18 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



me ''How about your overhead expenses?" Now we have an account 

 we call farm expense tliat has to take care of things that we cannot 

 charge to anything — insurance, taxes and the foreman's time you can- 

 not charge to any one crop, and the up-keep of the buildings and tools, 

 and looking over that account Avhen we were ready to get it for the 

 commissioner we found that quite a bit was charged to that account that 

 should have been charged to farm improvement, I have ten carloads of 

 sewer pipe buried underneath my farm, none of it less than ten or twelve 

 inches in diameter. Now that should not be charged to fann expense — - 

 it is farm improvement. Now we thought one thousand dollars a year 

 would about even up what legitimately belonged to farm expense, so we 

 divided one thousand dollars by 85 acres and apportioned it between 

 them. 



Mr. Bassett : I was interested in the relative profits of the different 

 Crops you raise in New York. 



Mr. Case : Grapes |35 ; peaches |55 net per acre. I wish to speak 

 about these peaches. There was a heavy body of woods between them 

 and the lake, and I lost my peach crop there, but later I took these 

 woods out of the way. In the year 1907 we had peaches on the table 

 a couple of times, and we had all the expense of caring for them. Plums 

 |74; ])ears |98; apples |124:; cherries |174. This whole report is pub- 

 lished in the proceedings of the New York State Agricultural Associa- 

 tion of that year. 



Mr. Bassett : Were those sour or sweet cherries, or both ? 



Mr. Case: Both. 



A Member: What was the relative cost of production? 



Mr. Case: I cannot rememl)er. I want to tell you that when we 

 got these nets together there were a lot of interesting figures, and they 

 were a great surprise to us. I was surprised to find peaches $55, but 

 there were my books showing the gross receipts, the expenditures, etc. 

 I took it for the six years and we could not get around it, and I was 

 surprised. 



A Member: Do you think pears? 



Mr. Case: If they need it. 



A Member: How many failures did you have on your peaches in six 

 years. 



Mr. Case: There were about twenty acres of these peaches in all, and 

 there was about ten acres of it that would produce, but we had to charge 

 up the twenty acres. 



Mr. Allyn : I just wanted to ask a question. You spoke of this timber 

 screen. I don't really understand all the principles. It seems that the 

 timber screen would help the fmit, and at the same time we know it 

 prevents the carrying of moisture laden winds through the orchard, and 

 we all know we get a cooler temperature if the atmosphere is not moist. 



Mr. Bassett: I think it is a fact that is not disputed that we need 

 air drainage for several reasons; it is almost as necessary as water 

 drainage. 



Mr. Case: In 1895 we had a very cold Northwest wind when the 

 fruit was in bloom, and the thermometer hung around 34 or 36 all day 

 long, and the only apples or fruit we had in 1895 was close to the lake; 

 then we went twenty or thirty miles south until we got in the chain of 

 lakes that goes through the state and there along these lakes we had 

 some apples, and we could not find any apples between there and eastern 



