38 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



set. S. R. Filler has a vineyard of the Niagara grape, and in connection,, 

 strawberries and a market garden. Others are engaged in less degree in 

 email and choice fruits and vegetables. Quite a number of small farmers 

 are raising small fruits and garden truck where they have the right kind 

 of soil and skill to make it a success. They sell much of their produce to 

 the larger farmers who think their time more valuable in raising stock and 

 grain than in growing berries and ''garden sauce." 



Daniel Strange, near Grand Ledge, has probably the largest apple 

 orchard in Eaton county, having set for market, a few years ago, 1,600 

 trees of the Ben Davis variety, which are just, now coming into bearing. 

 Next to him, Mr. Wm. P. Green, near this city, has some 1,500 trees of 

 choice varieties, largely of his own selection and raising. Mr. Wilton of 

 Kalamo township has a large orchard which he sprayed the past season. 

 He sold 346 barrels of first quality fruit. But few others sprayed trees 

 in that vicinity, and the apple crop, with those who neglected this 

 precaution, was nearly a failure. 



At Charlotte there were packed for market about 4.000 barrels of apples, 

 just about one third of last season's crop. There were a good many fruit 

 trees set last spring, but "farmers neglect them" is the talk of the fruit 

 buyer. It is very probable, the statistics gathered by the supervisors to the 

 contrary notwithstanding, that there is every year more fruit trees set, 

 that live to bear fruit, than are destroyed or become barren, of the aged 

 bearing trees. 



I think this little society, known as the Eaton County Horticultural 

 society, by its precept and example, has been of much influence in keeping 

 up and encouraging the fruitgrower in this locality. Holding monthly 

 meetings, from ho\ise to house of its members, exchanging inquiries and 

 experiences, often addressed by professors from the Agricultural college 

 and other learned and skilled men in horticulture, it has been the means of 

 enlightening all who came within its influence, as to the best varieties of 

 fruit and vegetable for cultivation, also as to the proper method of fighting 

 that vast army of destroying insects and worms that now infest every garden 

 and orchard. We believe there has been more spraying outfits sold and 

 used in and about this immediate vicinity than in all the rest of the 

 county; that here the production of fruit has been the largest, fairest, and 

 best; that the fruit has brought the producer more money for his labor, 

 and thereby profit, than where this society's example and practice did not 

 extend. 



Eaton county has always been noted for its fine quality of maple sugar 

 and syrup. Last spring, under the inducement of the two cents per 

 pound government bounty on manufactured maple sugar, thirty-two 

 farmers in the county each bought a Williams evaporator and went largely 

 into making sugar and syrup. Although but two or three will comply 

 with all the red-tape regulations necessary to get the bounty, still, in con- 

 sequence of that inducement, all have exerted themselves and have made 

 their maple trees the most paying property they have, several getting five, 

 six, and seven hundred dollars for the season's run, some of these maple 

 tree orchards yielding in sugar and syrup one-half dollar per tree. One 

 firm in Charlotte, J. Mikesell & Co., bought 1,400 gallons of this maple 

 syrup, and largely of sugar, to refine and purify and sell again to their 

 customers. A man that had much highway on his farm might set out 

 quite a respectable sugar-bush by the roadside, and his children or some- 

 body's else children would have a chance to make sugar in about thirty 



