STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 99 



Death came to this household and took the only son. The father, 

 after a iew years of carrying on the farm with hired labor, felt the 

 care too much for his increasing years, so, after many misgivings 

 and heart yearnings the old homestead passed into other hands. 

 And it brought a good round price. Why? On account of its rich 

 endowment of Baldwin apple trees. 



Let me tell you about it. I know this homestead well. Happy 

 have been the visits I have made there, and the memories of the 

 hospitality shared under the roof-tree of this fine old mansion, built 

 when Maine's pines were thickly standing, large and tall, over a 

 large area of the State, are restful as a strain of music at twilight of 

 a summer's day. 



The fruit trees growing on this farm formed the main factor in its 

 sale. And yet there was not a large orchard of bearing age on the 

 farm. Strange as it may seem, yearly crops of 200 barrels, mainly 

 Baldwin apples, were gathered and stored in the capacious fruit 

 cellar. 



Now you ask, "How can these things be?" 



This is a high, rocky farm, with a soil richly endowed with the 

 elements suited to orcharding. If you shouH ever go to the "Nor- 

 lands" where the 'amous Washburn family of Livermore were 

 cradled, to the beautiful eminence now surmounted with a quaint old 

 homestead, the fine, modern family mansion, with a beautiful little 

 church whose spire overtops the unique stone library building, you 

 will be very near the old farm I speak of. 



The rocks were cleared from the fields and these were so plenty 

 that walls were built enclosing ilelds of four to six and ten acres. 

 On the line of these walls were set native seedling trees some seven 

 or eight feet from the wall. These trees were set about thirty feet 

 apart on the line of the wall, the trees on the opposite side standing 

 at a point midway between the trees of the former row. 



These young trees were grafted in the branches or in the stock as 

 the fancy of the owner led. These fields in the course of the regular 

 rotation ; oats or mixed grain, followed by dressing and planted to 

 corn and potatoes, seeded to grass and clover again with wheal or 

 barley, remaining in grass four or five years, then the round of 

 rotation went on again. 



These trees grew from this course of cultivation, as might be 

 expected — they will grow over on these hills anyway — and became 

 quite constant bearers, and give apples that keep till the Irogs peep 

 in April. 



