VAIN TO RENEW AN OLD ORCHARD. 215 



until the trees began to decline, did that orchard yield anything 

 which was considered worthy of record. Meanwhile, the trees 

 were manured to a tremendous extent ; an abundance of barn- 

 yard manure, and a great quantity of night soil, were annually 

 employed in keeping those trees in what was called a good 

 growing condition. About the year 1835, the yield of that 

 orchard was so great, that there were twenty-eight hundred 

 barrels of apples barrelled on the farm, and innumerable heaps 

 left to decay on the ground ; but the price which the apples 

 brought, upon which the expense of gathering and barrelling 

 was laid out, was so low, that it was not considered, by any 

 means, a profitable crop. 



When I took the place, in 1856, the trees were all out of 

 condition. They were enormous, as you may well suppose ; they 

 had grown as all apple-trees grow in very fertile soil which 

 has received an abundance of manure. What was the first 

 thing for me to do ? I had been told by old Col. Pickering, 

 who is the best agricultural authority in Essex County, that 

 bone was the manure to restore apple-trees. I thought he 

 knew all about farming, and I went to work. I cleared out 

 all the dead wood and any limbs that seriously interfered with 

 the rest of the tree ; I had a good many of the trees grafted 

 with the choicest fruit I could find ; I had the soil all round 

 the trees revived with lime, bones, and everything of that 

 description ; I spent a great deal of money on those old trees ; 

 I had a respect for them as ancestral trees, in the first place, 

 and in the next place, I expected to make my fortune by 

 renewing those old apple-trees. Well, they looked finely, for 

 about three years ; everybody driving by said, " A new man has 

 got hold of this place, and he makes it shine." I thought so, 

 too ; and by-andby, I got one crop of fair apples, but the old 

 vitality was not there. The trees would blossom, — they tried 

 hard ; they did the best they could, — but the " Pickman Pip- 

 pin " and the " Garden Apple " were small ; they did not grow 

 rapidly enough to keep away the insects that infested them, and 

 they were late. The crop was never a good one, so that the 

 people who used to come there to get their favorite apples, 

 after seeing the orchard renewed, went away and said I was a 

 humbug, and the apples too. That was the result of my 



