232 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



laud. Yet it was known that former owners had sometimes realized a few- 

 hundred dollars in a year from the sale of what portion of the berry crop thev 

 wereifcble to secure. Nevertheless it was estimated somehow as so much waste 

 land, and the farm was for this reason lield to be greatly less valuable than the 

 surrouudiug farms. Mr. Ringold, after a year's experience, learned enough to 

 satisfy him that there was money in tliese berries, and instead of endeavoring 

 to drain the swamp and reclaim it, as ic is called, it were better to preserve it 

 as it was, and put forth his efforts to exchide intruders and secure the crop to 

 himself. 



For several years he waged warfare on interlopers. Persons had been accus- 

 tomed to go there year after year and pick the berries, and greatly rebelled 

 against liingold's efforts to prevent tliem from continuing to do so. But 

 determined persistence on the part of the owner finally taught these depreda- 

 tors to forbear their trespassing, and the proprietor began to reap the full 

 returns from his wortliiess swamp, enabling him to realize in 1880 the neat 

 little sum of §700, and in liSSl, owing to a smalleryield of fruit, a sum slightly 

 less iu amount, but still sufficiently great to exceed in value the aggregate worth 

 of all the other crops of his farm. And this from a swamp of ten or fifteen 

 acres — a portion of his farm that everybody peisisted in declaring to be a great 

 drawback to it, one that detracted much from its saleable value and enabled 

 him to secure so advantageous a trade at the time he became the possessor of it. 



In point of fact it is worth more than all the rest of his farm, and will prob- 

 ably yield for an indefinite period its annual harvest of delicious, healthful 

 fruit, requiring for its production no other care than the prevention of fire and 

 no other labor than the pleasant one of gathering the fruit. 



There were great numbers of such places in our State, — swamps, small and 

 large, which originally yielded enormous quantities of huckleberries or cran- 

 berries. Many of these the short-sighted owners, ignoring their value in their 

 native State, have labored to convert or reclaim into arable land. In some 

 instances really good land has been the result, but generally there has been 

 just enough done to produce a sort of a negative result, — enough to destroy the 

 berries, but not enough to create good land in its stead, — and in few instances 

 has the land been made into a condition to yield anything like as valuable crops 

 as the fruit which it afforded when taken from the hands of nature. 



Why should a cranberry marsh or a huckleberry swamp be considered worth- 

 less, and a strawberry plantation or a vineyard be esteemed valuable simply 

 because one is found in a state of nature, and the other results laigely from 

 the skill and energy of man, and yet both may be made equally profitable. 



(J. D. Lawtox. 



Lawton, Van Buren Co., Michigan. 



FRUIT GROWING A SMALL BUSINESS. 



A farmer not more than ten miles from our grounds turns up his nose at 

 "fruit grov/ing," and says "it's small business," and "hard on horses and 

 wagons."' Let us see about this "small business." We have about the same 

 amount of land that this farmer possesses. He employs on an average through 

 the entire year one unmarried man and one girl, thus giving means for support 

 to two persons besides his own family. We employ on an average twelve men. 



