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near 2 local market. It is rather a difficult thing to make a fortune out of growing fruit 
and shipping it exclusively to distant markets. I have myself a very deeply rooted 
‘aversion to wearing out my life in the behalf of express companies and carriers and com- 
mission men. Yet that is about the history of our business. The carrying companies 
and commission men have been making money fast and we have been getting very little. 
By being located near a local market we can very largely get rid of that trouble, but it is 
seldom that a local market alone is sufficient for us and it is therefore also desirable to be 
near a good shipping point, one at which there is competition, more than one way of reach- 
ing the outside market. From this point, for instance, you have as a rule only the steam- 
‘boat to connect you with Toronto. At the Falls we have a variety of ways: we com- 
monly send our fruit into Toronto, just past your door, as cheap or even cheaper than you 
send yours at the present time. We ship very largely through St. Catharines and Port 
- Dalhousie and we get it to Toronto justvas cheap as the people of Port Dalhousie. Then 
we have as alternatives this route and the Great Western railway line. It isa great 
advantage to havea variety of ways of reaching the market. Now, having the right man 
in the right place, which is near some town or village, you must have for the next thing 
the right kind of soil, which is a very essential thing. It is quite possible in a small plot 
where the soilis not right to make it right, but it would be rather a large contract to 
undertake to make ten acres, not naturally adapted to the requirements of the fruit 
grower, suitable for them. I think it was Henry Ward Beecher who said he never 
respected a mountain so much as he did after he had attempted to make one, and I would 
not advise any one to try and make ten acres of hard clay or very poor sand or swamp 
into a fruit farm, because yon have to compete with men who have suitable soils for the 
profit of the business, and to do so with any hope of success you must start on even terms 
with them. If you start with a bad soil the chances are that the business will be a fail- 
ure as a matter of profit, and, as it is evident that the produce of ten acres of land in fruit 
culture would be more than a single family would consume it is as a matter of profit we 
are considering this question. Now we have the right man in the right place with the 
right soil and he gocs to work. Another one thing is this, and in this I have failed though 
|I generally try to practice what I preach: if you are not able to fertilise ten acres 
‘properly sell five and fertilise the other five. Fruit growing requires a great deal of 
manure, and it is my experience that a great many of the artificial fertilisers are a failure ; 
indeed I have never yet been able to get ten dollars back from a ten dollar expenditure 
in that line. The preparation of ground for fruit culture isa different thing from prepar- 
ing it for the ordinary crops. If you wished to secure a good ordinary farm crop of oats 
or barley you would probably not cultivate very deeply, but with fruit the ground requires 
to be more deeply and thoroughly worked because the fruit will occupy the same ground 
year after year, even in the case of strawberries probably two or three years, and I have 
‘never yet been able to turn in manure so deeply that these plants would not find it, so 
you need not be at all alarmed about cultivating too deeply. The soil should be very 
deeply cultivated and thoroughly worked, and all the weeds eradicated as far as possible 
before planting. In planting raspberries, gooseberries and currants, plant in squares so 
‘that you can cultivate crosswise. Raspberries you put five to six feet asunder and about 
four feet in the row, so you can cultivate both ways. With gooseberries and currants 
you may plant closer, it will depend on the richness of the soil; but as far as possible get 
cross cultivation by which you will find the expense of cultivation very much reduced and 
the results will be better. In some cases of course you plant in rows. At the outset you 
can plant a vegetable crop between your gooseLerries, currants and raspberries, or grapes. 
in grapes I am favorable to the idea of making the rows somewhat wider asunder, by 
which you can get through readily with a waggon with manure, and you can utilise the 
Space between by getting a crop early in the season, because some vegetables will be 
iowable in the case we are speaking of now. In regard to the varieties of fruit to be 
planted that will depend very much on the kind of soil you have. If your soil is entirely 
sandy you cannot plant so largely of some varieties as you otherwise could. With a sandy 
gil my crop of currants would be less and my raspberries greater. One of the things 
shat the possessor of ten acres would be very likely to plant at the outset is strawberries. 
would not advise, however, that any one should do what I have trequently seen done, to 
