42 Report of State Board of Horticui.ture. 



FIELD WORK. 



I 



During the past two years I have visited the principal fruit 

 centers of the district, have personally inspected many 

 orchards and consulted and advised with the county inspectors 

 in nearly all the counties of the district, and have held a 

 number of fruit-growers' meetings and spoken on topics per- 

 taining to better methods of fruit industry. The interest 

 shown by the good attendance at these meetings indicated a 

 universal desire among the fruit-growers to get the experience 

 of those who have made a success. 



The past two years I have had many letters from fruit- 

 growers all over the district pertaining to all phases connected 

 with fruit. I have distributed among them 800 copies of the 

 eleventh Biennial Report of this board, the number alloted 

 my district, and have had many applications for this report 

 that I could not fill for want of copies. 



The past two years I have noticed the fruit-growers are 

 beginning to grow garden truck and feed for the stock they 

 use for cultivating their orchards. Several years ago the 

 growers bought much of their garden truck from California 

 truck growers, and depended for their income from the sales 

 from their orchards. This is a healthy change, and every 

 grower should be encouraged to grow in his own garden such 

 garden truck as he has to have for home use, rather than pay 

 transportation charges on the same to growers of truck in 

 other states. No doubt much of the high cost of living we 

 now see being discussed in the public press can be assigned 

 to the System of too many farmers specializing in one crop 

 alone, and not diversifying. Where the fruit-grower special- 

 izes on fruit alone for several years, while waiting for his 

 orchard to become productive, he has no income from capital 

 invested. He is constantly paying out money for bare necessi- 

 ties in place of setting aside a plot of his land and growing 

 the necessary garden truck and feed he has to have. The 

 facts that consumption is greater than production, or that the 

 consuming class has increased, while the producers have 

 decreased, with the costly methods of distribution, no doubt 

 would in part explain the high cost of living. That farm 

 products have greatly fallen off in this section I have noted. 

 A few years ago nearly all the farmers of this locality had 

 a surplus of all kmds of farm products. Nearly every farmer 

 had a surplus of bacon and hams to seil, while now many of 

 them are going to their grocer and buying their bacon and 

 hams at prices that are virtually prohibitive to any man that 

 pretends to any reasonable business System. Then, too, many 



