FRUIT ON THE FARM. 19 



THE APPLE. 



[From an Essay presented to the Hampshire Society.] 



Fruit-trees must be taken care of as well as other crops, if 

 one would realize any thing from them. One would not ex- 

 pect a crop of corn if he merely planted the seed in the spring, 

 without giving it any manure or after-cultivation : such an 

 one would be called a shiftless farmer. There are many who 

 are called good farmers who are shiftless fruit-growers ; and 

 the reason is this, they have been taught to look upon fruit 

 as an expense, rather than as a source of income from the 

 farm. If one will only stop and figure, he will find that 

 there is not a crop grown on the farm which pays as well, 

 compared with the expense laid out on it, as fruit. Take, 

 for example, the apple, as that is the standard fruit of this 

 latitude, and the one most generally grown. 



It js well to speak of this fruit in particular, as the past 

 season has been one of such productiveness, that man} r are on 

 the point of cutting down their apple-orchards to make room 

 for some other crop, saying that they had better raise corn 

 than to grow apples at the present prices. This is not so. 

 A farmer can make more clear money by growing apple* at 

 seventy-five cents a barrel than he can on any other farm- 

 crop. To prove this, let us see what it will cost to take 

 care of an acre in orchard, and also one in corn. Admitting 

 that corn can be grown for thirty-five cents per bushel, and 

 forty bushels are raised on an acre, the cost of growing would 

 be fourteen dollars : the price of corn we will take at sixty 

 cents per bushel, which will amount to twenty-four dollars : 

 this gives a profit of ten dollars from one acre. Now let us 

 see what one will get if he plants an apple-orchard. We 

 will reckon the trees, when planted, at twenty cents each. 

 If they are set twenty-five feet apart each way, it will take 



