ORCHARDS. 105 



57, was a severe one, extending pretty well into the Spring 

 months, destroying the larger part of the orchards in the coun- 

 try. My first orchard had not a healthy tree left (not one now 

 living), and of my second orchard the larger part were killed. 

 In 1859 I re-set my second orchard, planting my trees one 

 rod apart each way and leaning them to the southeast. I planted 

 an osage hedge around the orchard, and set Lombardy poplars 

 on the west side as being the quickest growing trees to form a 

 wind-break. I now have an orchard of about 400 trees, large 

 and healthy, and never lack a good supply of apples and some 

 to sell. My time for pruning is the month of August ; never 

 in Winter or Spring. As the limbs begin to show signs of de- 

 cay by bending, I cut them off, and take out, also, the weaker 

 trees. My trees are so dense that but little vegetation grows 

 under them, and the atmosphere therein is so cool and humid 

 as to be unfavorable to the propagation of noxious insects. I 

 have about half a mile of osage hedge on the farm, and about 

 one mile of rail fence, some of which has been in use forty 

 years and is yet sound. As fast as it decays I replace the 

 fence with three boards and two barb wires. I have about 500 

 red cedar posts on the farm. Am now re-setting some that 

 have been in the ground for thirty-three years, and find them 

 as sound as ever. 



CONCLUSION. 



Our settlement is not noted for big farms, but for big farm- 

 ing. I think we are the peers of any in the State. "We are on 

 the upper edge of the prairie belt, and one mile north of my 

 farm begins the lead ore regions, extending north several 

 miles above Galena. Cedar creek (so named from the many 

 trees of red cedar that once adorned its banks) soon after 

 leaving my farm enters a deep gorge, with limestone ledges 

 on either side rising perpendicularly about forty or fifty feet, 

 and runs a distance of three miles to its confluence with Car- 

 roll creek. This creek, also, has similar and more magnificent 

 scenery in its longer and deeper gorges, and in addition to 

 cedar, double rows of towering pines adorn and crown its 

 brink for several miles. 



