ANNUAL MEETING AT NEVADA. 211 



est. grandest and noblest interests of Missouri, will take this matter in 

 hand and enter their solemn protest against such handling of fruits. To 

 my mind, the only way for apples to be handled is to be hand-picked 

 and packed in barrels in the orchard and under the trees in which the 

 apples grew. In this way and this way only can the fruit of Missouri be 

 held up to that grand position now assigned to her and the grand posi- 

 tion she has won through the labors and efforts that have been put forth 

 by the members of the State Horticultural and County Societies. 



And now to my own labors in way of orcharding and fruit growing 

 on the Ozark. Four \'ears ago, last spring, I put out different varieties of 

 apricots, plums, cherries, crabs, apples, etc., etc.. also setting out different 

 varieties of peaches and some 750 apples. The following fall I put out 

 800 peaches and icoo apples, and same years put out 7000 hills of 

 black raspberries, and following year 20O0 red raspberries, and last 

 spring put out 1 5C0 Ben Davis apples and 100 Tulpahocken or Fallawater 

 apples. We had about three thousand apples, 800 peaches and some 

 berries to look after. A part of my peach trees have given me two full 

 crops, another part one full crop, while a large majority has not borne at 

 all. I have, no doubt, made many mistakes, yet some one has to make 

 mistakes or else lookers-on would gain no benefits. 



My first orchard I put out I put it in new seeded ground, seeded to 

 grass alone. After trees had been set one year I had my men take 

 spading forks and work the ground all up mellow about the trees, a cir- 

 cle four feet across. This I have kept up each year, leaving orchard still 

 in grass ; trees are making a good healthy growth. A few Ben Davis 

 bore fruit in 1887, and last spring it was a sight to see the bloom on this 

 young orchard, and I was looking ahead for a big job plucking fruit or 

 thining out from the young trees. But Dakota saved me the trouble by 

 sending one of her cold waves down here after fruit was nicely set, and 

 that cold wave did more in one night than I could have done in a week 

 of good work. Result— this season a strong growth of good wood, and 

 if Dakota will keep her blizzards at home next spring, I hope to show 

 you fruit next winter from that orchard. 



In closing I want to say one word about planting trees from an 

 ornamental standpoint as well as financial. When a small boy living at 

 home in York state, father set out a row of maple trees on two sides of 

 his farm, lying on the main road; this must have been fifty years ago, for 

 at fourteen years of age I left that home to work my own passage 

 through life, and the trees were then fair size, but I returned afterwards 

 to that old home and many a time have sat under and enjoyed the cool 

 shade of those grand maples that I had helped to plant in my boyhood 



