HARVESTING AND MAEKETING FROM THE ORCHARD. 223 



location, on a slope facing the north and west, the proper feeding, 

 the shaping of the trees — opened up to let sunlight through them — • 

 bring results that warrant all the care, the labor he expends. His 

 orchard is thinned during the growing season as much as a ]^lichi- 

 gan or Georgia peach orchard, his trees are balanced, and just enough 

 fruit allowed to permit of uniform, well sized and colored apples. 

 His orchard is not disfigured with dead or broken trees or limbs 

 crushed with their own productiveness and careless neglect ; and his 

 fruit picked and carefully packed gives him a result in compensation 

 of more than 33 per cent over others, and he has no barren years. 



I give this illustration along the line of practical and successful 

 harvesting and marketing ©f the commercial orchard. 



Mr. Halsted, of Michigan, is another who stands in his own 

 class, and his orchard is an illustration of cultivation, pruning, spray- 

 ing and fertilizing — and the results show that it is not true that the 

 reputation that Michigan once held of the great apple state was lost 

 because no longer could they grow fine apples, but that laziness, neg- 

 lect and leaving of nature to do all the work was the cause of the 

 decadence. 



But this singular thing remains — and sometimes I think with 

 discouragement to those who strive for greater excellence — that the 

 success of these commercial orchard men does not spread about them 

 even to their nearest neighbor. On one side of the fence are Hal- 

 sted's perfect apples, sought after by the best storage men, bright, 

 fresh, clean and resplendent in color and beauty ; on the other side 

 scabby, wormy, small apples hardly worth the' picking. 



On the North Shore in New York are probably the greatest 

 group of true, practical orchard men in the north. From Niagara 

 Falls along the lake front to Sodus are practical, painstaking apple 

 men. Orchards cared for from setting, cultivated, pruned and 

 sprayed, have given results evidenced in comfortable homes, in sur- 

 roundings of luxury that are seen in no other farming section. These 

 people are trained by precept and example, stimulated by successes 

 of others and, over all, inspired with love for the work. To go with 

 them through the orchard, to hear them tell of this tree and that and 

 what they have done, to see them with loving caresses handle the 

 growing fruit, shows their heart is in their work and love for or- 

 charding inspires them, and that they have thoroughly learned their 

 first and principal lesson in successful harvesting and marketing 

 from the commercial orchard. 



These men have a pride in their reputation and pick and pack 

 their fruit with that in view. Unsightly fruit is not hidden in the 

 middle of the barrel, no drop,. no number twos smuggled in; clean 



