ORCHARDS OF NEW-ENGIiAND. 



SOME FACTS ABOUT ORCHAEDS IN NEW-ENGLAND. 



BY HENRY F. FRENCH, EXETER, N. H 



Mr. Downing — How strange it is, that after all the preaching you and I, and other 

 sensible men, have done, no more attention is paid in New-England to raising fruit, as a 

 regular source of profit ! An instance of Yankee shrewdness has recently come to my 

 knowledge, which well illustrates the advantages of knowing something on this sultject. 

 In the spring of 1846, a Mr. W. M'as engaged in grafting apple trees, in various parts of 

 Rockingham count}^, and with the rest, grafted enough to amount to about twelve dollars, 

 for Mr. R., of Brentwood, upon an old orchard of natural fruit, consisting of about one 

 hundred trees. Mr. R. thought it rather extravagant to expend so much in an experiment 

 so hopeless, and W. finally proposed that he would go on in subsequent years, and graft 

 as many of the old trees as he chose, do the necessary pruning, and receive for his pay 

 one half the fruit that should grow on his grafts during the next twelve j^ears, and R. 

 should cultivate the land among them, for his own profit. This was considered a very li- 

 beral proposition, and at once accepted, and the contract was reduced to writing, and ex- 

 ecuted. I happened to beat Brentwood during the past autumn, just after W. had called 

 for his share of the fruit, and learned that the scions set in 1846, for setting which, he 

 had charged twelve dollars, produced sixteen barrels of marketable Baldwin Apples, 

 worth twenty-four dollars. INIr. R. had become so far convinced of his mistake, that he 

 offered W. one hundred dollars to release his interest in the orchard, which W. promptly 

 declined. I soon afterwards met W., and conversed with him on the subject, and he said 

 that so far from releasing his interest in the contract, for that sum, he would not sell his 

 share of the fruit/or om xjiar, for that amount, and allow the purchaser to choose it out 

 of the term. 



He has now grafted most of the trees with the Baldwin Apple, and thinks he shall get more 

 than a hundred dollars a year, in each of the even years of the last half of his term. The 

 evzn year is, as you well know, the bearing year for the Baldwin, throughout New-Eng- 

 land. Mr. W. further informs me, that he has made many similar contracts in the neigh- 

 borhood, and has acquired an interest in about one thousand trees; that his share of ap- 

 ples, grown on land of other people, the past fall, was ninety barrels, and that none of 

 the scions which produced it were set prior to 1845. He grafted one tree in 1845, which 

 produced in 1850, six barrels of fruit, and that he knows fifty trees which this year pro- 

 duced ten barrels each, w^orth in all, ^'750. 



Now, there are scattered all over New-England, orchards, of natural fruit, which is 

 either fed to swine, or made into cider. As food for swine, soar apples are a little better 

 than nothing. I have given hundreds of bushels to my swine, which seemed to find at 

 least a rational amusement in eating them. Indeed, for store pigs, they do tolerably well, 

 but for fattening animals, I should adopt the principle laid down in the good woman's 

 receipt for making saAvdust bread, " the less sawdust, the better the bread." Sweet ap- 

 ples are worth, perhaps, one-sixth as much per bushel, as food for animals, as Indian corn, 

 and this will just about pay for gathering them. 



As to cider, we estimate that eight bushels of apples, will make one barrel of cider, 

 Avorth one dollar and fifty cents, which will not pay a man who has any thing else to do, 

 for his labor in making it, if you give him the fruit on the trees. The natural fruit, then, 

 no value, and the facts before stated, show how readily the useless trees which pro- 

 , may be made valuable 



