68 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



From the renter's standpoint the orchard should be of fair size. A 

 small orchard, unless conveniently located near another leased orchard 

 will hardly pay for the time lost in getting to and from it. It should 

 also be located near a market or station if possible and near the home 

 of the renter. Time consumed on the road is time lost. I would give 

 a good rental for an orchard near home and near a market, when the 

 same orchard might be worth very little to me if eight or ten miles dis- 

 tant. Again the orchard should have good varieties. Winter apples 

 are generally preferred, but often summer or fall apples pay better if 

 there are enough of them to jtaj for marketing. It costs too much to 

 gather and market a few barrels of fruit at a time from orchards away 

 from home. A few standard varieties of good quality, such as Spy, 

 Baldwin, Jonathan and Greening are much better than orchards of many 

 varieties such as are generally found in orchards outside of fruit 

 districts. 



The accessibility of the orchard for spraying and harvesting should 

 also be considered. The ground should be comparatively smooth, and 

 not too hilly, water convenient and plentiful, fences good, buildings for 

 team and barrels accessible, trees low and not too crowded, nor too far 

 exhausted by scale. Thickness of branches is not so detrimental as they 

 can be thinned out, neither is age a great disadvantage if the trees have 

 low heads, with trunks and frame work capable of holding a good load 

 of fruit. About the worst class of trees we find are those that have had 

 the lower frame work removed by the tree butcher for convenience in 

 working beneath them, or those whose lower branches are dead or lost 

 from scale or crowding. It is diffiV^ult and expensive to care for a crop 

 in these high tops, and it takes longer than the ordinary lease to grow 

 a new head beneath them. 



This brings us to the most vital part of the leasing business, namely, 

 the contract. All contracts for the lease of orchards should be in writ- 

 ing. It may seem unnecessary at the time to both parties, but neither 

 can anticipate the changes that may take place before the expiration of 

 a verbal contract that may terminate it or render it of little account. I 

 speak from experience on this point for I have in mind two orchards 

 where a written contract was not considered necessary by the owner 

 and we did not demand it. Both of these orchards have turned out 

 unsatisfactorily. In another instance a written contract is all that held 

 an orchard and prevented trouble. If the orchard pays the renter well 

 some owners are bound to be dissatisfied, if it does not pay the renter 

 may be the quitter. The only safe way is to have a written contract 

 sufficiently explicit to cover all conditions that may arise. Some of the 

 provisions which such a contract should include are: 



(1) The definition, addresses and signatures of all parties to the con- 

 tract, including the owner or owners, the renter and the tenant, if there 

 is one. We have found the signature of the tenant especially desirable, 

 as the renter will be likely to have as much dealing with him as with 

 the owner, and his rights and agreements should be carefully defined in 

 the contract. In one instance trouble arose between the tenant and the 

 owner over their verbal agreement as to their respective shares of the 

 fruit. If our contract had defined the rights of the tenant as well as 

 of the other two parties this would have been avoided. 



(2) The contract should include the location and description of the 



