88 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTUBAI. SOCIETY 



eastern Nebraska because of their existence. With all the 

 draw-backs we are having with diseases of various kinds and 

 insects of every description, orcharding pays as well with most of 

 us as any other partof the farm. Honey a few years ago was not 

 worth saving. Cows at one time were so cheap that a calf was 

 not worth saving. We have known hogs and sheep to sell for 

 one and a half cents per pound. Only two years ago eggs were 

 a drug on the market, and chickens were so cheap that a 

 preacher would not eat them. The men and women who held 

 onto the animals and fowls are making money out of them now. 

 It is the man who holds on when prices are low and when 

 every one wants to get out of the business, who is in shape 

 when prices turn as they are sure to do. 



Brother Horticulturists, we cite you to the above facts by 

 way of encouragement. Orcharding in Southeastern Nebraska 

 is sure to loom up again. Be ready to reap your reward for 

 holding on. If we got good crops of fruit every year and good 

 prices for it, the business would soon be overdone; every body 

 would raise fruit, even the Patriots. In 1902 the apple crop cut 

 no small figure in Southeastern Nebraska. In Nemaha County 

 alone there were five hundred car loads of apples. There were 

 at least five hundred bushels per car (these figures are low) and 

 at thirty cents per bushel we have $150.00 per car and this mul- 

 tiplied by the five hundred cars makes the neat sum of $75,000.00 

 from one county alone. With a bumper crop of apples on our 

 hands, help scarce and hard to get, and lack of organization, at 

 least one hundred cars more went to waste. This waste is 

 what ought to bring a blush of shame to our cheeks. Is it not 

 a shame that a man who has grit enough to plant and care for 

 an orahard until it bears a car load or more of fine apples for 

 him, has not grit enough left to get out and seU them? Or- 

 charding will finally fall into the hands of men who are willing 

 to learn the business from Alpha to Omega. It takes a man of 

 grit and full of determination to plant an orchard; one has to 

 learn the lesson "Learn to labor and to wait! " There is plenty 

 of labor and from five to ten years of waiting. 



My advice to young men would be to plant apple 

 orchards now, jilant the trees far apart, not less than 

 two rods each way, and rather than any closer plant them 



