206 State Hurticiiltiiral Society. 



excepting the main channels in Salt river, and the creeks are almost 

 all dry, and we are in the center of about six or eight counties. I 

 have been in other parts, but it seems to center right at that place, 

 and if I had to say just in a few words how to fight the drouth, I should 

 say begin cultivating early, cultivate often and all the time through 

 the season, and if you do that, I am sure we can fight the drouth with 

 an orchard, when the other crops would be a total failure. 



Two years ago I visited an orchard, and I said to the man, if 

 you are going to follow what you are following today, you had just 

 a?, well quit the business. He was letting it grow in grass and weeds 

 and was turning his stock in there and letting them graze in the 

 corners, and I spoke it so plain and hit him so hard that he almost 

 got mad, and I didn't care if he did. That is the way to get some 

 people to do a thing. Last year he put the place in tobacco. This 

 year he did. work it, and if you would go and look at it this season 

 you would say there wag no drouth. If he had neglected it last year, 

 and this, as he had neglected it two or three years before that, the 

 orchard being about ten years old, I would not have given him ten 

 cents an acre for it, for I think it would have been a total failure. As 

 it was he had a very good crop of apples last 3'ear, and what apples 

 he had this year were good, but with us apples were almost a total 

 failure. 



Now in our planting of apple grafts : We put out about one mil- 

 lion plants, and out of the one million plants we have only one hun- 

 dred thousand. So you will see the condition we are in there. I 

 had four acres of blackberries. I am the fellow that told the other man 

 what to do, but didn't do it myself. On the four acres of blackberries 

 I didn't get a gallon. One of our neighbors, who had a patch not so 

 large, but who worked it thoroughly got ninety dollars from his patch. 



We have two orchards, one of them being on the right and the 

 other on the left. The one on the right has been worked thoroughly ; 

 we have not an orchard, where it has been worked as thoroughly as 

 that. There is a space that comes down between the two orchards, 

 and the one on the left was one year the best orchard. So this year 

 it commenced raining in the spring, and in digging trees for deliveries, 

 it took our time and we didn't get to this orchard on the left until 

 it got too dry, and we could not plow it. The other one we did plow. 

 You can just reverse these orchards now. This orchard on the left 

 was one year ahead, but it is not this year. The one on the right that 

 was worked this year, and has been worked thoroughly every year, 

 is a year ahead. There is two years difiference right there in the 

 orchards. I have noticed it. We have an orchard of about four hun- 



