STATE POMOIvOGlCAL, SOCIETY. 75 



Mr. Breed: You touch my modesty, Mr. President. Up to 

 the present year my friend Dawes tells me — and he knows the 

 farm, we touch elbows over the back fence, our farms join at 

 the rear — he tells me that 600 barrels has been the maximum 

 crop. This year my crop is almost 1400, But I will say right 

 here that since the first year that I was on the farm, with the 

 exception of making slight applications of nitrate of soda I have 

 not used any chemicals on my apple orchard. I fenced off a 

 small portion of one of the orchards, or the main orchard, and 

 put pigs in there the first year that I was there. The result was 

 so pleasing to me that last year I took in the whole orchard or 

 about 14 acres and fenced it and turned in about thirty, large and 

 small, swine. They went to work and worked it over. I didn't 

 feed them at all after the middle of May until I took them out 

 of the orchard just before picking the fruit. The consequence 

 w^as they didn't grow as swine would that had been fed but I 

 got some work out of them. I told them it was "root, hog, or 

 die" and they took the easiest part of it which was to root. I 

 put them in there the same this year, and at the present time of 

 the whole fourteen acres there isn't a half acre but what has 

 been completely turned over by the pigs. 



O. Haven't they done as much as the phosphate in your 

 judgment? 



A. I will say this that in my judgment the fruit is not so large 

 this year as it would have been if I had used chemicals, for this 

 reason : The first year that I was there I used the chemicals and 

 I had some of the finest and largest Baldwin apples that I ever 

 saw. I cannot say it of this year. But what has been lost in 

 size and all that has been more than made up in number. I have 

 got a big crop but I really don't think that the apples are so large 

 on the average, in fact I know they have not been so large as 

 they were the first year I was there, those trees around which I 

 placed the chemicals. 



Mr. Gilbert: We have another fruit grower with us who 

 has been after the same object but approached it from a slightly 

 different tangent. I will call upon Mr. Phinney of Standish who 

 has been successful in renovating an old orchard and in growing 

 a new one, and in obtaining fruit from both. 



C. S. Phinney: Some time ago the secretary of this society 

 approached me and asked me if I would prepare a paper on the 



