1 62 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



some crops from the orchard before the trees come into 

 bearhig". Then you want to mix in some peaches with the 

 ■apples as I did, and find out four or five years later you made 

 a mistake, as I did. 



Then _\ou all will need that orchard land for ])asture. 

 Perhaps you don't keep sheep up here, but we all do down in 

 \'irginia, and it is a mighty good place to turn the sheep in 

 an orchard, and let them clean up everything, grass and weeds 

 and apple trees. (Laughter.) 



Then I expect you will mow some grass in that orchard, 

 and that will supply mone}' to get a mower to try to cut down 

 the apple trees with, and then after you are all through, turn 

 in the old cow, iti the good old summer-time, and she will 

 want to knock off all the apples she can reach, and break 

 down the trees, and I think of all the 57 ways I have tried to 

 kill an orcharad, that an old cow, costing about $30. with a pair 

 of good horns is about the best way to do it. (Laughter.) 



I was thinking, as some gentleman told the story last 

 night, about the peculiar appearance of some of our orchards, 

 where you stand and look up underneath the trees, thev are 

 grown up to the first limbs just as level as a floor, it is about 

 four feet on the average, perhaps not quite so high, we will 

 say three and a half, but the under side of those limbs is just 

 as level as a floor. It looks as though, somebody had been 

 down on their knees and gone through with a pair of sheep 

 shears or clippers and trimmed off those trees about three and 

 a half feet from the ground. When you see an orchard like 

 that in Virginia, it means sheep have been in there, and they 

 have eaten everything off as far as they can reach, and usually 

 they reach up about three or four feet. So that is the natural 

 way that we grow fruit in the valley of Virginia. We are 

 getting better posted as the years go by, and we are finding 

 competition from the Northwest and competition from Con- 

 necticut, and just incidentally I want to say that, while we 

 think of Winchester. Virginia, as the Hood River of the East, 

 we have heard of the Connecticut Pomological Societv, and we 



