178 WE FARM FOR A HOBBY 



expert management. But the expertness, while of 

 a sort fairly common to industry, is practically un- 

 known to agriculture. All that Grandfather knew 

 about raising peaches you could put in your eye 

 except what he read in books. Armed with this 

 knowledge he had the intelligence to figure out 

 how to produce bumper crops of super-peaches. 

 Thereafter the mechanics of production could 

 safely be left to any experienced orchardman who 

 could be depended on to follow instructions when 

 they departed from the norm (probably the hard- 

 est thing in the world to persuade the average "dirt 

 farmer" to do). 



When the trees came in bearing, the capital 

 account was still sufficiently unimpaired so that 

 Grandfather instead of begging the commission 

 men to hand him a little money for his produce, 

 could afford to be snooty. He put the first bushel 

 of peaches that ever came off the farm in a hamper 

 in the back of the cut-under, put on his store 

 clothes and his priceless Panama hat, and drove to 

 Philadelphia. There he pulled up in front of the 

 leading fruiterer, far from the prying eyes of all 

 but a few hundred thousand citizens, and con- 

 sented to trade with the fellow for a trifle less than 

 the peaches' weight in gold. From that time on he 

 sold his peaches only in carload lots, but always 

 at premium prices. He was long on what most 



