SELLING THE BY-PRODUCT 177 



he went right on. When he had brought the land 

 up to the proper pitch he bought out an entire 

 nursery from a Maryland operator, set out all but 

 a smidge of the two hundred acres in peaches and 

 apples, and hired the ex-nurseryman as his head 

 farmer. 



It is noteworthy that southeastern Pennsyl- 

 vania is not or was not then considered "peach 

 country." All over the farm Grandfather drilled 

 artesian wells as insurance against drought. He in- 

 stituted a thorough and intensive regime of fer- 

 tilizing, cultivating, pruning, and spraying: his 

 best insurance against frost, as well as guarantee 

 of bumper crops of what were probably the world's 

 finest peaches. Thousands of people can, like my- 

 self, testify they never saw or ate better. In the 

 middle of the season, when prices were at the bot- 

 tom, his peaches used to retail in the best Boston, 

 New York, and Philadelphia markets at a dollar 

 apiece and that was before the war. They were 

 always sold under his own brand name. Buyers 

 knew where to come to get them; selling was the 

 least of his problems. He did not live to put his 

 apple orchard through its paces, but when he died 

 in 1919 ten years after he bought the farm he 

 had all his bait back and I reckon, although I never 

 had his confidence, something around a quarter 

 of a million besides. 



This kind of farming demands big capital and 



