162 Missouri State HorticvJtnral Society. 



the plum and took nearly all the fruit. By this time I had but 

 two left, having sold some to customers. 



About the same time, seven years ago last spring, I ^olanted ?o 

 native plums, mostly Wild Goose, set them all on one-fourth of an 

 acre of land, built a hen house in the middle, enclosed the whole 

 with a picket fence to hold pigs and chickens. When they com- 

 menced to bear we turned in the pigs to eat the wormy dropped 

 plums. We keep our chickens in the orchard from early spring 

 until the jilum season is over. 



The result is the chickens serve to thin out the curculio that 

 comes to the ground, and the pigs by eating all the plums that 

 drop, destroy the larvae for the next crop. In this way we have 

 no further trouble with curculio. In fact they are a benefit and 

 useful in thinning out the set of fruit. Without them I would 

 have to thin the crop by hand picking at considerable expense, as 

 all our native varieties set too many j)lums for the trees to mature 

 well. 



My little orchard of one-fourth of an acre yielded me a profit 

 last summer of $300.00 besides what we use in our family and gave 

 to friends. And more clear profit than I received from a 200-acre 

 farm that was well cultivated to grain crops. 



In conclusion I would say that I think pigs and poultry are 

 what the fruit grower needs to keep down the curculio, codling 

 moth, the gouger and root grub. They can not increase to such 

 an alarming extent if the droppings that contain the larva is all 

 eaten as fast as it drops from the trees. Now friends if I am right 

 in my conclusions we should advise planting liberally, fence the 

 orchards, turn in the hogs and poultry and we will succeed in 

 growing fruit cheaper, better and more abundantly besides the 

 profit from the pork, eggs and chickens, that will thrive and fatten 

 under this method. 



Respectfully, 



C. H. FINK, 



Lamar, Mo. 



