PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 15 



is less disposition among- farmers to improve their opportunities 

 for surrounding themselves with the comforts and luxuries of life 

 than among any other class. Living off by themselves, there is no 

 incentive to spruce up the place. With everything at hand to do 

 with, many are careless, indifferent and neglectful. They are en- 

 titled to the best the land can produce, and, with a little effort and 

 by becoming active members of the Minnesota Horticultural So- 

 ciety, they would soon have it. They will raise plenty of hogs, but 

 hogs don't suggest or make necessary any other good thing, while 

 strawberries do; they suggest sugar and cream and health. The 

 only things hogs suggest to me are boils and doctor's bills. May 

 our society grow until every farmer is a member, and then I shall 

 know that he has plenty of fruit, a fine vegetable garden with the 

 asparagus peeping out in the early spring to furnish a dish for din- 

 ner, with asparagus on toast for supper! Lettuce, radishes, peas, 

 beans, cauliflower, spinach, tomatoes and cucumbers will all follow 

 in their season, with the accompaniment of strawberries, raspber- 

 ries, blackberries, grapes and apples. Thej^ are the farmer's pre- 

 rogatives. They belong to the tillers of the soil, and yet they are 

 mainly vouchsafed to the dwellers in the town. Farmers are find- 

 ing out that they are not getting the best they are entitled to, and, 

 through the influence of our society disseminated by our valuable 

 monthly "Horticulturist" and by the good examples set b}^ their 

 friends in town, they are adopting more modern methods of living. 

 Seeing the improved method of grading the streets in town, they are 

 finding out that it does not pay to let the four rods wide of road 

 grow up to weeds, when only sixteen feet is all that is needed to 

 drive on, and so they cultivate the land up to the wagon track. Of 

 course, the5'^ cannot afford to treat the roads as it is advised for 

 towns, but it looks better and is much better to see a fine crop of 

 grain or potatoes growing beside the roadway than noxious weeds. 

 One example I have seen was a twelve mile drive on the Crj'stal 

 Spring road out of Lake City, where there were less weeds than 

 could be found across one block in some of the streets in town. 



In the country the roads are usually laid out on section lines. 

 There are seventy-two miles of section lines in a township. Allow- 

 ing six acres of waste land to the mile, there would be 432 acres to 

 the township. In the county of Wabasha with but 18 townships, 

 there wovild be nearly 8,000 acres of waste land worth $240,000. There 

 are 1,301,826 sq. miles of land in the state; six acres of waste land to 

 the mile would give us 7,810,956 acres worth, at $10.00, $78,109,560. The 

 interest on this sum would, at four per cent, amount to $3,125,000 

 annually. 



But the waste places do not stop here; enter the farms, and 

 around the buildings and fences there is much land that only adds 

 to the roadside production of weeds. I would not like, as is the case 

 on some farms, to have the grain sown up close to the buildings. 

 There should be a good front yard on the farm, not ornamented 

 with a hog-pen beside the road fence but set to cool and inviting 

 shade trees, the ground seeded to grass that can be kept in nice 

 condition with a scythe. Let all the buildings be arranged with a 



