An American Fruit-Farm Its Selection and Management for Profit and Pleasure Francis Newton Thorpe > Gopmehe NS COPYRIGHT DEPOSET; SF mn Sar \ BA fe Sie (4. SQHYVAANIA MOUHYY NVIGNI ») “HLHON 3HL OL 31H 3MVT "SAIMHSAHO ‘SWN1d ‘SadVHD :AHYNLINDILYHOH AAISNILNI ~~ ae 4 An American Fruit - Farm Its Selection and Management For Profit and for Pleasure By Francis Newton Thorpe Member of the State Horticultural Association of Pennsylvania With 2! Illustrations **The Face of the Master is good for the Land.’’ Cato, On Farming. G. P. Putnam’s Sons New York London The Knickerbocker Press 1915 CopyRIGHT, I91I5 BY FRANCIS NEWTON THORPE The Mnickerbocker Press, Mew Work $0 WW ©ca3sg7844 MAY --4 1915 nn I, To MARION HAYWOOD AND MARION EDGERTON THORPE Penh t EH shin ay pay ba otiate CONTENTMENT Fancy dishes? No. Remember, June’s for roses,—not December ; Take things in thetr season ; Vex not life with vanity ; Served or serving, take 1t simply,— With good cheer and reason. After Horace, Carmen XX XVIII. FOREWORD HE 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. Bo Nod. INDIAN ARROW VINEYARDS, April, 1915. CONTENTS I.—TIME AND THE TREE II.—SELECTING THE FRUIT-FARM IIJ.—TueE PLANTING OF THE FRUIT-FARM . 1V.—GETTING ALONG WITH HELP V.—THE CULTIVATION OF THE FRUIT-FARM VI.—FEEDING THE LAND . VII.—TuHeE Fruit-FarRM AND THE YOUNG FOLKS . VIII.—TEN THOUSAND A YEAR IX.—BIRDS AND THE FRUIT-FARM X.—THE FRuUIT-FARM AND OLD AGE INDEX 131 175 240 272 317 345 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE INTENSIVE HoRTICULTURE: GRAPES, PLUMS, CHERRIES. LAKE ERIE TO THE NortH. (‘‘INDIAN ARROW VINEYARDS’’) : : . Frontispiece ABUNDANCE PLUM-TREE; PRODUCING 52 BASKETS (1913) . ; ; : : : ; Bran Koha OVERLOOKING THE VEGETABLE GARDEN ‘ 428 An ALTHEA HeEpGE (IN Five Coors) In AuGust 48 “ IN THE CHERRY ORCHARD; NOTICE THE TREES (15 YeArS OLp) Kept TrimMED Low FoR EASY PICKING . 3 : : : ; : AEM EELSy OL ol IN THE CHERRY ORCHARD . f i 3 Yon A SON. AMIDST VINEYARDS; THE CHAUTAUQUA HILLS (1300 FT.) IN THE DISTANCE (SOUTH) ; : a ROSn In GRAPE TIME. (CRAWFORD VINEYARD.) LAKE ERIE TO THE NortH . ; ; Pi itcy add A TANK FOR SPRAYING ; : . 128% GANG-PLOWING . : : : : a tAon” Disc-PLOWING . ‘ : : ; ‘ a AA Tue Two-HorsE CULTIVATOR . 5 d elas SowinGc ALSACH CLOVER . : d WO oh BG aeen xii Illustrations HorsE-HoEING . 5 : : : SPRAYING A YOUNG VINEYARD FOR LEAF-HOPPERS. (MALLICK VINEYARD) THe STEAM-POWER SPRAYER FOR TREES AND VINES TREE SPRAYING; PLuM TREES. (LOOP ORCHARD). THE DRIVEWAY THROUGH THE FRUIT-FARM PACKING FRUIT FOR THE MARKET AT THE PACKING- HOUSE A Birp SANCTUARY. LAKE ERIE IN THE DISTANCE A CORNER OF THE FRUIT-FARM. LAKE ERIE IN THE DISTANCE : An American Fruit-Farm An American Fruit-Farm I TIME AND THE TREE HAKESPEARE’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 I 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 ‘ime and the Pree 3 when we set out these six hundred and six Concord cuttings each with its fringe of root about a little stickofvine? Athousand 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 Gi) 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 a = 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 10 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 II 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 upona 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. Wedo 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 €l6t NI SLAWSWE cS ONIONGOUd '3aYUL-WNId JONVAGNNAaY ge Om Time andthe 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 a 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. IJ 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 ihiime anc the aree 22 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 Aineid and Ihad. 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 lifeon 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. . . . Themobsof 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. In our day, as in other days, in all countries, at all times, men love to get back totheland. 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 t 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- N3AqdYv5 31ISVLAD3FA FHL DNIWOOTH3SAO ay Vg ra r ihiime) and) the ilree 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 isa 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 dimer and the Winree 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. IT SELECTING THE FARM LIMATE 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. Ina 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 27 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 arailroad. 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 mindis hisfarm. 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 4I 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 t The copy of Caio 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. A2 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 isa 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. Thestreams 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. Wecan dono 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 LSNDNYW NI (SHO1O9 BAl4d NI) 3DQ3H WE3HLIV NY L/h 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 4 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 Cesar 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: “Tf 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 Croesus 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. ons ago these shrubs and trees and grasses of our wild did not exist, and zons 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 vacuumcleaner. 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 bestfriend. 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 manlive? ‘“‘Aday,and yet forever,’’ answers one; “‘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 “TI 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. J do not overrate the fruit- farm nor wunderrate 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 \NIMDld ASVA YOS MOT GAWWIHL 1dayw (G10 SHYWSA SI!) SARSHUL AHL ADILON -GUYWHOYO AHYAHSD FHL NI 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 teet 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 asa 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 5 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 32 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 pharmacopceia. 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 failto 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 encyclopedia 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. JOE THE PLANTING OF THE FRUIT-FARM HETHER 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.” is is Lr 35 3) in x= kK z 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 6 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 asamulch. But such planting is inadvisable. Again, after plants are set, growth may setin. 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 itis 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—z.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 evena 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. Asin Germany, plant fruit-trees along the roadside and so get use of the land. Ina 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.* 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.’ t 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, Rall’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. 2 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’Angouléme); 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- simmonsin 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.* Of higher value than the plum is the prune, which seems to be only a hardy, late plum. One t 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. Hemay 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 ofa 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 mayen prove’ | yellows,’ “seale,” ~“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.’ 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. Inthe 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 t 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 theland. 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.* 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 : 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 7 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. Asa 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 CHAUTAUQUA HILLS (1300 FT.) IN THE DISTANCE (SOUTH) AMIDST VINEYARDS 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 swaysin 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 100 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 flourishes 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. Inthe 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 LAKE ERIE TO THE NORTH SS a Le uj z > a Lig (0) rs 3 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 2777 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 isman. Few die of disease. Three thousand six hundred tons of insects consumed daily make how many for one summer? Figure this out and you 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? Nothe. 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 lazssez fazre, 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 1913 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.* 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 1912 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! t 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 Zodlogical Society, 1913, 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. Buird-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 José 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 José, 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. Kull the birds and let scales and insects grow! * 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 t 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.* 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 I91I-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 four thousand robins were t 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.’ 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 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 1910 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. During 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 19 290 An American Fruit-Farm 1910 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 1910 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. 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 aérial 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 207 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? Vivi