82 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



per acre, and some just as good, one mile from a depot on a trunk railway, for $1 

 per acre. 



I at once began to plant fruit-trees of apple, pear, peach, plum, cherry, apri- 

 cot, quince, grape and berries in large variety; can't give an account of all this in 

 detail, but one word will cover most of it, and that word is mistake. 



I do not mean to say that these fruits can't be grown in Holt county ; most of 

 them can be, and with profit. My greatest mistake was in selection of varieties. 

 Many that flourished and bore abundantly where I came from were either too 

 tender for our winters, or unfruitful. I found 1 was in a new country (to me), and 

 If I expected to grow up with the country and make a success of fruit-growing. I 

 would have to forsake the road I had been traveling, burn the bridges and launch 

 out anew, begin at the bottom and grow up with the country. 



In my first apple orchard of four hundred tree?, planted twenty-two years 

 ago, for market fruit were. Home Beauty, Rosbury, Russet, Rhode Island Green- 

 ing, Newtown Pippin, Janet, Roman Stem, Grimes' Golden Pippin, White Pear- 

 main, Red Pearmain and Belleflower, and before I had time to discover my great 

 mistake in varieties, God sent the grasshoppers and destroyed the whole orchard. 



I thought it hard then to lose my trees, but replanted with Ben Davis and Wine- 

 sap. When these began to bear, I felt thankful that my first planting had been 

 destroyed, for a very few of each variety was saved in nursery row and planted as 

 a test, but they never proved profitable. The Ben Davis and Winesap have paid 

 extra well, and the mistake I made when I planted them was that 1 did not plant 

 forty acres in place of eight. 



But some urge that it is a mistake to plant such large orchards, for the reason 

 that they will not receive proper care, or if they do, fruit will be so abundant that 

 it can'c be sold at paying prices ; but my experience and observation has been that 

 the small orchards are the neglected ones, and in place of too much fruit, we have 

 not yet grown a suffiicent quantity of apples in Missouri to build up a good market. 

 It is only in the years that our apples are plenty that New York and eastern bujers 

 are here paying us good prices. 



The Olden Fruit Company, in Howell county, Mo., have the largest orchard 

 in the West, containing of apple, peach, pear, plum, cherry and quince, nearly two 

 hundred thousand trees ; there are but few if any larger in the world, I have been 

 through this orchard a number of times, and have yet to see the smfll orchard that 

 is cultivated and cared for as this one is. from the planting of the trees to the sell- 

 ing of the fruit. Everything is done systematically and gone through with in a 

 thorough manner. Sometimes thirty hands are busy for weeks thinning the young 

 peaches where too full, by hand picking. This is no mistake; it saves the trees 

 from injury, secures larger and better fruit, and pays better. All their fruit, when 

 ready, is carefully picked, sorted and packed in new, clean packages, of full stand- 

 ard size, and sent to market or sold to large buyers on the ground, who have been 

 attracted thither by the fine fruit of superior quality and the perfect manner of 

 handling: one merchant in Memphis, Tenn., having this year bought their apple 

 crop of three thousand barrels, at three dollars per barrel, at the orchard. 



I doubt if there is another orchard, large or small, in the United States, that 

 is paying as large dividends on the investment fis this one, and we say all honor to 

 the gentlemen who had the foresight, snap and energy to plant such an orchard and 

 develop a great industry in the wild wilderness of South Missouri. It means em- 

 ployment for hundreds of men, women and children, and happy homes for thou- 

 sands of poor men who will be encouraged to make a start for themselves from 

 seeing what the Olden company has done ; and the young man who contemplates 



