66 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



That farm must have been abandoned more than twenty-five 

 years at that time and that was as much as seventy-five years ago. 

 That farm was abandoned a hundred years ago and had grown 

 up to woods, and my father bought that farm onto his farm 

 when I was a boy, and 1 inherited it from him. That is why I 

 am there, and I am right there where I was born. 



Thirty-five years ago I decided T would raise an apple orchard 

 on this land. Now where I live, I live right among rocks and 

 hills. Chase's Mills is a little hamlet about as big as it was a 

 hundred years ago. It hasn't grown any that I know of. It is a 

 good place to live in. Down below the rips in the bend of the 

 river is twenty-five acres of clayey loam where there isn't a rock 

 or root. Further down the river, where the land slopes down to 

 the river is a side hill, sandy, loamy land — rocky soil — that is 

 where I raise Northern Spies, half a mile from the house, five 

 acres. Thirty-five years ago I set that land all out to apple trees ; 

 I didn't know what they were. The trees grew well for a few 

 years until there came a winter that killed almost all the apple 

 trees in the valley of the river in our section — killed natural fruit 

 trees — didn't kill the apple trees upon the hills but the natural 

 fruit trees. I went over one spring and found the trees most all 

 dead. I didn't think much about them, that is, I thought it was 

 not much use to try to raise apples there, I had got them all 

 started and a good many of them were dead. I went to work 

 raising corn, plowing the land. Some of the trees lived and 

 pretty soon they began to bear, and the trees that began to bear 

 were the Northern Spy. They began to bear when they were 

 small, I found the apples were good and I began to have a little 

 courage. Well, along about that time. I experienced religion, 

 that is I got that "Greenback" religion and for ten years I travelled 

 this country all over, and during that ten years I didn't attend 

 very much to this orchard. The trees grew up and bore some, 

 and the Northern Spies kept growing and kept bearing, bore 

 pretty well. 



Finally I went to grafting the living trees that were not 

 Northern Spies, and the trees that had died and sprouts came up. 

 Now three years ago I went into that orchard, and plowed the 

 whole thing over, all set to trees, most of them Northern Spies. 

 This year I raised 250 barrels of Northern Spies and about 100 

 barrels of other sorts, mostly Baldwins and Greenings. Three 



