^44 STATE BOARD OF AGEICULTUEE. 



of wood prune iu ■winter. I would not prune as the English do, cutting out the 

 ■center of the top to let in the sunlight. In this country a tree may have too 

 much sun. 



Mr. J. B. Lord. — Do you graft in the limbs? 



Mr. Scott. — That depends on the stock. Sometimes I splice graft ou the 

 limhs, and sometimes bud on the stalk. 



Mr. Lord. — Do you consider leached ashes better than unleached? 



Mr. Scott. — I do, because you can put on a thick covering to prevent the 

 growth of grass and weeds. I use straw on clay soil, removing it in winter on 

 account of the mice. The ground should be clean around the trees in winter. 



Mr. Stanley. — At what time of the year do you prefer to plant? 



Mr. Scott. — I always succeed best with spring planting. Fall planting may 

 succeed in sandy soil, but in clay plant invariably in the spring. 



I jilant apple trees forty feet between the rows, with a row of peach trees or 

 dwarf i^ears between. I do not plant the apple trees in the adjacent rows oppo- 

 site each other, but diagonally. 



Mr. Stanley. — At Avhat age do you prefer to plant trees? 



Mr. Scott. — I prefer trees two years old. '\Vitli such trees you get a more 

 natural root, and they grow better. 



The following paper was read by Mr. W. E. H. Sober, on 



DAIKYIXG AXD ITS PROFITS. 



Can dairying be made profitable in this county? The question of profit is one 

 that decides a man in all his business undertakings. The question next in the 

 line of this examination of an undertaking, and the one that has the most 

 weight, is, will it pay as well, or better than something else? Man seeks to 

 insure to himself in the matter of profit his possible best, and as between two 

 kinds of business he will select that which promises the best profit. 



It is hardly necessary to say to this audience that the cow is the source of the 

 ■dairy. I suppose it is understood by the term dan'ying to include all the methods of 

 handling milk so as to present it and its products in merchantable condition as 

 food. Milk and its products are found on the table of almost every American 

 home. Butter, cheese, and condensed milk are exported in large quantities, 

 making these products a matter of importance to the farmer. 



Washtenaw county, though high and rolling and best adapted to the produc- 

 tion of grain, is not deficient in elements to produce fair growths of grasses, rich and 

 nourishing to stock, as the large and fine herds and flocks it maintains well attest. 

 Grain has been, and is to-day, the leading product of this county. But I think 

 the feeling among our best farmers is growing stronger year by year that mixed 

 husbandry is safer, and more profitable, all things considered, than special. 

 They are coming to see more and more as the years go by that their acres do 

 not return them their twenty, thirty, and forty bushels of Avheat, as they did 

 when the soil was new and rich in the elements of wheat food. They observe 

 the new vigor of those fields when a plentiful application of barnyard manure 

 has been made, and they are asking with an earnestness that gives promise to 

 the future of farming in this county, "To what stock can we feed the hay, 

 coarse fodder, corn, oats, and roots so as to return as good a profit as when sold 

 in the town markets, and leave the manure on the farm as an offset for the 

 labor of feeding and care of the stock. This question once settled in the minds 

 of farmers that these products can be profitably marketed by being transformed 

 into beef, pork, mutton, poultry, wool, milk, butter, cheese, and the growing of 



