64 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



FAVORABLE CONDITIONS IN MAINE. 

 By R. H. LiBBEY, Newport. 



I do not come before you as a public speaker, as an orator, — 

 but simply as a practical farmer, nothing more. It would be 

 useless for me to undertake to make a speech even if I had pre- 

 pared one. I couldn't do it. So I simply come before you in 

 the mterests of this organization. I have been a member of this 

 organization for several years and ever since I joined the society 

 I have done everything in my power for the building up and 

 uplifting of this society. We are farmers together. We are 

 here as agriculturists, as orchardists, and we are here to talk 

 over how best we can improve our orchards, how we can get the 

 most and best results out of them. That is what we are here 

 for. 



Now a lecturer from some other place could make a great deal 

 better talk than I can, but I have my ideas. I was forced into 

 the cultivation of fruit from circumstances which it is perhaps 

 unnecessary to relate at this meeting, but it was through force 

 of circumstances. My father was a farmer, and when I came 

 onto the farm following him, which I seemed obliged to do, I 

 followed along hauling the same cart in the same ruts that he 

 had, and the ruts had got deep, — the hub of the wheel rolled on 

 the ground. I stood it for a couple of years and then I said : 

 "The bank account is growing short. What are we going to do ? 

 There is no money in farming this way." "There is no trouble 

 in the farming but your expenses are too much." Now that was 

 encouraging to a man who had just come onto a farm to tell 

 him his expenses were too much. I didn't see any way — 1 didn't 

 know any way to curtail. I had lived amongst folks and the 

 same as they lived. I couldn't curtail. I said to him : "How 

 would it do to have a little more income and not try to curtail ?" 

 He didn't see how I could do it. "Well," says I, "I shall haul 

 that cart in the ruts that you have hauled it in no more. I am 

 done. I am going to strike out into a new business." "What 

 are you ^oing to do?" "I am going into fruit culture, some- 

 thing that I think there is a dollar in." And I did. It was then 



