieties, 
 has cultivated it in season, and has marketed his 
 fruit with due care, may report "ten thousand a 
 year." It is not the big farms which always pay 
 best. Some kinds of business, some vocations, 
 seem to have their natural limits. I incline to 
 think this of fruit-farming. Neville set the limit 
 of thirty-five acres for vineyards; I accept the 
 limit. But he really made his vineyards yield as 
 much as six times their area under the usual culti- 
 vation. So with his orchards. He intensified his 
 trees to produce each after its kind. He was not 
 fond of traveling many miles for a melon when he 
 could grow one in the garden. One of his most 
 cherished possessions was the grove, some three 
 
264 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 acres, of original trees, amidst which stood the 
 farm-house. With land at upwards of a thousand 
 dollars an acre he declined to clear away this grove. 
 Instead, he cared for it and even replanted when 
 trees died. He had a sense of the beautiful, and 
 once remarked to me that if the Lake Shore 
 Society for the Care of Orphan Children were to 
 sell his farm, they would receive five thousand 
 dollars extra for that grove. 
 
 Neville was a philosopher. He was much given 
 to quotation, and his favorite lines were from 
 Emerson: 
 
 For what are they all in their high conceit, 
 When man in the bush with God may meet. 
 
 I never heard him quote more of the poem; 
 possibly he did not know more. His speech ran to 
 epigrams, some of which I here set down for the 
 benefit of all fruit-farmers : 
 
 Feed your land and your land will feed you. 
 
 Crop your land and you lose your crop. 
 
 A hard soil means a lean purse. 
 
 Humus in the land is money in the bank. 
 
 Labor is capital ; use labor well and your capital grows. 
 
 A weak plant is a perpetual loss. 
 
 Standard varieties fill the basket. 
 
 Let governments and State colleges experiment — unless 
 
 you are a millionaire. 
 Rule of thumb is the rule for losing. 
 The best farmer makes the best book on farming. 
 It is the pennies that count ; not the dollars in discarded 
 
 tools. 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 265 
 
 There are times not to do things. 
 
 Trim the plant when it is at rest; its work is to bear fruit. 
 
 Much trimming means quality of fruit. 
 
 Better trim with a penknife than an ax. 
 
 Don't wound tree or vine : no man can at the same time lie 
 
 in hospital and do active service. 
 The most profitable labor is profiting by labor. 
 The eye makes the package and the package makes the 
 
 market. 
 Look out for the lean spots on the farm ; one lean spot eats 
 
 up seven fertile ones. 
 The land likes a mixed diet, but it must be fed. 
 Handsome fruit brings handsome profits. 
 Stones and culls in your package sell the other man's fruit. 
 The quality of your fruit reflects your own. The quality 
 
 shows the willingness of the land. 
 Don't expect more from your fruit-farm than you put into it. 
 The man who knows all about fruit-raising has not yet been 
 
 born. 
 
 His own house stood in another section of the 
 farm. "Woods are getting scarce; pretty soon 
 people will not know how they look. Better 
 save this morsel as a sample." His whole farm 
 hinted strongly of his sense of the beautiful. 
 He set out hundreds of rods of ornamental 
 hedge, and scores of ornamental trees and shrubs, 
 and as many flowers as he could find room 
 for. People sometimes wondered that he, of all 
 men in the Valley the most practical in mere 
 money matters, would fritter away his time on 
 mere ornamentation of his estate. But he had his 
 reward. Scores of fruit-growers in the Valley 
 took the hint; the process of beautification begun 
 
266 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 by him has gone on and will continue with every 
 generation that inhabits the Valley. 
 
 He made me executor of his estate. The care 
 was a great surprise to me. I think he was led to 
 the confidence by my attitude towards his wise 
 administration of affairs. I always tried to benefit 
 by. it — a compliment which seemed to touch him. 
 I was not surprised to find his affairs in perfect 
 order. In the little room, off the kitchen, which 
 he used as an office, I found the complete record of 
 "Neville Farm. " On the wall hung the survey of 
 his estate, showing its subdivisions — its various 
 fields of vineyard, orchard, berry, and meadow. 
 The farm-house, and the farm-buildings were 
 carefully plotted; the mansion house in which he 
 had lived so long ; the drives and alleys, the hedge- 
 rows, the location of all drains and drainage wells, 
 and in a series of books, running over some thirty 
 years, I found an accurate account kept with each 
 section of the estate — orchard or vineyard. The 
 books also showed, from year to year, what treat- 
 ment each section had received; when plowed, 
 cultivated, when the vines or trees were trimmed or 
 sprayed ; what material was used, and particularly, 
 the succession of fertilizers each field had received 
 — whether cover-crop, as clover, soybean, vetch, or 
 turnips; or barnyard manure, or commercial 
 fertilizer as potash, bone, or other kind. Each 
 year was set out in a detailed balance sheet which 
 showed expenses and receipts ; not a betterment was 
 made, a tree or vine set out, a tool or an ounce of 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 267 
 
 fertilizer purchased without due registration. So, 
 too, every pound of product sold was accounted 
 for, with prices, and particular circumstances, if 
 thought worthy of notice. He carefully kept 
 record of the commission men with whom he dealt, 
 for his practice was never to retail fruit. All the 
 houses he had dealt with for some thirty years 
 were recorded, their financial standing clearly set 
 forth. If he lost a consignment, the cause was 
 duly set down and the name of the delinquent was 
 struck from his books. A like detail ran into his 
 personal accounts — but these I pass over as irrele- 
 vant. I saw now how it was that Neville knew his 
 land so well. Every new tree set out was of record 
 not merely as to cost, time of setting, and perhaps 
 comment as to wind and weather, but from time to 
 time the tree was brought to book, and if unfruitful 
 was torn out and its place given to another. The 
 rule of the farm was "Nothing but the best." 
 Every inch of land was in tillage, and every tree 
 and vine was the best of its kind and doing its best. 
 He worked on the theory that only the best is 
 really profitable. Therefore he did not hesitate to 
 tear out acres of vineyard or orchard, at earliest 
 moment, if convinced of their inferiority. Thus he 
 kept his estate at the top notch of fertility and 
 production — an expensive but highly profitable 
 management. Whatever season one visited his 
 farm, it was seen to be in perfect order; quite as 
 beautiful, to the trained eye, in winter as in 
 summer. 
 
268 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 The Neville farm was of a trifle more than sixty- 
 three acres, of which fully five were in grove, 
 driveways, and alleys. For each year I found a 
 balance sheet so that the story of expense and 
 returns might easily be read. Thirty acres were in 
 grapes, ten in cherries, seven in prunes, six in 
 peaches, four in berries, and one in garden. At 
 times he had tried currants, strawberries, goose- 
 berries, quinces, and grape-cuttings, and evidently 
 with profit; but, finally, he had brought his farm to 
 the divisions and stock I mention. He believed in 
 specialization, and I know that he purposed lessen- 
 ing the variety of production. He had come to 
 believe in grapes and cherries as dependable 
 producers. His records showed that the grape 
 crop had never' failed. Indeed, so far as I know, 
 the Concord grape never fails to fruit. Not every 
 year was the crop heavy — that is, remarkable, but 
 the tonnage always returned a fair reward. Some 
 years, from his thirty acres he gathered one hun- 
 dred and forty tons, and one year, one hundred and 
 eighty-seven tons, which sold, on the average, at 
 thirty-six dollars a ton. His cherry record was, 
 taking one year with another, of heavy crops 
 alternate years. The ten acres in cherries were 
 seven of sour and three of sweet — the sour chiefly 
 Montmorenci — with some Richmonds and Morel- 
 los; the sweet, Windsor and Napoleon, with some 
 Black Tartarian. The sweet cherries bore less 
 heavily and with less regularity than the sour. 
 The records showed, in highly productive years, 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 269 
 
 as high as five thousand bushels of cherries, of 
 which about one-third were sweet, the aggregate 
 return being nearly fourteen thousand dollars. Of 
 this nearly four thousand dollars were from the 
 sweet cherries. His prune orchard, the seven 
 acres, in highly productive years, yielded twenty- 
 three hundred dollars; the six acres of peaches 
 — and he managed to maintain the orchard, it 
 appears, some twenty years, for it was of this 
 age at the time of which I am speaking — yielded, in 
 favorable years, as high as thirty-one hundred 
 dollars. But there were less productive years, 
 when the gross return was as low as two-fifths 
 that amount. His garden supplied a heavy sur- 
 plus over the amount used by his family. The four 
 acres of berries — at the time of which I speak, red 
 raspberries were producing, en grosse, some seven- 
 teen hundred dollars a year. But there were 
 records of a similar acreage of currants, straw- 
 berries, and, for a few years, of black raspberries, 
 evidently tried and, in Neville's opinion, found 
 wanting. But most farmers would have considered 
 them highly profitable as Neville managed to 
 make them yield — so far as I could interpret his 
 figures — never less than two hundred dollars an 
 acre. 
 
 I went — out of curiosity — pretty carefully into 
 his expense account for all the years of large and 
 small income and discovered that on the average 
 his yearly income from his sixty-three acres was 
 nearly fourteen thousand dollars net. His expenses 
 
270 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 were heavy. His labor bill was very large because 
 he was ever at work. His bill for fertilizers ex- 
 ceeded fully threefold that of any of his neighbors. 
 He was a little fastidious as to packages and con- 
 tainers for his fruit, always putting it up for the 
 market in attractive fashion; a procedure which 
 meant much additional labor. Never a year 
 passed without its permanent betterment of his 
 estate, and chiefly in drainage, for it was a first 
 article in his horticultural creed that "no land is 
 better than its drainage. " His tools were of the 
 best but not always of the latest pattern. He kept 
 all buildings in perfect order ; was punctilious about 
 roofs and foundations, unbroken window panes 
 and fresh paint. Year by year he charged against 
 his estate for interest on investment, taxes, insur- 
 ance, and betterments. So, whatever the year, he 
 could turn to its story of labor and returns. 
 
 I was interested to discover that after deducting 
 expenses, as the years slipped away, one year with 
 another, Neville's net income equaled quite one- 
 half of his gross receipts. I think that very suc- 
 cessful fruit-growers will pronounce this return 
 exceptional, as expenses more commonly equal more 
 than fifty per cent, of gross returns, say from fifty- 
 four to sixty-eight per cent. It is a matter on which 
 scarcely two fruit-growers anywhere will agree. 
 The personal equation enters here, and the expense 
 account on the fruit -farm is as variable as the 
 personal equation, and cannot be precisely antici- 
 pated. Neville did things in a large way and indeed 
 
Ten Thousand a Year 271 
 
 in a somewhat expensive way, on the theory that 
 "only the best pays best." But there are many 
 fruit-growers who think they cannot afford to do 
 things in the best way. For example, Neville's 
 expense for labor and for packages was higher than 
 any other grower's in the Valley, because he was a 
 very particular man; yet, on the other hand, he 
 always received top prices. His labor bill was high 
 because "he always kept the cultivator moving"; 
 he was ever doing something of account on the 
 farm. He estimated the value of his estate at 
 sixty thousand dollars, which was moderate enough 
 if one considers its annual production. Few invest- 
 ments of sixty thousand dollars yield an annual 
 income of fourteen thousand dollars, together with 
 house rent, food supply, poultry, eggs, truck, fruit, 
 and not last or least, 
 
 "That peace of mind, greatest of all. " 
 
 Whatever the income from the fruit-farm, we 
 come at last to the man himself. If he selects the 
 right site for his farm ; if he makes the right sort of 
 soil; if he plants the right varieties of vine and tree 
 and bush ; if he cultivates in the right manner, and 
 gets his crop into marketable shape and to the right 
 market, he may expect a fair income — quite 
 possibly two hundred dollars an acre net. But the 
 man must think and do; ever think and do. Ten 
 thousand a year from a fruit-farm of fifty acres will 
 not produce itself automatically. The man is the 
 fruit-farm. 
 
IX 
 
 BIRDS AND THE FRUIT-FARM 
 
 ALL migratory birds are now under the protec- 
 tion of the people of the United States by 
 the Lane law, which after many years of agitation 
 was at last passed by Congress. All who are 
 interested in fruit-growing must choose between 
 the destruction or the preservation of their or- 
 chards and vineyards. For years the Government, 
 State or Federal, has labored to teach fruit-growers 
 all over the country how to fight destructive insects 
 and fungi; the battle has raged fiercely. But we 
 have come to the parting of the ways. Despite 
 all efforts to combat the evil by cultivation, and 
 specially by spraying, the alternative remains, 
 "Fruit or no fruit? " Which shall we take? 
 
 Recent years have brought more worms, insects, 
 fungi, pests of all kinds into fruit sections of 
 the country than were ever before known. For 
 the first time many have begun to understand the 
 story of the locusts of Egypt and the ten plagues. 
 Never before have insect and fungous enemies of 
 fruit done so much damage. In the Valley it was 
 
 more than half a million dollars for one year. 
 
 272 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 273 
 
 Throughout the country it exceeded twenty-seven 
 millions for fruit alone, and the total destruction, 
 including that of hay, tobacco, cotton, truck, 
 cereals, forests, was more than $800,000,000. 
 
 We ourselves are to blame. Never before were 
 birds so scarce as in 191 2. Never before were so 
 many wantonly slaughtered. Fruit-growers killed 
 them, and so cut off the hand that feeds; Italians 
 killed them for the pot. All America seemed in a 
 frenzy to slay the goose that lays the golden egg. 
 Folly of follies! Spray and fertilize and cultivate 
 all we please — no birds means no fruit, no crops, 
 no foods. 
 
 In southern France along the Riviera, one of 
 Nature's most productive fruit-gardens, the de- 
 struction of birds by man and by cruel storms, — the 
 seasons of 19 10-19 12 were among the worst known 
 in the history of the region — resulted in the almost 
 total failure of all fruits. They who in America 
 live in an equally favored fruit region may well 
 take notice. We are swiftly making a Riviera out 
 of our heritage. Scenery is all very fine, climate is 
 health, but the sole hope of the fruit sections of 
 our country lies in the production of fruit. This 
 gone, poverty must certainly come to the region. 
 What, for instance, except the fruit can pour 
 yearly into the pockets of the people of the Valley 
 the vast income they usually receive — more than 
 two millions dollars? Will the growers, will 
 the inhabitants of every fruit valley care for 
 their orchards and their vineyards or suffer them 
 is 
 
274 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 to be destroyed by their own carelessness and 
 ignorance? 
 
 Say what we please, our best friends are the 
 birds. The immeasurable loss to the country by 
 their wanton destruction could be avoided if we 
 would only let them alone. Eight hundred millions 
 a year! What are we going to do about it? Shall 
 we go on spraying tree, bush, and vine and shooting 
 birds? Shall we raise fruit only for worms — which 
 is precisely what we are doing all over the United 
 States. Consider the brutal facts of wanton 
 destruction of the birds, illustrated in the Lake 
 Shore Valley alone. In one part of that Valley 
 called North East, which comprises the north- 
 eastern corner of Erie County, Pennsylvania, 
 there were about seven thousand acres of fruit in 
 19 1 2, but this was so badly injured by insects that 
 the result was as if there were only thirty-two 
 hundred acres. This means that scores of fruit- 
 growers paid taxes, worked, or tried to work 
 thirty-eight hundred acres of fruit not merely for 
 nothing, but as a breeding ground for worms to vex 
 them another year. Nor is the Valley exceptional; 
 a like folly reigns in other valleys. Consider this 
 folly as a common procedure. In a region favored 
 by Nature for the production of a great variety of 
 finest fruit, men produce worms! Foolishly they 
 do all they can to defeat Nature and to injure 
 themselves. They kill their best friends and at the 
 same time expend thousands of dollars to make 
 artificial friends ; they imagine that spraying will 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 275 
 
 take the place of insect-eating birds. Nonsense! 
 Nature knows more than we. Consider the facts. 
 The coddling moth costs America annually $12,000,- 
 000 by destruction of fruit and $8,500,000 ad- 
 ditional for spraying bill. Is that good business? 
 One pair of potato bugs will breed 55,000,000 
 potato bugs in one season. One pair of green leaf- 
 lice will breed ten sextillion lice in one season. 
 Try to write ten sextillion and see what sort of a 
 figure you have! A pair of gypsy-moths busy all 
 summer will produce upwards of five trillion worms 
 to feed on orchard and. other trees. 
 
 Nature provides a check on these and like pests — 
 the birds. And who kills the birds? Do you who 
 are a fruit-farmer? Do you allow the killing of 
 them on your premises? What will a bird do for 
 us if we let him and his mate alone? A pair of 
 grosbeaks in course of the day visited the nest 
 four hundred and fifty times and each time with 
 two or more worms. Sparrows, chickadees, mar- 
 tins, vireos, average a visit every minute to the 
 nest, and two or more worms each visit. A night- 
 hawk's crop contained sixty grasshoppers ; another's 
 five hundred mosquitoes; a blackbird's thirty- 
 eight black cutworms, the meanest worm for 
 tomatoes, cabbages, strawberries, and the garden 
 generally. And in 19 12 there were more cut- 
 worms and fewer blackbirds in the Valley than ever 
 before in its history. One song-sparrow devours 
 more than fifteen hundred worms in one day, and 
 this cheeriest of songsters, who abides with us the 
 
276 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 longest of all songsters, always lives in or near a 
 vineyard. A scarlet tanager has been seen to 
 devour at the rate of thirty-five gypsy-moths a 
 minute for eighteen minutes at a time. More than 
 fifty species of birds, nearly all of which would 
 frequent the Valley — and most other valleys also — 
 if we would let them, live on caterpillars and plant- 
 lice. A pair of robins will eat, on the average, all 
 summer long, two worms every minute and rear 
 several broods to do the same act. And do you 
 kill robins? You say the robin eats cherries. But 
 the worms destroy infinitely more. You pay out 
 money to spray your trees; the robins will do the 
 work for nothing. And the woodpeckers, one and 
 all, are worth their weight in gold. They do more 
 to protect a fruit-tree than any other bird. You 
 may see them, if you do not kill them, search- 
 ing over the tree bark, stem, leaf, bud, even the 
 blossoms and the fruit, devouring, not cherries, 
 peaches, plums, prunes, but bugs, lice, myriads of 
 lice. Of course we ought to shoot them and spray 
 the tree and ask Uncle Sam to maintain an experi- 
 ment station in our locality for our benefit! Is 
 not this the climax of folly? What if the fruit- 
 grower were to let the birds alone, make his estate 
 a bird preserve, and put up a sign, "Pothunters, 
 Take Warning!" 
 
 A curious calculation as to the use of birds — and 
 one which must make a deep impression, if it be 
 considered at all — has been made by Kalbfus: 
 Each young bird in the nest daily consumes an 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 277 
 
 amount of animal food equal to its weight. Sup- 
 pose that there is one nest of birds to every acre of 
 land in Pennsylvania, 28,800 acres; this means 
 3600 tons of insects consumed every day; of course 
 "insects" include insect life in its three forms — 
 worm, pupa, and winged, — not to speak of insects 
 in the egg. On the average, is there one bird's nest 
 to every acre of land in that commonwealth? 
 Undoubtedly there are more. Robins live fifteen 
 years. Few birds live out their time, being cut off 
 by storms, famine, or enemies, of whom the chief 
 is man. Few die of disease. Three thousand six 
 hundred tons of insects consumed daily make how 
 many for one summer? Figure this out and j^ou 
 will discover that for four months alone it makes 
 insects enough to load a freight train nine miles 
 long, each car holding sixty tons! And this for 
 Pennsylvania only. What if we include all the 
 forty-eight States? It means that during one 
 season of only four months the birds of America 
 — assign but one pair of birds to every acre — con- 
 sume more than 3,600,000 tons of insects, or 
 enough to load a freight train nine hundred miles 
 long, each car carrying sixty tons; that is, a train 
 reaching from Buffalo to Chicago, full of the most 
 loathsome, the most injurious, the most pestilential 
 creatures known to man. Of course kill the birds ! 
 Of course it is better to have 3,600,000 tons of bugs 
 and worms devour our crops than to have these 
 same insects ground up in the crops of birds ! 
 A bird has a higher blood-temperature than any 
 
278 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 other animal. Its circulation is more rapid. It is 
 more active also. To keep up this higher tempera- 
 ture, this more rapid circulation, this greater 
 activity, it must eat more in proportion than any 
 other animal. Birds are the biggest eaters in the 
 world — not even excepting people who patronize 
 picnics. This explains the daily consumption of 
 a nine-mile trainload of insects in Pennsylvania 
 alone. We have added in a like tonnage for the 
 other States of the Union; add in the tonnage for 
 Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, 
 the Isles of the Sea! Who can compute the ton- 
 nage? Now we can dimly understand the state- 
 ment made by men who speak by the strength of 
 accurate knowledge that, if insects are not curbed 
 in some way, this planet will become uninhabitable 
 for man in less than twenty years. I believe that 
 the facts warrant cutting this length of time in 
 half. So of course, kill birds! Pass laws to kill 
 them! Encourage pothunters to kill them! Cats, 
 ever more cats to kill them! Kill the (cats?) birds, 
 and, like Herod of old, be devoured by worms ! 
 
 Birds are essential to human life. No birds, no 
 people. Charles Darwin proved once and for all 
 that there would be no soil were there no earth- 
 worms. Robins appear to have read Darwin's 
 famous book on Earthworms. They also seem to 
 know about cutworms and some other like friends 
 of man found in gardens. Of course black cut- 
 worms and grubs are more to be desired than 
 robins. Some people have the perversity to believe 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 279 
 
 that too many cutworms spoil the tomato patch. 
 A robin treats her family to pounds and pounds 
 of cutworms, each summer, but she also eats a 
 cherry! Off goes her head! How about the man 
 who raises wormy cherries? He demands just as 
 much per bushel — worms and all — as if the fruit 
 was first-class. The innocent purchaser thinks 
 that it might be a good thing to let loose a few 
 robins in that man's cherry orchard. Does he 
 think so? Not he. He, as is said, is saving at the 
 spigot and leaking at the bung. No, he is not a 
 stingy man — he gives a nickel for the mission in 
 China. No, he is not an ignorant man — he went 
 to school; he can read, write, and cipher. But he 
 yearns to preserve that nine-hundred-mile freight 
 train full of bugs; he believes in the laissez faire, 
 the free-trade theory of worms; the let-alone 
 theory, save as to birds; kill birds, raise bugs. 
 If only these fruit-growers and farmers who do all 
 they can to kill birds might have all the bugs on 
 their farms and in their vineyards and orchards, — 
 and keep them there! But no; these are the very 
 men who complain first and loudest and demand 
 State and Congressional appropriations for experi- 
 ment stations and the assignment of experts from 
 the Department of Agriculture at Washington to 
 kill insects and fungi for them — while they kill 
 birds. The United States now protects all migra- 
 tory and all insectivorous birds — or at least, the 
 law of 191 3 was enacted for this purpose. Several 
 States have protective laws ; but as yet the hand of 
 
280 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 man is hardly stayed in this country from the 
 wanton destruction of birds. The mind of our 
 people is not yet right on bird-protection, nor will 
 it be right until they are the law, and not one bird 
 helpful to man by destroying insects can be killed 
 wantonly on American soil. 1 
 
 Every State has some sort of game law, the best 
 at present, fixing penalties for killing birds "out 
 of season," or with "automatic guns," "traps" of 
 certain kinds, and providing for special officers to 
 see that the law is executed. But to-day there is an 
 army of more than 5,000,000 men who at some 
 time during each year scour forest, field, mountain- 
 side, thicket, and glen and kill every feathered 
 creature in sight. There must be a bird-conscience 
 in Americans before they will adequately protect 
 the birds. 
 
 It appears by the census that the destruction of 
 farm products by insects in 19 12 was more than 
 $973,000,000. Only a few hundred millions! 
 What are they to a great, a powerful, an intelligent, 
 a progressive country like ours ! Not every 
 country can feed its bugs and worms a thousand 
 millions a year and build a Panama Canal, and 
 four warships, and no end of post-offices, and 
 knock off the tariff on foodstuffs, and do sundry 
 other minor things in one year — and survive! 
 
 1 There are innumerable books about birds. The best single volume, 
 as yet, is Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation, 
 by William T. Hornaday, Sc.D. With maps and illustrations. New 
 York; New York Zoological Society, 19 13, 411 pp. 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 281 
 
 In the State of Pennsylvania, alone during that 
 year, the loss by ravage of insects was greater than 
 the entire income of the Lake Shore Valley, a 
 hundred times over. 
 
 Birds preserve the balance between all food 
 products and insect and fungous enemies. De- 
 stroy birds and this balance is destroyed; nor can 
 spraying restore the balance; nor can cultivation. 
 Let Nature have her way. She is our best friend. 
 Vain men think they know better what to do than 
 Nature. The whole secret of fruit-growing is to 
 be on the side of Nature. Bird-destruction means 
 wasted work, wasted crops, the perilous increase of 
 insect and fungous pests. What makes a farmer 
 more wrathful than to discover a trespasser ruin- 
 ing his crops; stealing his fruit, snaring his fowls, 
 catching his fish? But when a dozen turtle-doves 
 settle down in the wheat-stubble, the farmer gets 
 his gun, or suffers another to get a gun, and hurries 
 out to kill. All the tramps, trespassers (except 
 pothunters), and thieves combined injure the 
 farmers less than the farmers injure themselves 
 by wanton destruction of birds. Funny, isn't it? 
 
 All the strikers all over the United States, in all 
 the strikes and destruction of property during the 
 year 1912, did not destroy property to more than 
 one-tenth of the destruction wrought by insects 
 to farm products. Farmers and fruit-growers 
 speak severely of "strikes" and "strikers" in the 
 manufacturing towns of the country. What may 
 the strikers truly say of farmers and fruit-growers? 
 
282 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 People in the country are horrified if told that 
 nineteen people — so the report goes — may be 
 found living in one room in Pittsburgh. But these 
 good country people are not disturbed by the 
 slaughter of the birds. Consistency — so the pro- 
 verb runs — is a jewel, even (as the French say) 
 "when it is made of paste." 
 
 In one season, one San Jose scale will produce 
 3,216,030,400 of its kind; this is the law, "each 
 after its kind, " with a vengeance. One pair of 
 robins — probably the most useful of our common 
 birds — may possibly in one season raise seven 
 robins. Do you see the difference? But, you say, 
 robins do not eat scale. There are other and more 
 common scales, plum scale, peach scale, maple 
 scale, oak scale, apple scale, cherry scale, black- 
 olive scale, greedy scale, oyster-shell bark-louse 
 scale (which is the most destructive next to the San 
 Jose, and is common east of the Mississippi, and 
 is the food of many birds). What birds devour 
 scale? Titmice, woodpecker, orioles, thrush, wax- 
 wing, warbler, chickadee — many varieties of these 
 birds. Scales and insects increase by the millions; 
 birds, possibly by the half dozen. Kill the birds 
 and let scales and insects grow! r 
 
 And there are farmers who say: "Give us this 
 day our daily bread. " There are fruit-growers and 
 farmers who demand the presence of experts, and 
 
 1 Read Birds That Eat Scale Insects, a little pamphlet published and 
 freely distributed by the Department of Agriculture of the United 
 States Government. 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 283 
 
 appropriations from Congress — to do what? To 
 serve as artificial birds. Kill the birds and spray 
 Bordeaux mixture instead, and get Uncle Sam to 
 pay the bills! Funny, isn't it? 
 
 In the public schools of the country there may 
 be found some 16,000,000 young Americans, the 
 "rising hope of the nation." How many of this 
 "hope" ever hear one word of counsel, not to say 
 instruction, as to the value of birds to man? 
 Thousands of them "collect" birds' eggs and nests, 
 not without wanton destruction of bird life, but 
 who among these rising millions learns in school 
 the lesson of lessons worth knowing, that human 
 life depends upon bird life, and therefore the pro- 
 tection of birds means civilization? What teacher, 
 what board of school trustees knows anything or 
 cares anything about this matter? How many 
 millions of dollars are paid by the taxpayers to 
 train "the rising hope, " and how much is actually 
 used to civilize the child as to the use, not to say 
 the rights, of birds? 
 
 The word "insects" or the word "fungus" does 
 not occur in the Bible. There are thirty-three 
 verses, in the King James version, which mention 
 birds directly; perhaps as many more which spe- 
 cially refer to bird life. We are told that "the 
 birds of the air have nests. " This is according to 
 St. Luke. How soon must it be said, "The birds 
 of the air had nests"? Are clergymen, whatever 
 their church or creed, helping preserve the birds, 
 "each after his kind"? Are they at any time 
 
284 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 instructing their listeners, young or old, in the 
 value of bird life to mankind? Or is "slumming" 
 more interesting? Or "politics"? Or a course in 
 sociology or the "higher criticism"? Or "the 
 missions on the Congo"? Palestine is a birdless 
 country; it is mostly a wilderness. Why a wilder- 
 ness? Clergymen are public teachers of immeasur- 
 able influence. Are they "with us or against us" 
 in the sane attempt to give the birds a chance? 
 There is one text in the Bible from which if the 
 preacher does not at once preach he may never 
 again have the opportunity, because the text will 
 no longer be true. 1 
 
 Sometimes, when clerks break loose from banks, 
 stores, and other places, they become "pothunters." 
 They want to shoot everything in sight, in the 
 bird line, on holidays: robins, thrushes, martins, 
 wrens, woodpeckers, pigeons, owls — and so on 
 through the list. Why not? Who owns the birds? 
 Who objects? Shoot the robin and throw the 
 carcass under the bushes! Only a few hundred 
 million more bugs to eat up food crops; that is all 
 that shooting a robin means. Query: Do clerks 
 eat wrens, martins, field-sparrows, robins? 
 
 During the winter of 1911-1912, the "city 
 council of Pittsboro, South Carolina, rescinded an 
 order forbidding shooting within the city limits so 
 that the people might shoot robins that had been 
 driven by a severe storm into the town to seek 
 food and shelter. About f our thousand robins were 
 
 1 Song of Solomon, ii., 12. 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 285 
 
 killed. The mayor of the city, who was away at 
 the time, was so disgusted at what had occurred 
 that he resigned his office upon his return." This 
 delightful bit of history graces the pages of a bird 
 report in a distant State. 1 
 
 Shall all the birds be destroyed? Shall farmers 
 and fruit-growers help the destruction and stand 
 the loss? How many millions of dollars? Far 
 more than the value of all the products of all the 
 fruit sections in America. Do steel-manufac- 
 turers combine for their own interests? Does the 
 Standard Oil look out for its own? Does the paper- 
 trust, the lumber-trust, the cotton-trust, the book- 
 trust, the woolen-trust, the steel-trust, and so on to 
 the end of the trusts, if an end there be? Do farm- 
 ers and fruit-growers look diligently out for their 
 own interests? Would the Standard Oil, that finely 
 organized and well managed concern, deliberately 
 refuse to omit anything, however laborious, which, 
 if done, would add to Standard Oil values? But 
 farmers and fruit-growers kill the birds that feed 
 them. They depend upon their labor and their 
 crops; they work; they think they work harder 
 than any other workers in America. Yet they kill, 
 or permit to be killed, the chief source of their 
 wealth, — the birds. Indeed, of all the people on 
 this planet, farmers do the least in their own in- 
 terests. They refuse to get out of time-worn ruts. 
 They are suspicious of everybody. They kill their 
 
 1 Report, Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, January 15, 1912, 
 p. 28. 
 
286 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 best friends. This is not a libel, but a terrible fact. 
 And yet the farmer is the most independent man 
 in America. 
 
 Every American farmer may risk his last dollar 
 on this truth, unpleasant as it may sound, that 
 fully one-fifth of his efforts is wasted absolutely 
 by the destruction of his products by insects and 
 fungi. On many farms the waste is greater than 
 this. Powerful -'trusts" protect themselves and 
 compel others to "keep hands off." Farmers and 
 fruit-growers refuse to protect themselves by 
 simply letting Nature alone. Let the birds live! 
 Who butters the farmer's bread? Do not forget: 
 it was a bird that brought the prophet his daily 
 bread. 
 
 We now have more laws protecting birds than 
 ever before, but, unless the mind of the people is 
 behind them, they remain dead laws. All men who 
 are truly fond of hunting are the best friends of 
 game and of the protection of bird life. The time 
 has come when as a people we must take our choice: 
 dead laws, dead birds, dead vines, dead trees, dead 
 labor, or living laws, countless birds, orchards, 
 vineyards, abundant crops, lower cost of living. 
 
 Meanwhile insect pests and fungi are increasing, 
 as they are increasing in every fruit region, in 
 every farming region in America. The natural 
 check on these enemies is the birds. Why destroy 
 the birds? Why not protect them? What fruit- 
 grower would refuse a gift of a fertilizer that would 
 increase his annual harvest twenty-five per cent.? 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 287 
 
 Or would he reject an offer of labor that would 
 work out that increase? But the farmers and 
 fruit-growers of the country may have this increase 
 for nothing if they will protect the birds. On the 
 low estimate of one bird's nest and its brood for 
 every acre of land, the birds of Erie County destroy 
 in one season of four months — and the ravages of 
 worms and their destruction by the birds is for a 
 longer period — the enormous total of 125,000 tons of 
 insects! This means six hundred and twenty-five 
 tons every day during the season. But there are 
 more than one nest and a brood to every acre, and 
 birds do a greater service than this consumption of 
 enemies of orchard and vine. In the single county 
 of Erie, and chiefly in the Lake Shore Valley, the 
 birds, assuming one pair for every acre of land, 
 destroy in one season enough insects to fill a freight 
 train fifty miles long, each car holding thirty tons ! 
 A similar train may be drawn out of every fruit 
 valley in the United States, — by the birds. Shall 
 we kill them? Is it even good business to protect 
 them? During the season these friends of ours 
 destroy thirty pounds of insects on every acre of 
 the farm — that is, more than a ton of insects in 
 one season on a farm of sixty acres. What fruit- 
 grower would like to handle a ton of bugs and 
 worms? There are innumerable species of fungi 
 which ruin tree and vine, bush and plant, bark, 
 root, leaf, bud, flower, and fruit; no part of the 
 living plant is exempt. Not all fungi are bird-food. 
 We do not know exactly the amount of service the 
 
288 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 birds render us in destroying fungi. We do know 
 that birds eat the scale — the widespread and 
 numerous woodpecker family, the house-sparrow, 
 the tree-creeper, the long- tailed tit, grosbeak, 
 oriole, warbler, wren, chickadee, waxwing, vireo — 
 in all, some fifty-seven varieties of birds, all of 
 which feed on the scale. Of these, twenty-seven 
 varieties destroy the two most destructive scales — 
 the black-olive scale, and the oyster-shell bark- 
 louse. Fungi are vegetables, plants, growing from 
 infinitesimal seeds called spores, which in countless 
 numbers float on the wind and suck the life out 
 of other plants. At present our chief defense is 
 judicious spraying. 
 
 From 1900 to 1 9 10 the value of farm property in 
 the United States increased one hundred per cent. 
 — that is, from $20,439,900,000 to $40,991,450,000. 
 Dining this period the value of land increased 
 one hundred and eight per cent, per acre, but the 
 population of the United States increased only 
 twenty-one per cent., which means that, relative to 
 population, land is acquiring a scarcity value. 
 Indeed, the increase in farm values was a significant, 
 probably the most significant, increase among all 
 the changes in the affairs of the American people. 
 Of every one hundred of our people, fifty-four live in 
 the country; forty-six in the city. The actual land 
 area of our country is just short of 2,000,000,000 
 acres, and of this enormous area only twenty-five 
 per cent, is improved land. On the other hand, 
 forty-six per cent, of the whole is actually farm 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 289 
 
 land. This means that quite one-fifth of all land 
 called "farm land," throughout the United States, 
 is unimproved. If we consider what "improved" 
 really means as applied to land in our country, we 
 must admit that farming here is as yet extensive 
 rather than intensive, and that bad farming is the 
 common practice. 
 
 During the last twenty years an amount of 
 capital far beyond accurate computation has gone 
 into farming, and this form of investment has only 
 begun. The city man who puts $30,000 into a 
 farm may now be found in every prosperous 
 farming community. Hundreds, thousands of 
 farms — fruit, stock, poultry, truck, cranberry, and 
 so on through the list — are owned and operated 
 by rich men who made their money in banking, 
 manufacturing, railroading, medicine, politics, 
 patents, speculation; with them the "get-back-to- 
 the-land" instinct is dominant. In the Lake Shore 
 Valley, and in other valleys, scores of such men 
 may be found and almost without exception their 
 farms are highly profitable. All over the United 
 States such men may be found, and because of 
 them a new profession, a new vocation, exists in 
 America, that of "farm manager," "superinten- 
 dent of the fruit-farm," "horticulturist," and 
 thousands of young men are in training on farms 
 and at agricultural colleges and special schools to 
 fill these positions. This astonishing change in 
 affairs goes far to explain how it happens that the 
 value of farm property increased between 1900 and 
 
290 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 1 9 10 from twenty billion to forty billion dollars. 
 Now during this decade there was but a trifling 
 increase of land in farms, that is, less that five 
 per cent.; for the acreage in 1900 was 838,600,000, 
 and in 1910, 878,800,000;' and the increase during 
 this time in improved land was only fifteen per 
 cent., that is, from 414,500,000 to 478,452,000 
 acres. The large fact is that farm-lands increased 
 in value chiefly because of better farming. 
 
 No small part of the credit for this increase is 
 due to such men as Burbank and Bailey, and 
 particularly to the men who have charge of experi- 
 ment stations; and to such work as is done by the 
 Department of Agriculture at Washington, and 
 similar departments of the State Governments. 
 Our people seem at last to have awakened to the 
 enormous importance and almost infinite oppor- 
 tunities and possibilities of farming in its many 
 phases. 
 
 What do all these big figures and big facts 
 amount to? "Where the treasure is, there is the 
 heart also, " says the Book of Books. When the 
 American people have an investment of $40,991,- 
 450,000 does any one imagine that somebody's 
 "heart" is not "there also"? Does any one 
 imagine that the millions of Americans engaged in 
 farming, if they have any conception of their own 
 interests, are going to permit a wanton waste of 
 from twelve to twenty-five per cent, of their in- 
 vestment annually? Or, will they awaken, save 
 this waste, and capitalize it? 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 291 
 
 Does the United States Steel or the Standard 
 Oil permit any such waste? Does the Pennsyl- 
 vania Railroad, or the Vanderbilt, or the Harriman, 
 or the Baltimore and Ohio, or the Pacific? Does 
 the Cunard Line, or the American, or the Allen? 
 Does any human being, who can be left safely at 
 large permit an annual waste in his business of 
 twelve per cent.? But farmers and fruit-growers 
 permit this waste; they are the guilty party. The 
 farmer will fight the railroad when it attempts to 
 take in a few rods of his land to widen its tracks. 
 He will go everlastingly to law with his neighbor 
 over a disputed fence-line when all the land in 
 dispute is not worth fifty dollars; and at the same 
 time he will suffer himself to be cut off twelve 
 per cent, and more every year, and will actually 
 superintend the wasting so as to make it larger. 
 He kills protective birds himself and encourages 
 everybody else to kill them. 
 
 At least twelve per cent, of all our land products 
 are yearly destroyed by worms; yet, beginning in 
 Texas and Florida and continuing to the Canadian 
 border, from ocean to ocean, the wanton and 
 wicked destruction of birds goes steadily on. 
 Wealth is rapidly retreating to the country, to 
 the farm, to better farming and fruit-growing. 
 "Things," says Emerson, "refuse to be mis- 
 managed long." The increase by more than 
 twenty billions of dollars in farm values from 1900 
 to 1 9 10 means the necessity of bird protection. 
 Owners of such wealth will not tolerate a twelve 
 
292 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 per cent, yearly waste of capital. Nothing is 
 gained by calling a spade by any other name. A 
 spade is a spade; a bird is a bird; a farmer is a 
 farmer. A wise farmer is not a foolish farmer. 
 But will the wise man forever suffer the foolish 
 man to injure the wise man? If the foolish fruit- 
 grower or the foolish farmer will not protect his 
 own, and thereby he injures his neighbor, shall the 
 neighbor submit tamely, quietly, smilingly, and 
 charge up the loss and no more, or shall he defend 
 his own substantial interests? A wise farmer is 
 better than an act of Congress or of Assembly. 
 How long will the farmers and the fruit-growers of 
 the country slumber and suffer this wanton injury? 
 How long will they submit to this yearly loss of at 
 least one-eighth of the just results of their labor? 
 Are they less capable than the Standard Oil, or 
 the Cunard Line, or the General Electric? Come 
 on, men of wealth, and buy up the farms! Im- 
 prove them. 1 Welcome Burbank and Bailey, 
 Experiment Stations, Schools of Agriculture! 
 Welcome governments, of Nation or of State! 
 Welcome all associations, societies, granges, clubs, 
 meetings, books, newspapers, speeches, conversa- 
 tions, ideas — welcome all actual thinking that 
 favors the protection of the birds ! 
 
 If farmers and fruit-growers do not suffer birds 
 to be destroyed, will their profits at the close of 
 the year be twelve per cent, increase? This de- 
 pends upon how our neighbors act. Our bird- 
 neighbors are in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 293 
 
 Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, California, Maine, 
 Minnesota, — in every nook and corner of our 
 country. Bird-protection is not merely a local 
 but a universal need. A fruit-grower may live 
 near the northern edge of the country. All the 
 way southward the birds are remorselessly and 
 wantonly destroyed the whole year through. 
 Practically, people living at the North get only 
 whatever birds escape our neighbors at the South. 
 In Tennessee millions of insectivorous birds, es- 
 pecially robins, are killed for fun and for food 
 during the time of their migration — February and 
 March. The wild pigeon, once best known of 
 migratory birds, has become extinct through 
 wanton destruction, yet there are thousands of men 
 now living who can remember when the sky would 
 be darkened by immense flocks of these birds in 
 flight to or from their breeding-grounds. Alexan- 
 der Wilson computed that one flock of these pigeons 
 which he saw passing over Indiana contained 
 2,230,272,000 birds! This was two generations 
 ago. On September 14, 1908, the last wild speci- 
 men was taken near Detroit, "the last that ever 
 will reach the hands of man," for not one bird of 
 this species is now in existence. Yet, some years 
 after Wilson recorded his observations, the Legis- 
 lature of Ohio refused to pass any law protecting 
 the passenger pigeon on the plea that the birds 
 were so numerous they could not decrease, much 
 less become extinct. To-day we must add to the 
 rapidly increasing list of extinct species of useful 
 
294 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 birds — in our country alone — the Labrador duck, 
 the Eskimo curlew, three species of the macaw, 
 and the Carolina parakeet. And our common birds 
 — robins, orioles, sparrows (not the English spar- 
 row, that insufferable scavenger, but our native 
 species), bluebirds, martins, chickadees, turtle- 
 doves, owls, night-hawks — are rapidly perishing by 
 indiscriminate and senseless slaughter. 
 
 Ten cents a dozen for robins seems a fabulous 
 price to the thoughtless Tennessee mountain boy, 
 and to kill thousands of robins in Georgia, Ala- 
 bama, and the Border States, generally, while the 
 birds are migrating, means a birdless tract to 
 the North. The robin, or, properly speaking, the 
 thrush, is only a type of the victims. After the 
 entire South has spent months in destroying useful 
 birds, the entire North takes up the work of 
 slaughter and continues it till the last escaping 
 bird takes its flight southward into the camp of its 
 enemies. The miracle is that a single bird survives. 
 
 A twelve per cent, profit from birds means a 
 common-sense treatment of them everywhere and 
 at all times. Foolish, selfish, murderous man is 
 blind to his dependence upon birds for his existence. 
 Every species he kills to extinction only marks his 
 progress toward starvation, for he is hastening the 
 day when the world will be uninhabitable for man. 
 The oceans have northward and southward cur- 
 rents, polar and equatorial currents, vast rivers in 
 the sea which, starting from the equator, flow 
 northward and make the temperate zone inhabit- 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 295 
 
 able, and flowing from the poles toward the equa- 
 tor do a like service for the hot regions. Rivers of 
 air also flow from the equator to the poles, from the 
 poles to the equator, and the motion of the earth 
 through space imparts to the rivers of sea and air 
 a vast spiral motion so that all regions of the earth 
 are reached and affected by this vast circuit of 
 aerial and marine ventilation. Not less remarkable 
 are the annual bird migrations from equatorial 
 regions northward into our temperate zone; south- 
 ward into the temperate regions of Asia, Africa, 
 and South America. Back and forth this river of 
 bird-life flows, and has flowed through the ages. 
 It too has its function in maintaining the nice 
 balance of life on the globe. Happily we cannot 
 destroy the rivers of the sea or of the sky, but we 
 are doing our best to destroy the equally helpful 
 and necessary river of birds. But — "Stop! Look! 
 Listen!" Destroy the birds and in less than 
 twenty years mankind will literally "be eaten of 
 worms. " 
 
 The world is filling up; the continents and the 
 isles of the sea are becoming peopled. There are 
 now one hundred millions of people in the United 
 States. When George Washington was President, 
 and our country was bounded by Canada and the 
 Floridas, by the Atlantic and the Mississippi 
 River, there were only three million people. How 
 long before there will be five hundred million — yes, 
 five times five hundred million? You say, "What's 
 that to me?" What generation — your children's 
 
296 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 children — will be saying, "Oh, that my fathers had 
 been wise in their generation!" But we are not 
 raising the children of to-morrow — we are killing 
 birds. That is our business; let posterity take care 
 of itself! But here a footnote from your inmost 
 mind: Do you wish that your grandfather, or 
 even your father, had been a little more "fore- 
 sighted"? Do you blame anybody for using up 
 the forests, for polluting the rivers and streams, 
 for destroying the game, for wasting the resources 
 of the country? No man lives for himself and 
 remains a man. 
 
 The annual tide of bird-life sweeping in upon us 
 is a diminishing tide; every year, smaller; drying 
 up like our rivers and streams; vanishing like our 
 forests. Instead of letting this river of bird-life 
 cleanse our orchards and vineyards, we scatter a 
 pinch of Paris green, spray a tiny stream of Bor- 
 deaux mixture, and do the work ourselves. The 
 birds would like to do it for nothing, and far better 
 than a sprayer. "No, thank you, " says the fruit- 
 grower; "no birds for me ! If you see a robin in 
 my orchard, 'Off goes his head!' I prefer to kill 
 birds and to scold about wormy fruit and to insist 
 that Congress shall make a handsome appropria- 
 tion to kill the worms. " "Is not the life more than 
 meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the 
 fowls of the air!" But our eyes are glued to a 
 gun barrel. However, if any person should happen 
 to hand the fruit-grower in the Valley — doubtless 
 in other valleys — a twelve per cent, bonus on his 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 297 
 
 investment, he will be on the spot to receive it, 
 promptly, with his bag. 
 
 If after killing our common birds the farmer 
 would take the trouble to examine the contents of 
 their crops he would discover that forty-five per- 
 cent, is insects, thirty per cent, vegetable matter, 
 and twenty-five per cent, seeds, chiefly of weeds. 
 The contents vary with the season, being greater in 
 insects in spring and summer; in autumn, greater 
 in seeds of weeds. But man is a killing animal. 
 All our folk-lore abounds with stories handed down 
 from our remote ancestors of killings of man, beast, 
 and bird. What boy, seeing a bird, does not yearn 
 to kill it on the spot? A boy, a stone, and a bird; 
 a man, a gun, and no bird! Cruelty to animals? 
 But we cannot eat our cake and keep it. The 
 clock strikes warning; the time has come; we must 
 choose between fruit, food, and famine; between 
 birds and worms. 
 
 Now birds, like men, must have food. What 
 food? Nature, in the wild, supplies her own with 
 nuts, buds, leaves, roots, seeds, flowers, and the 
 infinite variety of animal species. Species feeds 
 on species ; this is the law of life on the globe. We 
 have cleared the land and destroyed the sources of 
 food for the birds. Much of the so-called injury to 
 fruit and other crops wrought by birds is wholly 
 due to the necessity we have imposed upon them. 
 Forests, shrubs, bushes, weeds, wild fruits, and 
 berries and all that world of life on which birds 
 feed in a state of nature we have quite destroyed, or 
 
298 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 so reduced that the birds must resort to our trees, 
 vines, shrubs, and plants, and to the insects and 
 fungi which we indirectly propagate — or perish. 
 Civilization means largely the disturbance of the 
 wild. Civilization shears off natural vegetation 
 and introduces cultivated or man-made varieties 
 of plants with resulting plant diseases. We also 
 compel the insect world to feed upon our plants, 
 having destroyed all that vegetable life on which 
 it formerly fed. So both insects and birds are 
 compelled to forage in our orchards and vineyards. 
 What must follow? A bird famine or a man 
 famine? Or shall we protect our own interests, 
 ward off famine, by raising enough for the birds 
 and ourselves also? Bird-food must come from 
 insects, fungi, or plant life. What is natural bird- 
 food? Elderberries, mulberries, wild cherries, 
 pokeberries, Virginia creeper, juniper berries, holly 
 berries, hackberries, huckleberries, — and these are 
 the natural food of some sixty-seven species of 
 birds. Does anybody plant mountain-ash, silver- 
 berry, Chinaberry, buckthorn, barberry, pepper- 
 tree, snowberry, viburnums, sumac? But these 
 are bird-food. Juniper, black-currant, June- 
 berry, red raspberry, black raspberry, blackberry, 
 sarsaparilla, bird-cherry, hobble-bush, red osier, 
 choke-cherry were growing in American valleys 
 for ages before La Salle, Father Hennepin, and 
 their brave companions caught sight of the "Great 
 Lake of the Cats," which we call Lake Erie, or 
 discovered the great West. 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 299 
 
 But let us be more particular and look more 
 closely at our native bird-food supply: red-cedar, 
 mulberry, pokeberry, sassafras, spice bush, black- 
 currant, the raspberries, frost-grapes, dogwood, 
 blueberries, snowberries — and the list might be 
 lengthened. Call the roll. Do any of these wild 
 things answer ''Present"? Are any of yesterday? 
 Where are the dogwoods, the fox-grapes? Gone, 
 and the birds that fed on them. If a man cannot 
 get bread, will he eat a stone? Or will he throw 
 the stone and eat the bird? If the birds cannot get 
 their daily bread will they eat stones? Or will 
 they turn to garden and orchard, to field and farm- 
 yard, and get wounds to their death? "Yes," 
 says the farmer, "but I can't keep my land in the 
 wild just to feed birds." "True," replies the 
 bird, "but I must eat, and whereas I once fed 
 bountifully on mulberries and poke-weed, now I 
 must feed on cutworms, cabbage-lice, and some 
 tame fruit — very tame." The farmer is loading 
 his gun. "But I pay my bills," resumes the bird 
 with its weather eye on the gun barrel; "and 
 really, I prefer choke-berry to cabbage worms; 
 but you, friend farmer — just put down the gun, 
 please, till I am through; you have cut down all 
 the choke-berry and set all out to cabbages; if 
 I can stand the change of diet, certainly you can 
 stand — just point the other way, please ! — to let 
 me alone." 
 
 1 ' Bang ! Well, that robin won't eat no more cher- 
 ries off my trees ! ' ' And Farmer Grimstone reloads. 
 
300 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 Listen to our wise friend Professor Bailey: 
 
 The mulberry, of almost any variety, will thrive almost 
 anywhere in America, though you better select your variety 
 for your special locality. Try the " New American, " called 
 also the "Downing." Plant mulberry trees and you will 
 have birds and birds and birds, and your orchards and 
 gardens will not be molested — at least by birds. Indeed, 
 you may have cause to wish that the birds would eat worms 
 and let mulberries alone. Mulberries fruit with cherries 
 and strawberries and raspberries and early fruits generally. 
 
 For untold ages the inhabitants of Italy, and 
 of the shores of the Mediterranean generally, have 
 slaughtered birds without discrimination. And 
 this wanton destruction of all bird-life is charac- 
 teristic of Southern Europe. Anything that wears 
 feathers and flies is game and food to the Italians 
 in Italy and to all the inhabitants of that vast 
 area once the Roman Empire. No habit is more 
 deeply ingrained in the Italian than that of slaugh- 
 tering birds of any kind. They come to America 
 with very loose, if not fantastical, notions of 
 "liberty, " — that most abused word of our age and 
 country, — and here they immediately proceed to 
 kill every bird in sight. Few Americans have any 
 conception of the bird slaughter wrought by 
 Italians in their own land and by them in this land 
 of their adoption. They seem like savages thirsting 
 for blood. To them the right to kill birds seems as 
 unquestionable as the right to express an opinion 
 about the weather. 
 
 Nature made the Italian peninsula a paradise 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 301 
 
 for birds, but any one who has lived there long 
 enough to see things as they are, not merely 
 wonderful churches, art galleries, and ancient ruins, 
 but methods of farming, of horticulture, of market- 
 ing; facts of food supply, wages, taxation, — the 
 rude, every-day facts of Italian life, — soon discovers 
 that Italy has few birds. The wonder is that any 
 exist there. 
 
 Start, some May morning, from Menaggio, on 
 Lake Como, for a walk up the valley into the moun- 
 tains. Your purpose is to climb San Croce. On 
 the winding way you cut across the fields. What 
 is this rude "rick" or tower you see by the copse 
 of bushes? This "Roccolo" embowered amidst 
 concealment? As you pass, a low-browed, swarthy, 
 ill-kept man, with rings in his ears, opens the low 
 door and glares upon you. You have disturbed 
 him in his lair. As you came up the hill you heard 
 birds whistling, crying, calling to their mates. 
 Where are they? None are in sight. Now you 
 discover that these cries came from the low, dark, 
 shabby tower. You see a sight that sickens you. 
 The tower is a trap. The imprisoned birds are 
 blind — blinded by the fowler with red-hot wires. 
 They are shrieking with pain, calling out in agony 
 to any of their kind. Their helpless cries are a 
 decoy. A linnet, a fieldfare, two yellow-hammers, 
 a red-wing, flying over the land hear the cries; are 
 drawn by them toward the tower. See the 
 "Roccolo" embowered midst the pretty green 
 foliage! The birds fly to the relief of their kind! 
 
302 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 Suddenly, the sharp whistling, whirring sound of 
 the sweeping hawk! But the hawk is a clever 
 device in the fowler's hands, a sort of rattle he uses 
 to frighten the victims. They plunge for shelter 
 into the copse. Threads! Tangled threads, full 
 of pockets, treacherously span the open spaces. It 
 is a fowler's net! The entangled birds flutter 
 frantically, hopelessly, and hang there, caught. 
 All the time the seared and blinded birds within 
 the "rick" keep up their piteous shrieking for help. 
 The low-browed, dark-handed man snatches the 
 linnet, the struggling captives lie with twisted 
 necks, a heap of dead song-birds in the corner. 
 And if you look closely, you will see the dark- 
 faced man thrust a sharply pointed stick through 
 the captives' eyes. He is proud of his "catch." 
 He shows you two hundred birds in the corner. 
 If you will take the trouble, you can see half a 
 dozen "Roccolos" from this one, and you can find 
 thousands of them all over Italy. One "rick" 
 reported ten thousand birds during a single autumn. 
 In the vicinity of Menaggio alone the slaughter of 
 birds in a single week amounts to tens of thou- 
 sands. Sell them? Of course. Go to the mar- 
 ket-place, in Florence, Venice, Rome, Padua, Siena 
 — go to any market-place in any Italian town 
 and you see exposed for sale, regularly, redwings, 
 goldcrests, skylarks, yellow-hammers, hawfinches, 
 song-thrushes, warblers, linnets, bullfinches, yellow 
 birds, redbreasts, wrens, goldfinches, curlews, jays, 
 nut-hatches — song-birds, from fifty to a hundred 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 303 
 
 species — for sale in bunches of three, or by the bas- 
 ket containing hundreds; and this in any village 
 of Italy, Spain, Portugal, or Asia Minor. Game 
 birds too? Yes, if they can be had, but Italians, 
 Spaniards, wealthy, educated, refined, living in 
 "palaces by the sea," boast of a day's plunder, 
 hundreds of skylarks, and the like, and consider 
 them a choice morsel, as Americans consider 
 reed-birds. 
 
 With the millions of Italians, Hungarians, Po- 
 lacks, Russians, Arabs, Bulgars, Persians flooding 
 America, and bringing with them all the bird- 
 killing appetite of centuries of Europe, what is 
 to become of American birds? Shall Antonio and 
 Joseffy and Oesterglitzyiz literally eat up American 
 birds to the extinction of the species, as they have 
 done in their native land? Would the farmers and 
 fruit-growers of our country like to have the thou- 
 sand million dollars lost every year in America 
 by the ravage of crops by insects? What are we 
 doing to prevent this loss? Does Farmer Jones, 
 or Fruit-grower Neville run a "Roccolo"? Does 
 either turn "pothunter"? Is Antonio suffered to 
 roam at will over the farms cleaning out birds and 
 game of every sort? What a man does by another 
 he does by himself: this is sound law. What farmer 
 lifts his finger, casts his vote, or speaks one word to 
 prevent the destruction of birds, even on his own 
 land? Who has ever known a farmer who took 
 the trouble to protect birds? 
 
 And Antonio in our midst is soon heard from. 
 
304 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 As soon as he can, after landing, he buys a gun. 
 He wants to kill anything he can cook and eat, 
 and he makes no discrimination: robins, crows, 
 herons, buzzards, bluebirds, owls, woodpeckers, 
 humming-birds, orioles, ducks, — anything that 
 wears feathers! Never in history were the birds 
 in such peril of extinction, in America, as they are 
 to-day. The State of Pennsylvania has had a 
 terrible experience with alien bird-killers. Six 
 Pennsylvania game wardens have been killed 
 and more wounded by ''alien pothunters," though 
 the law of the Commonwealth forbids an alien to 
 carry, or even to possess, a gun. 
 
 It is a misdemeanor for Antonio — unless he 
 becomes an American citizen, which he hastens to 
 do — to kill birds. Once he understands civiliza- 
 tion of the American type he makes a very good 
 citizen. But for centuries in Italy this indiscrimi- 
 nate bird-slaughter has gone on. About all the 
 birds seen in Italy are in flight across the country. 
 Did you ever see a nest of birds, or of eggs any- 
 where in Italy? Antonio ate the eggs as soon as 
 they were laid ; then he ate the old birds. Do Amer- 
 icans want their song-birds consumed off the earth? 
 
 "All very well," says Farmer Joe, "but I don't 
 fool along about birds; when I want to shoot 'em 
 I shoot 'em; guess it's my land and they belong to 
 me. " But the birds do not belong to Farmer Joe; 
 they are creatures of the wild and no individual 
 can establish title to them. They no more belong 
 to Farmer Joe than does the wind that sweeps 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 305 
 
 across his meadow; or the sunshine that colors his 
 apples. He might as well bring suit against 
 his neighbor because the east wind blew from his 
 neighbor's farm as to attempt to make the birds 
 his own. And doubtless partly because of this 
 incapacity for ownership of birds, every man's 
 hand is against them. 
 
 Who said "robins"? What fruit-grower has 
 killed seven at one blow, like the famous German 
 tailor? Or has boasted that he slew five hundred 
 in his cherry orchard? "They took my cherries, 
 and I'll kill them," says Farmer Grimstone. 
 "They took my strawberries, and I'll kill them," 
 echoes Farmer Pennywit. "They cleaned out my 
 cabbages; I'll kill 'em, " shouts Farmer Truck. 
 
 And they killed the robins. A crop of dead 
 robins. A big crop of cherries? Of strawberries? 
 Of cabbages? That depends. But of course kill 
 the robins. Why? Because their own crops wit- 
 ness against them. Examine and see: 
 
 42% insects — 19% beetles, 10% grasshoppers, 6% 
 caterpillars, 7% snails, spiders, angleworms. 
 
 48% vegetable food — 47% wild fruits, 4% cultivated 
 fruits (more in June and July than in August) . What wild 
 fruits? Dogwood, wild cherries, wild grapes, greenbrier, 
 elder, holly, cranberries, huckleberries, barnberries, sumac. 
 Ten times as much wild fruit in the robin's crop as culti- 
 vated fruit. 
 
 "But I watched him," interrupts Mother 
 
 Grundy; "I saw him take the largest and best 
 
 29 
 
306 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 strawberries; just a 'pick* out of each one and 
 then go to another; just sampling the whole patch. 
 Jimmy, get your gun!" 
 
 Now a farmer or a fruit-grower never makes a 
 mistake; never eats the wrong thing at the wrong 
 time; never tries to grow three blades of grass on 
 soil that will not grow one ; never neglects his trees, 
 or his berry-patch, no never. It is always the 
 birds, or the wind, or the weather. Farmer or 
 fruit-grower never plants potatoes and reaps 
 Colorado beetles; or sets a berry-patch and raises 
 grubs. But the robin eats one strawberry and nine 
 wild fruits and as a digester fills up on angle- 
 worms, cankerworms, grasshoppers, caterpillars, 
 snails, slugs, spiders, and beetles. Of course, kill the 
 robins! Kill them because they eat one per cent, 
 of their food from cherry tree and berry bush. 
 And then, it is such sport ! Think of the joy, the 
 excitement of stalking the robin! What are lions, 
 tigers, elephants to robins? And the foolish 
 creature persists in nesting year after year right 
 under the farmer's nose: in the porch vine, over 
 the kitchen door, by the well-curb, in the old 
 apple tree where robins nested in grandmother's 
 time and with special consideration for the cats. 
 What better friend has the cat than the plump, 
 stupid mother robin, and the plumper, stupider 
 little robins! "I don't shoot robins," remarked 
 one virtuous farmer; "I raise 'em for the cats." 
 Three broods a year if the robins manage to escape 
 the cats, and the farmer, and the fruit-grower, and 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 307 
 
 the farmer's boys, and the fruit-grower's boys, and 
 all the other boys, and the hired help, and the 
 pothunters, and the "turkey storm," and the 
 wind that upsets nests, and sundry mysterious 
 enemies that swoop down upon the birds while 
 the farmer is at church. 
 
 Watch the old birds. Every minute, from sun- 
 rise to sunset, and long in the twilight, they bring 
 food to their young, — sixty worms, bugs, beetles, 
 moths, slugs an hour. Make your own calcula- 
 tion. How many robins at work and eating worms? 
 How many pounds of bugs and worms consumed 
 during the season? Credit the robin with thirty 
 pounds. Would farmer or fruit-grower rather 
 have the thirty pounds in his crop or in the robin's? 
 And the bird is not a robin after all; it is only a 
 thrush. Those Pilgrim Fathers who persisted in 
 coming by the Mayflower and in founding New 
 England, and in doing various, very various and 
 sundry things by themselves and their posterity, 
 said, "Robin," when in that first spring time at 
 Plymouth, after the most cruel of winters, they 
 saw and heard the red-breasted thrush and for the 
 first time felt at home in the New World. What 
 fruit-farmer in America will not prefer cats and 
 pothunters to robins even when they nest in the 
 old apple tree? 
 
 A five per cent, loan on good security, with 
 punctual payment of interest, is not easy to find. 
 The universal law of money-lending, indeed, of all 
 investment is, the better the security, the lower 
 
308 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 the rate; the greater the risk, the higher the rate. 
 Bird-protection means a high rate of interest and 
 no risk. Fruit-growers must risk their all for an 
 income. A little care and labor invested in bird- 
 protection always brings a handsome return for 
 the trouble. Strange to say, many farmers and 
 fruit-growers do not believe this. Because they 
 are unbelievers in this sort of investment, they 
 and the world at large are losers. There is an 
 ancient saying that none are so blind as they who 
 will not see. 
 
 The first step is to let the birds alone. Give 
 them the freedom of the farm. Protect them by 
 keeping hands off, and see to it that other people 
 do likewise. If necessary one can appeal to the 
 law of the State, and if there be no State law, 
 appeal can be made to Federal law. 
 
 The second step is to encourage birds. Make 
 the fruit-farm a bird-sanctuary. Avoid needless 
 alarms. Kill cats, but in aiming at the cat be sure 
 not to kill the bird. No pothunters; no birds 
 killed out of season; no insectivorous birds killed 
 at all. Build bird-houses. A tin can will make a 
 bird-house, or a little spare time with boards, a 
 box, hammer, saw, and nails will result in a bird- 
 house and ten per cent, on the labor expended. 
 Birds really pay ten and one half per cent.! 
 
 A bird-house duly erected will possibly (not 
 certainly) tempt some birds to stay with you. 
 Perhaps your reputation among birds is bad "for 
 peace and good order"; you may possibly be on 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 309 
 
 their black list. Perhaps the wrens, the martins, 
 the bluebirds, the barn-swallows have a poor 
 opinion of you. Perhaps they look upon you (and 
 your cats and your gun) as avowed enemies. Of 
 course you cannot expect a ten per cent, bird- 
 profit on demand. Even birds know their friends, 
 resent bad usage, and prefer worms on a friendly 
 farm to worms and guns on an enemy farm. Try 
 it and learn for yourself. A tin can with a family of 
 birds within is to be preferred to a yellow, pink, blue, 
 red, green, mansard-roofed, laundry, bath-roomed, 
 be-porched bird-palace on a purple pole, — and no 
 birds. Nail an empty can up in the tree and watch 
 results; or, let the thirteen new kittens come to 
 cathood and watch results; or, let pothunters 
 roam over your place and watch results; or, execute 
 State and Federal laws, and listen to your own 
 interests, and watch results. And if you wish to 
 amuse the children, — of course it will not interest 
 you; but if you do wish to amuse the children, some 
 rainy afternoon, you might obtain from the De- 
 partment of Agriculture, at Washington, — for the 
 asking, — a copy of Birds of a Maryland Farm, or 
 the handsomely illustrated Birds of California in 
 Relation to the Fruit Interests. Dr. Beal, the learned 
 author, tells plenty of facts which apply to all parts 
 of our country. Of course there is no ignorance as 
 to birds in America. Are we not a highly educated, 
 Christian people? Why do we want a book about 
 birds? Would not what we do not know about 
 birds make a book. We kill them right and left; 
 
310 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 we fire at them from the upper windows and the 
 back door; we set the cats and dogs upon them; 
 we encourage our children to destroy them; we 
 let pothunters roam over our land to kill them, 
 and we kill them ourselves. Providence, we are 
 assured, helps those who help themselves, but does 
 Providence help those who refuse to help them- 
 selves and who do all they possibly can to injure 
 themselves? "There's the rub." 
 
 A birdless country is a desert, and any country 
 may be made a desert by the destruction of its 
 birds. Birds maintain the balance of life; they are 
 the police of earth and air. 
 
 On earth: Thrushes (the robin is a thrush), sparrows, 
 larks, wrens. 
 
 In air: Warblers, vireos, creepers, nuthatches, wood- 
 peckers, fly-catchers, swallows. 
 
 What would we do without the aid of these 
 feathered policemen? Will spraying be a substi- 
 tute? Will chemicals? Nearly a thousand million 
 dollars' damage to crops in America, every year, 
 is the answer. Nature sends these policemen ; feeds 
 them; always on time and no "graft." Who are 
 our common bird policemen? Hawks and owls; 
 yes, despite the cooper-hawk and the sharp- 
 shinned hawk and the great horned owl, hawks 
 and owls are among the best policemen of earth 
 and air. Mice, rats, rabbits, moles, flies, noxious 
 insects, innumerable, but fifty species of hawks 
 and thirty-five species of owls are ever after these 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 311 
 
 marauders. Protect the hawks and the owls; they 
 are among our best friends. Every hovering bird, 
 happening to fly above the chicken-house, in the 
 empyrean blue, is not a cooper-hawk, or a sharp- 
 shinned hawk; be sure you are right before you 
 shoot. 
 
 Woodpeckers? Yes all woodpeckers except the 
 yellow-bellied sapsucker. No policemen on the 
 farm are more valuable than the members of 
 the great woodpecker family. And these birds 
 surpass all others for value in the orchard. 
 
 Warblers? Yes, the entire family, and a very 
 large family too. Nothing escapes them — larvae, 
 flies, scales, ants, worms, slugs, grubs, bugs, and 
 plant lice by the million. Watch a warbler catch- 
 ing insects from the underside of a plum leaf, 
 cherry leaf, apple leaf, grape leaf, berry leaf, 
 and then conclude whether you really want to 
 shoot him. 
 
 Thrushes? Yes, all. These are the plump, 
 common insectivorous birds, and the robin most 
 common of all: hermit thrush, wood-thrush, 
 brown-thrush, all friends. Do you protect cut- 
 worms, grasshoppers, caterpillars? The thrushes 
 will exterminate them if you give them the chance. 
 
 Swallows? Sky-birds, all, and great fly-catchers. 
 What has become of the old-time barn-swallow? 
 We still have mud and barns. Only seven species 
 of the swallow family in the United States and 
 six of these east of the Mississippi River. Since 
 we have painted under the eaves of our barns, 
 
312 An American Fruit- Farm 
 
 made them entrance proof to the birds, and made 
 war on birds generally, the swallows have some- 
 times failed to reach us and are becoming rare. 
 But these birds have the record as the chief natural 
 enemy of the cotton-boll weevil. The great enemy 
 of any of our seven species is the English sparrow, 
 a useless, ratty bird that should be exterminated. 
 Before the English bird was introduced into the 
 country, and for some thirty years after, we had 
 our own American swallows. Don't shoot the 
 wrong bird. 
 
 I will give some little evidence in favor of the 
 English sparrow. Of several bird-houses I set up, 
 the English sparrows took possession; the houses 
 were compartment houses, accommodating about 
 ten families each. Soon after I set them up, — one 
 was fastened to the telephone pole, — a wandering 
 flock of bluebirds arrived, about 7 o'clock, one 
 September morning. They were spying out the 
 land, and dozens of them inspected the new quar- 
 ters, with seeming intention of engaging them for 
 the next summer. My expectations were high. 
 The next summer one pair of the bluebirds re- 
 turned and leased a smaller house set up over the 
 arbor. Here they raised their family in safety, 
 and at the expiration of the lease, moved out. 
 Jenny Wren had been eying the apartment all 
 summer, and had taken an adjoining house at the 
 other end of the arbor, but for some reason, she 
 was unhappy; perhaps she did not like Quaker 
 drab, in which the apartment was painted. But 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 313 
 
 no sooner had the bluebirds removed, than Jenny, 
 with a twitter and unconcealed joy, rushed into the 
 bluebirds' late quarters and began hauling out 
 the nest, scattering it to the four winds and singing 
 at the top of her voice all the time. Having cleaned 
 the place out, she too departed. The English 
 sparrows had taken possession of two houses, and 
 as their numbers seemed at least obtrusive, one of 
 my household suddenly tore out the rude nests 
 they had made hoping to drive the birds away, and 
 one of the houses was taken down for a time. On 
 the next telephone pole, some distance away, I 
 had fastened yet another compartment house, 
 somewhat larger than the others. The English 
 swallows promptly took possession of this for the 
 remainder of the summer. We called it "the 
 slums." One pair of the British birds built a nest 
 in the open eaves of the north porch, and there 
 raised two lusty broods, whose shrieks for worms 
 could be heard way down in the cherry orchard. 
 I noticed that these English sparrows fed on in- 
 sects, worms, grubs, and the like, just like robins, 
 quite losing their habits of playing street scaven- 
 gers. Robins, wrens, bluebirds, flickers, wood- 
 peckers, king-birds, seemed ever quarrelling among 
 themselves, but I did not observe that the English 
 sparrows either gave or received blows. Perhaps 
 it is better to have English sparrows than no birds 
 at all. 
 
 Orioles, blue jays, sparrows? The sparrow 
 family is said to comprise more than one-seventh 
 
314 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 of all the birds in America. They are plain, 
 homely, noisy, sociable creatures, chiefly feeding 
 on the seeds of weeds. A single tree-sparrow is 
 said to consume one ounce of weed-seed a day. 
 This means, in a State as large as Pennsylvania, 
 the consumption of more than six hundred and 
 fifty tons of weed-seed each year by the tree- 
 sparrow alone, and there are many other varieties 
 of this active family in the Commonwealth. Shall 
 we kill sparrows and raise weeds, or kill weeds by 
 protecting the sparrows? The blue jay is always 
 after the brown-tail moth, the extent of whose 
 ravages cannot be estimated in money. The blue 
 jay is Nature's specific for this most destructive 
 moth. Which shall we have, fruit trees, shade 
 trees, and the blue jay, or no blue jay and no trees? 
 But there are animals that wear trousers and carry 
 guns who — ? and after the gun, — a dead blue jay! 
 Bobolinks? Down South the rice-planters con- 
 demn them; up North, away from the rice-fields, 
 the bird develops an insatiable appetite for all 
 sorts of harmful insects. Here at the North we 
 must say, "Let somebody else kill the bobolink; 
 we need him." 
 
 Crows? Yes, a good friend, the crow. Grass- 
 hoppers, cutworms, meadow-mice, countless num- 
 bers of these do the crows destroy. After a very 
 careful hearing, and the jury out a long time — out 
 indeed for years, — the verdict, as reported by 
 Uncle Sam, in the celebrated case of "The People 
 of the United States vs. the Crow," is: "The 
 
Birds and the Fruit-Farm 315 
 
 destruction of crows is mistaken policy, for the 
 crow performs important services to agriculture, 
 and his extermination would be a loss to the 
 country." 1 
 
 House wren, phcebe, martin? We used to 
 have these cheery policemen about our houses in 
 great numbers, but the English sparrows — so it 
 is believed — have quite driven them away. But 
 whither have they driven them? The British 
 birds did not eat them. I strongly suspect that 
 the boy and the cat and the man and the gun and 
 the English sparrows may account for the sus- 
 picious absence of these old friends. But if you 
 really believe that the British brown-coats did it, 
 then fire away at the brown-coats, perhaps after 
 reading that comforting pamphlet published by 
 our Government at Washington, on "The English 
 Sparrow as a Pest. " Possibly as the British birds 
 are now very numerous we have here the way out 
 in our demand for something to kill. Boy and 
 man thirst to kill something, and here are the 
 English sparrows. If perchance in killing them 
 you save robins, crows, flickers, mourning-doves, 
 woodpeckers, cherrybirds, owls, quail, orioles, 
 grosbeaks, martins, bluebirds, let us by all means 
 save robins, crows, doves, orioles, and the rest. 
 But I may, I must, submit another morsel of 
 testimony which may temper wrath against the 
 English sparrow. At the corner of the east porch, 
 amidst the vine, a Virginia Creeper, — a chippet 
 
 1 United States Year-book of Agriculture, 1907, p. 170. 
 
316 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 built its nest and brought forth four young. The 
 parent birds were tame, coming to the nest con- 
 stantly with supplies; even alighting on our persons 
 as we sat near by. One afternoon I noticed 
 three birds feeding the brood, but being doubtful, 
 I summoned witnesses from the household. We 
 all agreed that the old birds had a helper. We 
 noticed that when she came, the birdlets were still 
 as mice, nor made one peep till long after the 
 "neighbor" had gone. It was an English sparrow 
 that was helping and that continued to help till 
 the last chippet had flown from the nest. Whether 
 some mourning widow, or officious neighbor, — 
 the "slums" were quite a distance away, — or 
 whether the chippets, feeling that they had too 
 large a contract on hand, had employed a day nurse 
 we never knew. Every fruit-farm should be a 
 bird-sanctuary. 
 
X 
 
 THE FRUIT-FARM AND OLD AGE 
 
 WISDOM, serenity, — and, Macbeth adds, 
 "honor, love, obedience, troops of friends," 
 should accompany old age, yet such a galaxy we 
 rarely see. Youth has slight idea of time; age has 
 no other. To youth, age is a port so remote that the 
 voyageur thinks, " Time enough for that; it is not 
 yet on my chart' ' ; to age, youth has begun a voyage 
 so devious, it is idle to presume to mark it out. 
 Youth is hope, age is memory; youth attracts, age 
 repels. The prince is waiting for the kingdom; the 
 heir, for the estate. "Who would have thought 
 the old man to have had so much blood in him! ,, 
 exclaims Lady Macbeth. "Who would have 
 thought the old man would live so long!" exclaims 
 the son whose life has been only an expense account 
 to his father, who gave more thought to his fruit- 
 farm than to his boy. ' ' Something for my old age, ' ' 
 says the man in middle-life who has known the 
 buffetings of fortune. The fear of want and de- 
 pendence makes many a man in the Valley a 
 fruit-farmer. The orchard and the vineyard are 
 safety; a pension between the man and the poor- 
 
 317 
 
318 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 house. Land, Blackstone gravely informs us, is 
 immovable, therefore the man fastens himself to 
 the land in great hope, as men in shipwreck lash 
 themselves to rafts and spars. Security in life is 
 the pearl of great price; 
 
 "Yet we all know security 
 Is mortals' chiefest enemy." 
 
 Overland, in ox-carts in summer, overlake, 
 in sleds in winter, from New England and New 
 York came that stalwart band some of whose 
 descendants remain in the Valley to this day; but 
 most of the land taken up by the pioneers is now in 
 the hands of strangers. Many of those who first 
 cleared forests and left fields grew old, and fell 
 asleep in the Valley, but some, restless as the 
 sea, pioneers to the heart of their hearts, like 
 Daniel Boone, felt stifled if they saw the smoke 
 from a distant hearth, and, leaving their little clear- 
 ing, sought the prairies of further Ohio, Illinois, 
 Indiana, or the rich lands of Michigan, and some 
 passed far beyond the Great River, even to Cali- 
 fornia, swelling the company of the Argonauts of 
 '49. But they who remained in the Valley and 
 grew old among their fields of corn and wheat, 
 their flocks of sheep and cattle, watched the world 
 roll past their doors and part of it roll back again. 
 These were the fathers of the Valley who built 
 roads and bridges, churches and schools, and at 
 last, forsaking their log-cabins, built fine and yet 
 finer houses for themselves and for their children, 
 
The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 319 
 
 and, dying, gave each child an ample portion of 
 their ample estates. They were the elders, the 
 deacons, the 'squires, the colonels of their day: 
 large, vigorous men, who did things in a large 
 way, and thought little of overcoming difficul- 
 ties. They were of the builders of the nation. 
 
 Most grandfathers and all great-grandfathers are 
 heroes to their posterity, — Homeric personages in 
 the history of the family, — and all more ancient 
 ancestors "were giants in those days." This 
 exaltation of ancestors was the religion of the classic 
 world and remains in much of the religion of to-day. 
 To have the right to carry busts of ancestors in the 
 funeral procession marked the divine origin of the 
 dead Roman and his living descendants. We in 
 the Valley do not carry such tokens of divinity on 
 our way to the grave, but we enjoy any knowledge 
 we think we possess of being fruit of a very ancient 
 tree whose roots run deep into European soil. 
 Between Adam and the Flood few of us find 
 difficulty in tracing descent, but grave embarrass- 
 ments arise between the Flood and the American 
 Revolution. Happily for all men — and of course 
 this includes us within the American Fruit 
 Valley, — when Nature fails, man bravely steps in : 
 there are nurseries in which genealogical trees of 
 any variety may be had, each of its kind, and 
 we may add, of its price. But in the days of 
 pioneering the fruit-trees in the Valley were not 
 from genealogical nurseries; rather did they come 
 from the wild. 
 
320 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 These pioneers did a greater work than Hercules: 
 they planted the seeds of a civilization which bears 
 fruit unto this day. They found the Valley as 
 La Salle, Celeron, and Father Hennepin saw it, and 
 began the transformation that is going on to this 
 day. The Valley as we see it was not made in a 
 day. We have cleared away remainders and ves- 
 tiges of the primeval woods; we have drained wet 
 places, built roads, houses, and barns; we have 
 changed pasture lands to wheat fields, wheat fields 
 into orchards and vineyards, and where yesterday 
 the wild deer was speeding like the wind, to-day is a 
 sweep of cherry blossoms. This we did with cun- 
 ning tools and help of many hands; that they did 
 with slow and painful toil, grubbing through the 
 tall, thick woods, burning the forest to get rid of it, 
 and paying for their land with the pearl-ash which 
 they hauled in mid-winter, over a wilderness road 
 to Pittsburgh or to Barcelona, where, getting a 
 few pieces of silver they made their titles secure. 
 And one acre of this land which they cleared with 
 such lengthening toil is to-day worth, as the world 
 says, more than a thousand acres of the days 
 of pioneering. They labored and we enjoy; they 
 toiled for us who come more than a century after. 
 Their age was our youth; they built the ship and 
 began the voyage, and we are making port. 
 
 Generations to come will speak of our labor as 
 vast, astonishing, Herculean, and will carry our 
 busts in their funeral processions. Yet in the 
 Valley — possibly in other valleys — few old men 
 
The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 321 
 
 now living were born on the land they now own. 
 Land tends to become more and more an article of 
 commerce, a utensil, a bale of silk, a yard of calico, 
 and so changes hands easily. So frequent is the 
 change, the land has slight chance of being a birth- 
 place. It takes time to be born as well as to die 
 and land must be in the family long enough for 
 the event to happen. The pioneers in the Valley 
 took time for life; the Valley was their home 
 and they looked for no other; they had gone 
 West, and the Valley was West. Their dreams 
 were of New York and New England, but these 
 hills and this lake were before their eyes. A man 
 lives in his visions, though they hover over a 
 distant sky line and under strange stars. 
 
 " His heart 's in the Highlands, 
 His heart is not here; 
 His heart 's in the Highlands, 
 A-chasing the deer." 
 
 How-busy-soever he may seem to be in the Low- 
 lands, he lives in the Highlands. Within this 
 round which encircles orchards and vineyards, 
 hills and lake, gleaming streams, field and forest, 
 the pioneers lived and saw visions and here they 
 are buried. 
 
 I remember, years ago, the burial of one of these 
 pioneers who for more than half a century had 
 lived in an old-fashioned house amidst orchard 
 boughs. The logs had been covered more than 
 seventy years since with thin, wide clapboards 
 
322 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 and the winds and the weather had painted them a 
 soft gray. An ancient grapevine ran the whole 
 house around, close to the eaves, and tiger-lilies, 
 snowballs, pinks, and lilacs were a wilderness. 
 The bubbling spring near the door was partly cov- 
 ered by a broad, flat stone, and a well-trodden 
 path led to it. Within doors the great beams stood 
 exposed ; the wide floors were uneven and the win- 
 dows had diamond panes and were overshadowed 
 by the vine. There was a cavernous woodshed, 
 and the swallows twittering in and out; and some 
 were diving into the throat of the huge chimney at 
 the gable. Under the rude cornice ran the irregular 
 line of mud nests, and the roofs were green with 
 moss. Thither the pioneer had come in his youth 
 and made his home. Here he had brought his 
 bride, and here the children were born. They had 
 all gone out into the world, leaving the old folks 
 alone. On Thanksgiving Day some of them would 
 come back to the family reunion, and then the 
 long waiting till another Thanksgiving Day. The 
 burial of the pioneer was on a peaceful June day, 
 not rare in the Valley. All the world was in bloom. 
 It had been a peaceful ending of a peaceful life. 
 There was the touch of silence in the orchards, the 
 hint of loneliness in the air; so silent that, as we 
 stood among the lilacs and the pinks, we could hear 
 the ticking of the tall clock in the great kitchen, 
 near the settle. We were for a moment in an age 
 that has passed away. The whistle of the distant 
 train seemed a painful, a wanton intrusion. Troops 
 
The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 323 
 
 of friends were gathered about, and among them, 
 the last of the pioneers who had assembled to bury 
 their own. It was a closing scene in the play. 
 The house was old; the trees were old; the lilacs, 
 the smoke-bush, the lily beds, the grapevine 
 wreathing the house, the faces set in retrospection, 
 — all, all were old. Youth and modernity seemed 
 an intrusion. The venerable dead had spent a 
 long life here, slowly growing old and, at last, 
 slipping away peacefully. 
 
 Strangers now possess the land; the house, 
 abandoned, fell into decay. The spring is choked ; 
 the old-fashioned flowers have vanished; the very 
 site of the old home is a cornfield. The children 
 or the grandchildren never return; all the neigh- 
 bors are strangers and even the memories of the 
 old home are forgotten. Yet for nearly fourscore 
 years it was the old home, and the pioneer who 
 transformed the wild came to the ideal old age 
 accompanied by "honor, love, obedience, and 
 troops of friends." But the children abandoned 
 the old home; yes, but that is quite another story, 
 a story which the old pioneer himself did not write; 
 every man is author of his own ; he could not write 
 theirs, and they cannot write his. The son of this 
 venerable pioneer died suddenly of heart-failure, a 
 prosperous banker, having attained the great age 
 of fifty-three; indeed, he was older than his father 
 dying at eighty-eight. The pioneer had arteries 
 which kept young. 
 
 But every fruit-grower does not reach eight and 
 
324 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 eighty, nor does every city banker die at fifty- 
 three. The problem is to keep your arteries young. 
 Some say. "Eat cheese"; others, "Drink sour 
 milk"; others, "Buttermilk"; "Don't worry"; 
 "Sleep on the roof"; "Two meals a day"; 
 1 ' Avoid extremes ' ' ; and yet others, ' ' Farm. ' ' Old 
 age and crafty death, as Whitman tells us, pur- 
 sue, overtake, overcome all, — so why seek to es- 
 cape! Let us be patient, and, like Seneca, receive 
 the messenger calmly. For be it bank or farm, 
 factory or the high seas that we affect, we yield at 
 last to the enemy. It is the living, then, not the 
 dying, that concerns us. 
 
 What has the fruit-farm to offer for daily living? 
 Nothing, unless your heart is in the fruit-farm. 
 Orchards and vines may mean life to me, but daily 
 death to you. You pine for city ways and scenes, 
 for these are life to you. Length of years is found 
 not exclusively in city or country; old age may be 
 found in either. But length of years is not living. 
 Lincoln at fifty-six had done more than old Parr at 
 one hundred and fifty-two, or, so far as we know, 
 more than Methuselah at nine hundred and sixty- 
 nine. Caesar, Napoleon, dying at Lincoln's age, 
 accomplished more than all the centenarians of 
 their time. Alexander at thirty undoubtedly had 
 done more than any other youth of man and woman 
 foorn. Life cannot be measured by the calendar. 
 
 At Tivoli we are shown vestiges of the summer- 
 homes of Horace, of Caesar, of Brutus, of Cassius, 
 but the world finds these men in Rome. We must 
 
The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 325 
 
 locate a man more definitely than merely by say- 
 ing, "He lived on the planet somewhere." The 
 region of a man's essential activities is ever small, 
 Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, and the conquerors 
 astonish us by the extent of their triumphs, for 
 their influence reaches us also. But there are 
 other, even mightier conquerors, not men on 
 horseback, spear and sword in hand, war and 
 ambition in their hearts, but peace and good will, 
 and life and living. The Caesars are the excep- 
 tions and the world exalts them as the measure of a 
 man. As ridiculous to measure the mouse by the 
 elephant as Napoleon by a huckster, or Lincoln by 
 a street-juggler. Each after his kind is the law of 
 youth and age. Unless common men abound to 
 admire, then it were foolish in Caesar to be am- 
 bitious. No man cares to smoke in the dark; and 
 were we all fishes in Mammoth Cave, what use had 
 we for eyes? What would become of costumiers 
 were men blind? How much is the world governed 
 because of "looks"? Youth is commonly misled 
 by exceptions, and many a man never outgrows 
 his youth. It is a wise man who knows, believes, 
 labors, lives with no thought of Caesar. Our schools 
 and colleges have much to answer for, in their 
 diversion of youth from reasonable ways by delud- 
 ing them in knowledge of Alexander, Napoleon, 
 Rockefeller, Shakespeare, Lincoln, Marconi, and 
 others, the exceptions among men. The young 
 man is fired by the illusion that, having had ex- 
 plained to him the activities of men of might, 
 
326 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 the rare and exceptional spirits who at intervals 
 of long centuries visit this earth, they can do as 
 the mighty have done, or, unable to do, shall live 
 miserable ever after. Inspiration is not imitation ; 
 its coals of fire are original. The old pioneer, dying 
 in his home, amidst the work of his hands for 
 quite fourscore years, has done his work as well, 
 in its kind, as did the foremost man of all this 
 world. Let there be a hundred elements in the 
 visible universe, one is as important as another, so 
 far as we know; radium is no more important than 
 nitrogen. Be there a million trees in the forest, so 
 far as we know one tree is as important as another. 
 The most popular notion abroad in America, "All 
 men are created equal," might seem to hint that 
 the fruit-farmer is as important as the President, 
 so far as we know, and that 
 
 " Each thing in its place is best, 
 And what seems but idle show 
 Strengthens and supports the rest." 
 
 True, Shakespeare does not sing the equality of 
 men; nor does Plato, nor Aristotle, Zeno, Cicero, 
 Bacon, nor Spencer. Grotius affirmed the equal- 
 ity of sovereigns, and Rousseau and Jefferson 
 straightway carried it over among men of all sorts 
 and conditions. Equality is the most popular 
 doctrine the world has ever known. True or false, 
 this doctrine must now and forever be reckoned 
 with. All shades of interpretation of the doctrine 
 have been made, and they agree that the man him- 
 
The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 327 
 
 self, not man as a kind of animal among animals, 
 is the principal element. To the man all comes at 
 last. The living of one man is as much to him 
 as the living to another, whether acreage be small 
 or vast, or the menu be bread and cheese or of 
 nineteen courses. The fruit-grower is as much 
 to the fruit-grower as is the banker to the banker. 
 Threescore and ten years on the fruit-farm in the 
 Valley mean as much to him who lived them as 
 three score and ten years in the bank, or in prac- 
 ticing law or medicine to him who lived them. 
 
 Does it follow, then, that as all fruit-growers do 
 not die centenarians fruit-growing is a risky busi- 
 ness? Does the making and the care of orchards 
 and vineyards keep the arteries young? Or do 
 stock-raising, wheat-farming, or "a few acres and a 
 cow"? If a man would have young arteries he 
 must select young arteries to be born from, — not 
 merely young arteries, but arteries that keep young. 
 One cannot put new arteries into old bodies. The 
 flight of time is not stayed by a man's taking title 
 to a fruit-farm. But in bringing up a cherry tree 
 in the way it should go, a man also determines the 
 state of his arteries. Ancestors here play their 
 part ; indeed, they really determine all the import- 
 ant lines for their posterity. Next to ancestors 
 come the man and his habits, or, say, his bundle 
 of habits, — which is the man, — and next to the 
 man the orchard and the vine. Of these habits 
 thinking is most tyrannical, for he is as he thinks. 
 There is an imperfect translation of this line, — 
 
328 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 "As a man eats so is he." One must be careful 
 in his translations. The habits of ancestors 
 become arteries on the fruit-farm. It might seem 
 that a man might know as much as a bird and 
 eat what will agree with him; or, like a plant, 
 assimilate only food and nourish. Animals feed 
 as they live, by instinct. If the fruit-grower's 
 instincts are normal, will his arteries keep young? 
 This too depends upon the man. If he enjoys life 
 on the fruit-farm; if he lives in his trees and his 
 vines, wise, serene, amidst troops of friends, sum- 
 mer, winter, spring, and autumn, storm and sun- 
 shine, he will find his arteries in the fruit-farm, as 
 young as he makes them. Where his vision rises 
 there it rests. The Valley is his country; its hills 
 bar away the world; its lake divides him from a 
 foreign land. He sits beneath his own vine and 
 cherry tree, hears of wars and rumors of wars, 
 but the Valley is peace. He has his anxieties, 
 supreme at the moment, trifling when past. He 
 feels himself anchored to safety — his fertile acres. 
 The fear of want he never knows. Nor indeed if 
 he is a thinking man, does he sigh for impossible 
 riches, for he can never obtain wealth beyond the 
 limits of the business he is in. Wealth is the profit 
 on labor; the more the laborers, the greater the 
 wealth. Oil kings profit by everybody's labor; 
 so too the steel-kings, the cotton-kings, the beef- 
 kings, and all other kings who monopolize the 
 activities of countless thousands of workers. The 
 seamstress, working by the midnight lamp, en- 
 
The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 329 
 
 riches the oil-king, as does the ocean-liner, or the 
 dreadnought whose black smoke breathes of burn- 
 ing petroleum. But the fruit-grower can have no 
 like monopoly of labor. 
 
 If he is laboring for great riches, he is hardening 
 his arteries in vain. Now the struggle for riches 
 is the chief hardener of arteries in any vocation ; it 
 is the fatal habit. Not infrequently such harden- 
 ing of the arteries occurs early in life, and few who 
 drive fast and furious in chase of wealth survive 
 threescore. The precise date is fifty-six; why so 
 fatal I do not know. But necrology tells this 
 perpetual story. Even fruit-growers cease at 
 fifty-six, or younger, if they have quite solidified 
 their hearts, to say nothing of their arteries, by 
 striving for riches. 
 
 Honor, wisdom, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
 distinguish old age, yet we have known aged persons 
 distinguished by other qualities and possessions. 
 We have known old men not wise, but foolish; not 
 serene, but restless; not surrounded by troops of 
 friends, but with difficulty attended by a hired 
 nurse. Even in the Valley, years do not always 
 bring the philosophic mind. The reason is plain: 
 few men are philosophers; few at any time are 
 wise, at all times serene, or ever attended by troops 
 of friends. Old men are precisely what they have 
 made themselves. The vocation does not change 
 the man. A querulous youth becomes a querulous 
 old man, unless he undergoes a process of elimi- 
 nation. Peach trees cannot do it for him, nor 
 
33<> An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 grapevines. The fruit-grower may make a tree 
 fruitful and miss being fruitful himself. There 
 is a hint of serenity in an October tree, weighed 
 down with golden fruit ; there is a hint of troops of 
 friends in the apple tree in full bloom, the bees 
 humming among the branches. There is a hint 
 of wisdom in the fruit-farm well-placed, well-made, 
 well-tended, trees and vines shining in vigor. 
 
 But every plant has its enemies: insects, fungi, 
 beating sleet, crushing winds; it is attacked in 
 earth and air, in bud and blossom, in leaf and fruit, 
 bark, twig, and root. The wonder is it survives. 
 Perhaps, could we see our own race as we see plants, 
 we would wonder that there is a human being left 
 on the earth. That the race survives is the miracle 
 of life, — whether of plant or animal. 
 
 Does the fruit-farmer care for himself as well as 
 he cares for his vines and trees? Here is the su- 
 preme question, and the answer is the man himself. 
 He too fades as a leaf, but next year the leaves burst 
 forth afresh. The tree too runs its cycle; it falls to 
 earth again to become part of the soil and food for 
 later generations of its kind. The question of ques- 
 tions is, " If a man die shall he live again? " " As the 
 tree falls, shall it lie so?" The one we answer in 
 faith and hope ; the other Nature answers before our 
 eyes and in our own experience. If there be any 
 difference between the tree and the man, it is think- 
 ing that makes it so. Of what then can the fruit- 
 farmer think? Of grapes, cherries, peaches, only? 
 or of himself? And not of himself solely but of 
 
The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 331 
 
 himself in human relations — those relations which 
 Shakespeare tells us mark green old age, "love, 
 honor, obedience, troops of friends." We come 
 then by way of orchard and vine to the man him- 
 self, having long since passed the cherry tree. 
 That is hanging full of scarlet balls amidst the 
 green, fine product of Nature's craft. Is he also 
 fruitful, a spirit abounding in the humanities? 
 Is he symbolized in his cherry tree? 
 
 A very mean man may raise very fine cherries, — ■ 
 sweet cherries, not English Morellos, — and a very 
 good man may have no cherries on his trees, not 
 even Morellos. There lived, long years ago, in 
 the Valley a valiant pioneer named James Smed- 
 ley, a Yale man of the old type, a medical son of 
 Eli. He was always eloquent of temperance. 
 "But, Doctor," said Halsey Taylor to him one 
 day, the hot sun streaming down upon them in the 
 barley field, "how is it that you, who are so strong 
 a temperance man, raise so much barley?" 
 
 "Why, young man, reason enough! Reason 
 enough! I raise barley for seed!" 
 
 In the search for old age one is not compelled 
 to travel by way of a fruit-farm; he may reach 
 it by any route, anywhere; indeed, give him time, 
 and he cannot miss it. There are routes and routes. 
 Were he to choose, which would he take? Did 
 fruit-growing lead to perpetual youth, all the world 
 would be fruit-growers. It is accident, promise, 
 volition, profit, each and all which lead him over 
 the route. When we consider the perils he will 
 
33 2 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 risk, it would seem that the supreme determinant 
 is the hope of gain. Hasten not to be rich. He 
 is foolish who heaps up riches, for he does not know 
 who shall scatter them. The life is more than 
 meat. The lilies are clothed more gorgeously than 
 was Solomon in all his glory: ancient sayings, all 
 and doubtless true, once, in very ancient times, 
 but not in these days of peril and struggle for 
 existence! In the Valley these sayings have been 
 current — at least on Sundays — for more than a 
 hundred years. Fruit-growers have heaped up 
 savings only to be scattered by strangers, or wasted 
 by the children for whom they were so painfully 
 saved. Easy come, easy go, is the law of the 
 Valley. To appreciate a fruit-farm, one must 
 make it out of the sweat of his brow. Cost 
 nothing, worth nothing. Build the house a little 
 at a time as you prosper and it becomes a temple; 
 if an inheritance, a gift without associations, it 
 means no more to you than a freight-car. The 
 less you have in the house, the more boldly you tear 
 it to pieces; and the more you change it, the more 
 it is yours. 
 
 The fruit-farm is the embodiment of threescore 
 and ten years' labor; it resembles the owner. 
 When it is a living memory it attains its highest 
 value in his eyes. Having lived a lifetime among 
 its trees and vines, he has reformed it many times, 
 so that like a chain it lies in links of construction, 
 and each link is a period of life. Here age reads its 
 diary and every bush and tree is a memory. Here 
 
The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 333 
 
 Annie lost her ring; there Bob caught the rabbit; 
 yonder is what is left of the old deer path; this is an 
 Indian spring; that row of apple trees I planted 
 the year the war opened, and this cherry tree by 
 the porch I sent home in a letter from near Fred- 
 ericksburg, before the battle. Mother planted it. 
 We never thought it would live. When I got out 
 of the hospital it perked up and began to grow. 
 We always called it "General Hooker," and a fine 
 tree it is, — when it bears. These grapes I raised 
 from the cuttings and I cut the posts and stakes 
 myself when we cleared the piece of timber east of 
 the grove. What? Why that is my Washington 
 peach. Colonel McLane gave it to me while he was 
 in Congress; he brought it from Mt. Vernon. And 
 so the old man goes on from tree to tree, vine to 
 vine, over the whole farm, associating everything 
 with some tender memory. The whole farm is a 
 bundle of associations, — not yours, nor Annie's, nor 
 Robert's, but his. It is his world. There comes 
 a time when a man's thoughts return to the scenes 
 of his youth; the fruit-farm is the scenery of a long 
 life. 
 
 I have known young people in the Valley who 
 furnished their house, when they started life 
 together, with antique furniture — anything old 
 would do. Most of the equipment they purchased 
 at one blow in an antique shop in Salem that is 
 skillful in giving the hundred-year touch to the 
 product of the shop in the back-yard. The zeal for 
 association may become a passion; some people 
 
334 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 care nothing for their great-grandmother, but they 
 would like to have her silver spoons; others pay 
 liberally for anybody's old table. Some like to 
 think, as they sit at the Chippendale desk: 
 "Here my father wrote; and his father, and his 
 father's father." There is the nice suggestion of 
 continuity and a dim impulse toward ancestor- 
 worship, — a sort of return to first things. Who 
 does not make a more cautious bid or play a better 
 game if the card table came over in the Mayflower? 
 
 The man who has grown old on his fruit-farm 
 lives in daily communion with an unseen world — 
 his yesterdays; and no man's life is so interesting 
 to him as his own. "Leave the old farm?" he 
 answers when some one would buy — "Yes, when 
 I leave the world!" "Leave the farm?" says the 
 heir, to whom it is only bushes and bother — "Well, 
 you just offer me a price and see!" He parts with 
 his inheritance like Esau. No man willingly sells 
 his life, and associations are life. The stranger 
 cannot buy them; the heirs cannot sell them, be- 
 cause they were never theirs. Even the old man 
 cannot part with them, for they are he himself. 
 
 At the Pennsylvania Historical Society in Phila- 
 delphia there is a death mask of Napoleon. Not 
 many years ago an aged man might have been 
 seen on the eighteenth of June, standing, hat in 
 hand, gazing reverently upon the mask. It was 
 George Nieman, private secretary to Blucher, dur- 
 ing the hundred days. He fought at Waterloo ; he 
 captured the iron carriage used by the Emperor 
 
The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 335 
 
 and now displayed at Madam Tussaud's; and he 
 kept a diary of his hundred days. Translated, it 
 was published in the English Historical Review. 
 Most interesting its incidents. At the grand 
 charge of the Imperial Guard under Ney, Blucher's 
 horse was shot and the old General was pinned 
 to the earth beneath him. Nieman threw his own 
 cloak over the prostrate General and the French 
 surged over him, never suspecting, and Blucher 
 was unharmed. "Now," so runs the journal, 
 describing events before the battle of Ligny, "we 
 had Napoleon before us and he was equal to an 
 army of 30,000 men." Once a year the aged 
 man came to the rooms of the Society. The Libra- 
 rian would open the doors of the iron closet, take 
 out the death mask and, retiring, leave it for the 
 veteran of Waterloo to gaze on. Not a word 
 would he speak. Silently he lived again his hun- 
 dred days. Again he witnessed the charge. Again 
 he was at La Haye Sainte and Wellington and 
 Blucher were grasping hands. Again he was 
 entering Paris with the Allies and the five Kings, 
 and again he was with them at the grand opera. 
 To me who translated and published the veteran's 
 diary, this death mask meant only a name; a day 
 spent on the field of Waterloo; an autograph, a 
 book, and petty relics of the exiled Emperor; but 
 to the aged German Lieutenant it meant the most 
 dramatic experiences of a lifetime. It was his 
 supreme association. 
 
 To the man who for many years has lived 
 
33 6 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 amidst orchards and vineyards, they become 
 like the mask of Napoleon to the veteran of 
 Waterloo. That great event was his event, his 
 victory. So these trees, these vines, this equip- 
 ment for living in the Fruit Valley becomes the 
 old man's great event, — his victory. Scant enough 
 is the consideration given to old age to-day. 
 Even in the Fruit Valley, where life moves with 
 even and prosperous current, the aged seem to the 
 young somewhat an encumbrance. Commercial 
 greed has penetrated the Valley and the young 
 are impatient to possess the land. Nor is age 
 unconscious of this. It feels the chill, not of years 
 alone, but of greed and discourtesy. Children and 
 youth are now the supreme rulers, and for them 
 and them alone the world exists. The restlessness 
 of mere bodily motion, the intoxication of mere 
 diversion, are the cravings of the hour. "More 
 money and more fun!" is the cry. Life is a 
 cheap, boisterous merry-go-round; a perpetual 
 sojourn in Vanity Fair. Old age is not senility 
 if only it can hold a hand at bridge. But youth 
 insists on being in at the making of the will. 
 "Give me my portion of goods!" it cries. The 
 orchard, the vineyard, the cherry tree mother 
 planted, the apple orchard father set out, are only 
 money-makers, not beautiful plants which living 
 hands set out and loving hearts tended many, 
 many years and made precious by thought and toil. 
 There is only one book in the world — the cash- 
 book; only one account — the bank-account. Old 
 
The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 337 
 
 age, even when rich, is a burden on the family, and 
 penniless old age is a nuisance which the public 
 must abate. The children fly out into the world; 
 father and mother are sent to the poorhouse; they 
 committed the unpardonable offense of being poor 
 and growing old. 
 
 In the Valley, if men are young at sixty, they 
 are also old at thirty. Boys and girls at eighteen 
 have lost the bloom of youth. Commercialism 
 drives the schoolgirl into an office to pound away 
 her life on a typewriter, and to the end of her days 
 the atmosphere of that office hangs about her. 
 There is the inestimable loss of femininity which 
 she can never make up. The boy plunges into 
 the world at eighteen and is gray, wrinkled, and 
 sordid at thirty. He is older than his grandfather, 
 and has learned lessons which the orchard and 
 the vine never teach. Between the young people 
 and the old there is a great gulf fixed and neither 
 can — even would he — pass over to the other. 
 The boys and girls are like peaches trigged out in 
 market with fancy paper covers in natty baskets, 
 but we know that the bloom has been rubbed off 
 and that the fruit is stale. And we decline further 
 disappointment by not searching to the bottom of 
 the basket. But somebody buys the peaches, — 
 possibly on a bargain counter. As we wander 
 through the stalls, we are thinking of the days when 
 we picked real peaches from real trees, each after 
 its kind. 
 
 Nature always has her winnings at the end of the 
 
338 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 game. Cheat her and we cheat ourselves ; play fair 
 with her and she rewards us bountifully. Forget 
 to feed the peach tree and Nature forgets to put 
 any bloom on the peaches. In vain we deck the 
 branches with bits of glass and colored paper; 
 quality and bloom are not. Forget to feed the 
 boys and girls and Nature forgets to beautify 
 them with the indescribable charm and bloom of 
 youth. The shoemaker makes shoes, not chil- 
 dren's feet; the milliner makes clothes, not girls' 
 bodies. Nor can factory and physician together 
 take the place of Nature. 
 
 Even young fruit-growers go to Carlsbad to 
 drink the waters at the hotels. Grandfather 
 drank from the Indian spring on the farm, but 
 he missed Baden Baden. Is life a fable agreed 
 upon? A product of the factory? A creation of 
 the Patent Office? In days not so long since past 
 it took seventy years to make a man old. We do 
 it in half the time now, in the Valley, — perhaps 
 in other valleys. Then it took a week to reach 
 New York; now half a day. Then it took seven 
 years to learn a trade; now no time: men are born 
 mechanics and resume practice without notice. 
 Then one man worked for another for wage agreed 
 upon between them; now he refuses to work, but 
 demands the wages. Then butter was eleven 
 cents a pound ; now it is sixty, and, like a cheap 
 piano, "assembled" in a factory. Then schools 
 were few and learning was desired ; now schools are 
 many, nobody studies, and all get a degree. Then 
 
The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 339 
 
 men worked for a living, now the best player has 
 the largest salary. Then children were seen, not 
 heard; now children only are heard and seen. 
 Then old age was venerable; now, like Mrs. 
 Skewton, it is made up for the day, often falling 
 to pieces if jarred. Then sermons were an hour 
 long; now they are a bore of fifteen minutes, and 
 in summer in the best churches both sermon and 
 preacher are omitted. Then the father was the 
 head of the house ; now it is the cook. Then men 
 and women grew old among their orchards and their 
 vines and were reverently gathered to their fathers 
 by their children; now the undertaker buries them 
 by electricity and the children telegraph: "Regrets, 
 previous engagement, but send copy of the will by 
 return mail, please. " Then the old faith ; now the 
 new doubt: ever saving then; ever spending now: 
 paying for the farm then ; mortgaging the farm now : 
 old and young struggling to build the home then; 
 now the young folks living in apartments, and the 
 old folks all alone on the farm. But it is the same 
 old world; only the folks are the latest novelty. 
 Ours is ancient Athens in modern dress: all 
 spending their time in hearing some new thing. 
 That the world is fixed in its ways no one 
 can doubt, and fruit-growers cannot change them. 
 We come ever to the man at last. He grows old 
 despite orchards and vines, but gracefully, with 
 them. He fades as a leaf, but the leaf has grown to 
 perfection during its life of a season. It has kept 
 its cycle. Much has been written as to man's 
 
34° An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 natural vocation. Hunting? Fishing? Grazing? 
 Farming? Bartering? Fighting? Commerce? 
 Science? Law? Medicine? Engineering? Writ- 
 ing? Is it anything? Is man by nature a fruit- 
 grower? In the old days of pioneering, his supreme 
 function, in the Valley, was clearly stated by the 
 answer to the first question in the Westminster 
 Catechism. Then the chief end of man was "to 
 glorify God and enjoy him forever." In the Valley 
 now, quite all that is left of the direction is "to 
 enjoy! " Indeed, to-day a heaven without a Mid- 
 way Plaisance would be no heaven at all. Then, a 
 heaven with pleasure would have been an embar- 
 rassing surprise. If there is the old earth there 
 is also the new heaven. Each generation sees its 
 own earth and conceives its own heaven. The 
 children in the Valley to-day do not see with the 
 eyes of pioneers. Could those worthies return 
 to the Valley, — or possibly to other valleys, — they 
 would not, they could not, see their world. Long 
 as the oldest of them lived, — and I remember two 
 centenarians, — they witnessed only the strange- 
 ness of change; the faculty of adjustment had 
 wholly failed them. This is growing old, — the 
 increasing feebleness of adjustment. Perfect ad- 
 justment means immortality. The aged man may 
 have managed to adjust himself to new condi- 
 tions for many years, when suddenly his power 
 ceases; his collapse may be wholly physical; his 
 mind is still attuned to the rhythm of men and 
 things. Here is the cue to old age, a sound mind 
 
The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 34 1 
 
 in a sound body; even a sound mind in an unsound 
 body. It is not the most powerful mind in the most 
 powerful body, but simply the sound mind respon- 
 sive to Nature till the end. Not Plato's mind, for 
 that was his alone; nor Samson's body, for that was 
 Samson's. But your mind in your body, in your 
 world. Perhaps your world is the Fruit Valley; 
 mere locality makes no essential difference. I am 
 thinking of men and women who grow old fruit- 
 fully, — performing their functions till the close of 
 life's last day, each after its kind. For every man 
 has a natural life, if he but knows, and his supreme 
 function is to live that life. Is it to be old at thirty 
 or at eighty? Is it to use up the springs of mind 
 and body while yet in the dew of youth? 
 
 The uselessness of old age and the indifference 
 towards it, to-day, in the Fruit Valley, — and possi- 
 bly in other valleys, — are the natural result of ways 
 of living. Old age reaps what it sows. Did the 
 pioneer labor for meat and raiment only? Was 
 yesterday's thought in the Valley to have greater 
 riches to-day? Where else in the world are such 
 wonderful gardens, flowers, walks, vistas, as at 
 Monte Carlo? And there are other things at 
 Monte Carlo also. Some of these are not shown. 
 They are not even reported. They are buried in 
 haste. 
 
 Youth to-day is the product of yesterday. The 
 fathers labored for riches and many of them quite 
 forgot, the while, for whom they were toiling. 
 Neglected children attract less attention than 
 
34 2 An American Fruit-Farm 
 
 neglected orchards and vineyards. We hear of 
 "the run-down farm, " not of the "run-down" son 
 or daughter of the farmer. We hoe the garden 
 industriously and let the children and even our- 
 selves run to weeds. And then, when the boy and 
 the man, the girl and the woman are choked by the 
 weeds, youth is old and broken before its time, and 
 old age has not "love, obedience, and troops of 
 friends." 
 
 "My orchard runs to apples," said one fruit- 
 grower to another, in the Valley, one morning, a 
 touch of contempt in his voice; "And mine," replied 
 his neighbor, "runs to boys." Paradoxical as it 
 may seem, the object of a fruit-farm is not to raise 
 apples, grapes, peaches, berries, or cherries, but 
 boys and girls, men and women, youth and old age. 
 He has the best fruit-farm who raises the best fruit. 
 When, at last, come Old Age and crafty Death, as 
 surely they will come, by its fruit the fruit-farm 
 and the farmer are known. It is not his bank- 
 account but his boy that is the real asset or lia- 
 bility of his life. Here cluster all associations ; here 
 center all memories. The men and the women who 
 live for the children, just as robins live for young 
 robins, have lived naturally. But the life is more 
 than meat and the body than raiment. Wisdom 
 is the principal thing and the best fruit-farming 
 is understanding. Spreading orchards and rolling 
 vineyards are fair to see and fruitful, but their real 
 beauty and fruitfulness are in the use made of them. 
 " Here a man grew! " marks the site of earth's great- 
 
The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 343 
 
 est, most famous places. Ancestor-worship, the 
 most ancient religion of the race, is a product, an 
 early product, of belief that a man is the finest fruit 
 this planet can bear. The valley which produces 
 the best men and women is the valley in which to 
 live and die. Youth or age there is sacred. None 
 too young, none too old for reverence. The price 
 of living is above rubies. There the fruits of the 
 earth grow to perfection, every tree and vine 
 producing after its kind. One of the choicest, the 
 rarest fruits of the Fruit Valley is Old Age, accom- 
 panied by "love, honor, obedience, and troops of 
 friends." 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adam Bede, 26 
 
 iEneid, 25 
 
 Age of Fishes, 182, 192 
 
 Agricola, 25 
 
 Agricultural Colleges, 22, 24 
 
 Alaska, 196 
 
 Alsach (Alsike) clover, 140 
 
 America as fruit-producer, 126, 
 
 127 
 Ammonia, 204 
 Angelo, Michael, 25 
 Anthracnose, 108 
 Antiquary, the, 26 
 Appendicitis, 64 
 Apples, varieties, 87 
 Argonauts of '49, 318 
 Aristotle, 214, 326 
 Ashes, 95, 184, 204 
 Atlantic City, 82 
 
 B 
 
 Babylon's Hanging Gardens, 59 
 
 Bacon, Sir Francis, 326 
 
 Bailey, Professor, cited, 208; 
 
 quoted, 300 
 Barnyard manure, 140, 142, 149, 
 
 180, 184, 185, 186, 197, 198, 
 
 207, 266 
 Baskets and packages, 1 47 
 Beal, Dr., cited, 309 
 Beethoven, 25 
 Berries, 85, 86 
 Birds, and aliens, 303; and public 
 
 schools, 283; bird-life, tide of, 
 
 296; bird sanctuary, 308, 316; 
 
 blackbirds, 275; bobolinks, 314; 
 
 bulletins, 309, 315; cats, 298; 
 
 chippet, 315, 316; consumption 
 
 of insects by, 277, 307; crops, 
 
 contents of, 305; crows, 314, 
 
 315; destruction of, 291, 293; 
 doves, 315; English sparrow, 
 312, 315; extinction of, 294; 
 game- wardens and, 304; in 
 Italy, 300; jays, 313; Lane law, 
 272; martins, 315; orioles, 313, 
 315; passenger pigeon, 293; 
 phoebe, 315; pot-hunters and, 
 278, 304; robins, 276, 277, 294, 
 306; swallows, 311; tanager, 
 276; thrushes, 310, 311; value 
 of, 272-316; varieties, uses, 
 310; woodpeckers, 276, 311, 
 315; wren, 315; and see 272-316 
 
 Birds of a Maryland Farm, 309 
 
 Birds of California, 309 
 
 Blackberries, 108 
 
 Bluecher, 335 
 
 Bone, 202 
 
 Book-farming, 163, 165 
 
 Boone, Daniel, 318 
 
 Bordeaux, mixture, 156; tables, 
 160; see also under Spraying 
 
 Boys and the fruit-farm, 211- 
 
 239. 338 
 British Columbia, 40 
 Bronze Age, 35 
 Bulletins for fruit-raising, 153, 
 
 154; list of, 173 
 Bumper crops, 18 
 Burbank, Luther, cited, 24; 208 
 Buried seeds, 195 
 
 Cassar, 51 
 
 California, 47, 126, 318 
 
 Canterbury Pilgrim, 14 
 
 Cato, cited, 12, 29, 58, 122; 
 
 quoted, 40, 166, 167, 210 
 Cats, 278, 298 
 Celeron, 320 
 Central America, 40 
 
 345 
 
346 
 
 Index 
 
 Cervantes, 215 
 
 Chautauqua Fruit Belt, 42, 43 
 
 Cherries, diseases of, 157; pruning, 
 
 135; varieties, 94 
 Charlevoix, 45, 97 
 Cicero, 326 
 Clay land, 138 
 Climate, 33; belt, 36; importance 
 
 of, 62, 209 
 Coal-measures, 192 
 Coddling-moth, 275 
 Concord grape (see Grapes) 
 Carboniferous Age, 42 
 Cornell University, 120 
 Cover-crop, 22, 143, 144, 145, 
 
 149 
 Cropping the land, 200, 232 
 Curculio, 156 
 Currants, 109 
 
 D 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 278 
 
 De Candolle collection, 21 
 
 Denonville, 45 
 
 Destruction by insects, 280; by 
 
 scale, 282 
 Devonian Age, 42, 182 
 Dobbins, Captain, 240 
 Drainage, construction, 78, 79; 
 
 importance, 77, 85, 1 89, 248, 
 
 249 
 Dry farming, 190 
 
 E 
 
 Earthworms, 278 
 Edison, 53 
 
 Employers' Liability Act, 129 
 Emerson, quoted, 26 
 English Historical Review, 335 
 Erie County, 45 
 
 Experimental Stations and Schools, 
 153, 164, 165, 187, 208, 235 
 
 F 
 
 Farm buildings, 260, 261 
 Farm management, 25 
 Farm valuation, 288, 289, 290 
 Fertilizing, 19, 20, 183, 197, 202; 
 tables, 204, 205, 206, 207, 248 
 Florida, 47, 126 
 Florida rock, 202 
 
 Franklin (Poor Richard), cited, 
 215; quoted, 56, 213 
 
 Fruit, quality desired, 131, 135 
 
 Fruit-farm, a clock, 14; accessi- 
 bility, 67; associations, 8, 11, 
 317-343; care of, 57; cultivation 
 of, 131-174, 255; enemies of, 
 152, 153; planning the, 71-112, 
 30, 31, 72, in; scarcity value 
 of, 12; selecting the, 33-70; 
 supreme rule of, 5 
 
 Fruit-farmer, and the boy, 220- 
 228,342; and birds (see Birds); 
 the model, 240-271; and his 
 farm, 68, 69, 317-343 
 
 Fruit, nature of, 192 
 
 Fruit-raising, artificial, 54, 55; 
 process, 60; quality, 147; secret 
 of, 250, 255; (see "Neville 
 Farm") 
 
 Fungi (see also Birds, Insects, 
 Scale, Spraying), 41, 75, 91, 
 101, 108, 150, 151, 152, 153, 
 154, 156, 158, 161, 230, 242 
 
 G 
 
 Gage's Gulf, 182 
 
 Garden of Eden, 215 
 
 Girls and the fruit-farm, 211-239, 
 
 338 
 Glacial Period, 65 
 Gooseberries, 109 
 Grapes, 95-105; trimming, 138; 
 
 diseases, 158; roots, 141 
 Great American Desert, 97 
 Griffon, the, 45 
 Guano, 204 
 Gypsy-moth, 275 
 
 H 
 
 Hamlet, 51 
 
 Hardpan, 188 
 
 Harrison, Fairfax, 41, note 
 
 Hedges, 265 
 
 Help (see Labor) 
 
 Hennepin, 45, 320 
 
 Hog's Back, the, 97, 182 
 
 Homer, 21, 25 
 
 Hull House, 54 
 
 Humus (see Fertilizer, Soil), 17, 
 22, 141, 143, 172, 176, 194, 201, 
 205, 208, 209, 230, 232, 233, 
 234. 255 
 
Index 
 
 347 
 
 Iliad, 25 
 
 Insects (see Birds, Scale, Spraying) 
 Intensive farming, 15, 240-271 
 Italy (birds), 300, 301 
 
 Jefferson, cited, 326; quoted, 27 
 
 K 
 
 Kainit, 207 
 Keeping young, 327 
 Kalbfus, cited, 276 
 
 Labor conditions, 114; fundamen- 
 tal question of, 119; locality, 
 116; season, 115; treatment of, 
 123 
 
 Lacustrine, 21, 23 
 
 La Hon tan, 45, 97 
 
 Lake Como, 301, 302 
 
 Lake Dwellers, 21 
 
 Lake Erie, 139 
 
 Lake Geneva, 21 
 
 Lake Shore Valley, 12, 16, 30, 34, 
 37; described, 42-47; berries in, 
 no; labor in, 117; location, 
 126; spraying in, 128; altitude, 
 139; adapted to grapes, 155, 161, 
 171; geology, 182 
 
 Land, feeding the, 18, 19, 141, 
 142, 175-210 
 
 La Salle, 45, 46, 97, 320 
 
 Leaf -hopper, 158 
 
 Lines of trade and travel, 37 
 
 Longfellow, quoted, 326 
 
 Louis XIV, 54 
 
 Law, John, 241 
 
 Lucullus, 54 
 
 M 
 
 Mayflower, the, 9, 334 
 
 Managgio, 301, 302 
 
 Michigan, 47 
 
 Mill, J. S., 214 
 
 Mississippi Bubble, the, 241 
 
 Montmorenci cherry, 6 (see 
 
 Cherry) 
 Muriate of potash, 207 
 
 N 
 
 Napoleon, 27, 214, 324, 325, 335, 
 
 336 
 "Neville Farm," 243-271 
 Newton, Isaac, 215 
 New York Evangelist, the, 21 
 New York Tribune, the, 262 
 New Jersey, 37 
 New Zealand, 39, 40 
 Nitrate of soda, 107, 184, 193, 
 
 202, 203 
 Nitrogen, 22, 172, 187, 200, 201, 
 
 202, 204, 205, 207 
 Notes on Virginia, 27 
 
 O 
 
 Orchard, cultivation, 148, 149, 
 150; planting (spaces), 74; 
 setting out trees, 81, 82, 84; 
 trimming, 135, 136, 249 
 
 Package law, 129 
 Palestine, 284 
 Parton, quoted, 215 
 Pears, 87; blight, 88 
 Pennsylvania, 39, 47 
 Pennsylvania R.R., 128 
 Perry, Commodore, 46, 240 
 Phosphate, 193, 200; see Fertilizer 
 Phosphoric acid, 172, 201, 202, 
 
 204, 205 
 Pittsboro, S. C, 284 
 Plant food, 83, 179, 180, 184, 192 
 Plants, food, 180; our ignorance 
 
 of, 193, 194, 195; growth, 178, 
 
 179, 184 
 Plato, 215, 326, 341 
 Plums (prunes), 89, 90, 135 
 Poor Richard, 56 
 Pope, Alexander, 162 
 Potash, 19; chickweed as, 143, 
 
 187, 201, 205 
 Potato bug, 275 
 Prince Edward Island, 119 
 Profits in fruit-farming, 240-271 
 Prunes (plums), 90, 91 
 Pyrethrum, no 
 
 Q 
 
 Quince, 95 
 
348 
 
 Index 
 
 Raffael, 25 
 Raspberries, 107, 108 
 Richmond, Early (cherry), 6; 
 
 see Cherry 
 Riviera, 273 
 "Roccolo," a, 301 
 Root- worm, 152 
 Roots, setting out, 72, 75; spacing 
 
 (table), 73 
 Rust, 108 
 
 Scale, 88, 91, 156; propagation, 
 
 282 ; (see also Birds) 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 26 
 Shakespeare, cited, 1, 25, 26, 53, 
 
 215, 326; quoted, 256, 317, 318 
 Silurian Age, 42 
 Smedley, Dr. James, 331 
 Snow as cover crop, 145 
 Soil, cropping, 200; drainage (see); 
 
 dead, 193; exhaustion, 233; 
 
 making, 181; preparation, 176, 
 
 181, 183, 197, 198, 235 
 South America, 49 
 Spencer, Herbert, 326 
 South Carolina rock, 202 
 Spraying, 151, 159, 160 (see 
 
 also Birds, Scale) 
 Spraying machines, 159, 160 
 Stone Age, 35 
 Strawberries, 105, 106 
 
 Sub-soiling, 79, 80, 81; (see also 
 Drainage) 
 
 Tacitus, 25 
 Tankage, 202 
 Taylor, General, 19 
 Texas, 126 
 
 Thanksgiving Day, 322 
 Thrip, the, 158 
 Tivoli, 324 
 
 Vines, 140 (see Grapes) 
 Virgil, 25 
 
 W 
 
 Walpole, 113 
 
 Washington, George, 27, 53, 58, 
 
 215 
 Waterloo, 335 
 
 Watering the ground, 190, 191 
 Weather, the, 15; signs, 256-258 
 Webster, cited, 58; quoted, 19, 
 
 23 
 Wesley, John, quoted, 54 
 White, President, cited, 120 
 Whitman, Walt, 324 
 
 Zeno, 326 
 
J2 Selection from the 
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 Complete Catalogue sent 
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The Art of 
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 Its Development and Its Application to 
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 By 
 
 Samuel Parsons, Jr. 
 
 Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects 
 Author of " Landscape Gardening," etc. 
 
 3°. 48 Illustrations, $350 
 
 Mr. Parsons, to whom was intrusted the 
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 principles he cites passages from at least one 
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 magazines and pamphlets, and even these often 
 only in public libraries. 
 
 New York G. P. Putnam's Sons London 
 
Field Book of American 
 Trees and Shrubs 
 
 By 
 
 F. Schuyler Mathews 
 
 Author of " Field Book of American Wild 
 
 Flowers," " Field Book of Wild Birds 
 
 and Their Music " 
 
 16°. With Many Illustrations, Some in Color 
 
 and Maps 
 
 Cloth, $2.00. Full leather, $2.50 
 
 Mr. Mathews's earlier books, dealing 
 with American Wild Flowers and Wild 
 Birds, are a sufficient guaranty for his 
 volume on American Trees and Shrubs. 
 The book is not only artistic in form 
 but also possesses scientific accuracy and 
 value. It covers the entire territory of 
 the United States. An important feat- 
 ure is a series of maps showing the 
 habitat of the various species. 
 
 Q. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York London 
 
Field Book of 
 
 American Wild 
 
 Flowers 
 
 By 
 
 F. Schuyler Mathews 
 
 New Edition. 12°. $2.00. Full Leather, 
 $2.50 
 
 Being a Short Description of their 
 Character and Habits, a Concise Defi- 
 nition of their Colors, and Incidental 
 References to the Insects which Assist 
 in their Fertilization. With 24 Repro- 
 ductions in Water-Color, and Numer- 
 ous Pen-and-ink Studies from Nature 
 by the Author. 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York London 
 
Field Book of Wild 
 
 Birds and Their 
 
 Music 
 
 By 
 
 F. Schuyler Mathews 
 
 12°. $2.00. Full Leather, $2.50 
 
 A Description of the Character and 
 Music of Birds, Intended to Assist in 
 the Identification of Species Common 
 in the Eastern United States. With 53 
 Reproductions in Water-Color, and 
 Numerous Pen-and-ink Studies of Bird- 
 Songs by the Author. 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York London 
 
H Si 111 
 
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