PLANTING OF THE TREES 91 



knew his business too well to need advice from 

 a tenderfoot, so I went back to my root pruning. 



We were ten days planting these thirty-four 

 hundred trees, but we did it well, and the days 

 were short. We finished on the 7th of Novem- 

 ber. The trees were now to be top pruned. 

 I told Johnson to cut every tree in the big or- 

 chard back to a three-foot stub, unless there was 

 very good reason for leaving a few inches (never 

 more than six), and I turned my back on him and 

 walked away as I said these cruel words. It 

 seemed a shame to cut these bushy, long-legged, 

 handsome fellows back to dwarfish insignificance 

 and brutish ugliness, but it had to be done. I 

 wanted stocky, thrifty, low-headed business trees, 

 and there was no other way to get them. The 

 trees in the lower, or ten-acre, orchard, were not 

 treated so severely. Their long legs were left, 

 and their bushy tops were only moderately cur- 

 tailed. We would try both high and low 

 heading. 



On the night of November 11 the shredders 

 came and set up their great machine on the floor 

 of the forage barn, ready to commence work the 

 next morning. There were ten men in the shred- 

 ding gang. I furnished six more, and Bill Jack- 

 son came with two others to change work with 

 me ; that is, my men were to help him when the 

 machine reached his farm. We worked nineteen 

 men and four teams three and a half days on the 

 forty-three acres of corn, and as a result, had a 



