mistakes in varieties. We will grant that all nurserymen mean 

 to be honest, but still it goes hard to plant a good Baldwin or 

 Mcintosh (supposedly) and in four or five years find it bearing 

 a worthless early yellow or greening. It means four years or 

 more to get it back to a worth-while kind by top-working, so it 

 pays to be very careful in buying. 



We cut two crops of hay in this one thousand tree orchard 

 this last year. We also cut perhaps a dozen trees among the 

 whips, and mice have accounted for a few more during the 

 summer, so we shall have to replant a score or so. I do not 

 look for damage from mice this winter as I gave them a good 

 dose of lime and sulphur, put on with a brush before snow 

 came; that proves a cheap and effective preventive if applied 

 below the branches perhaps twice a year. These trees are 

 headed about 2 feet from the ground and each has been given 

 two forkfuls of cow manure this winter, which will be dug in 

 when the ground is soft again. They will be pruned back about 

 half their growth and put into shape as they grow. 



Now, let me tell you about the seven hundred peaches set 

 for fillers wuth the idea that they would help pay for growing 

 the apple trees. One year I sold S200 worth from twenty 

 Carmen trees, and that is the only good story I can tell except 

 that there is nothing more beautiful than a peach when it is 

 just ready to drop into your hand. In 1917 and 1918 there 

 were no peaches, just when the trees were full grown and 

 should have done their best. Up to that time I had sold $1,000 

 worth, and last year they bore so heavily that many were 

 broken down and ruined, with a crop that sold for $1,300, 

 enough to just about pay up for the expense and care they had 

 caused, but little or nothing to help grow the apple trees. 

 This crop was so heavy and the trees so old and high that the 

 expense of picking would have eaten up most of the returns 

 but for the second crop of grass that was so thick under them 

 that I could jar them off as they ripened and pick them up 

 without injury, and they were sold on our lawn by the road- 

 side. Prices were very low because there was not the usual 

 demand for the fruit for canning, owing to the scarcity of sugar. 



The pears set for fillers are coming on and have begun to 

 make returns, and, being longer lived than the peaches and 



