78 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



last season we finally got our courage screwed up to the point 

 of starting an orchard, and it is because I believe that the expe- 

 rience we have had in starting that orchard may be of practical 

 use to you that I want to talk to you a little while this evening 

 in regard to some of the problems we have met and the way we 

 have solved them. I think it is Bernard Shaw who says that 

 ^'He who can does, and he who can't teaches," and it was more 

 or less out of resentment to that general feeling that we went 

 into this business ; although, as I said, it was still more because 

 we had a firm belief in the ultimate outcome and felt that we 

 could make it profitable. 



In selecting a site for our operations, both of us being 

 teachers in the agricultural college at Amherst, we were almost 

 of necessity restricted to locations within a reasonable distance 

 of the college, because while we didn't expect to give very much 

 personal attention to the matter, still we had to have it where 

 we could get at the farm expeditiously when we did want to 

 go, and we have always run down at least once a week. So in 

 selecting our farm, while we looked about and got what we con- 

 sidered as a good orchard locality, we were considerably tied 

 down and perhaps didn't have the range that we might. But 

 we considered, aside from the question of ease of getting at it, 

 two or three points in the selection of the location, and the first 

 and most important point was the matter of soil. We selected 

 what you might call a gravelly loam. Of course it varies some- 

 what; there are about one hundred and fifty acres and it varies 

 in different parts of the farm, but most of it runs to a gravelly 

 loam. We had Mr. Kinney. President of the Vermont Horti- 

 cultural Society, and himself a lifelong grower of apples and 

 of the finest quality of apples, come down and look over the 

 proposition. He said he didn't see how we could have improved 

 in the matter of soil. Our idea is not to go into the general 

 trade, the growing of barrel fruit, but to go into the box trade, 

 into the gilt-edged trade, if you may call it that, in New York 

 and Boston and the large towns, so that it is practically impera- 

 tive that we shall be able to grow highly colored fruit. And 

 for that reason we selected this soil which is rather a dry soil, 

 not clayey but a soil that will give us first-class, highly colored 



