144 * SeRaed ANNUAL REPORT. 
all traveled the same road of bitter experience, when if we had 
communicated more freely with each other we might have shunned 
some of the failures; but now that we have an agricultural fa iS 
and a live Professor at its head, we shall be looking in that direc- 
tion for examples of practical horticulture. Ithas been the fortune 
of most of us to have experimented unsuccessfully with some of 
the small fruits, but our failures give many of us our best experiences. 
Since the blight has thrown a shadow over our hopes of profit 
from the apple, we should strive to make up in small fruits what we 
lack in the larger. We may safely enlarge our strawberry, currant 
and raspberr. patches without fear of overstocking the market, and 
we may yet regain the reputation of being a first-class fruit State. 
Truly, the experience of the past two years has not been flatter- 
ing, but we may derive some comfort from the fact that, while we, 
in cold Minnesota, have been scorched, they, six hundred miles 
south, have some of them been burned. 
To arrive at the area covered with small fruits, in our county, is 
no easy task, but I should say we have, of the different varieties, 
as follows: Strawberries, fifty to seventy-five acres; black and 
red raspberries, fifteen acres; currants, fifty acres; cranberries, 
two hundred acres. 
The prospects of a full crop of small fruits are equal to many of 
the past years. Strawberries are one-half to two-thirds of a crop, 
late rains having swelled the fruit set to a good size. Many of the 
blossoms blighted, from some cause unknown. Plants wintered 
passably well. 
Currants will yield about two-thirds of a crop, the few berries 
setting being a good size, but bunches short. The crop of rasp- 
berries is not more than one-third of the usual amount, caused by 
the killing back of the canes by the extreme cold of the past win- 
ter. Plums promise xo yield abundantly, having set very full. 
The little curculio is at work, leaving his crescent-shaped mark to 
let people know that the hard times did not disturb his repose. 
The currant, by some, is considered the most valuable of all our 
fruits being used in the many forms. When green it is most ex- 
cellent for sauce, pies, tarts, and canned for winter use. When 
ripe the wines, jams and jellies made from it help to fill the larder 
of every well regulated housekeeper. In its season it is used very 
much as a table fruit, being very healthful. The old Red Dutch is 
first for profit and quality. 
White grape next. The rest are fancy varieties for professional 
nutserymen to make money from. 
The soil in which I have cultivated currants has not been the 
best adapted to developing the largest returns, but it is such as a 
large majority of our horticulturists have to deal with—sandy 
prairie. J usually propagate by cuttings taken the latter part of 
September or first of October and planted in rows two feet apart 
and six or eight inches in the row; setting top of cutting even with 
the top of the ground, then by turning a furrow with a light plow 
on the row they are prepared for winter. After the frosty nights 
in the spring are passed, the ridge is raked off, leaving the top of 
the cutting even with the surface ; cultivating clean, we are reward- 
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