STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. /I 



years ago I went into that orchard and cut off the lower limbs, 

 trimmed it so I could plow it, and where the large trees were I 

 kept harrowing the ground, and what I have done in orcharding 

 the Northern Spies I have done with a "harrar", plowed that sod 

 and turned it over and where the trees were large kept "harrar- 

 ing" of it all summer. 



Now I went to a meeting of this society down in the town of 

 Chase's [Mills at our grange hall a good many years ago, I was 

 raising Northern Spies a little then, and there I got an inkling 

 of raising small fruits and I planted small fruits in among these 

 small trees, — strawberries, raspberries, blackberries. As I say, 

 we plowed the orchard and where these large trees were we 

 raised 250 barrels, the most of them from forty trees, and I have 

 done it all with the "harrar," by "harraring" that ground and 

 keeping the grass and everything all down, didn't manure that 

 ground much, it was all in the "harrar." Where the trees were 

 not so that you could get at them I had a Frenchman take a pick 

 and go in and dig and make it mellow. Where the trees were 

 small, I would plant corn in some places, and plant small fruits, 

 but would leave a chance to drive the "harrar" right alongside of 

 the trees. You don't need to make your ground very rich to 

 raise apples. You make your ground so it will bear two tons of 

 hay to the acre and plant Northern Spies and it won't bear an 

 apple ; but plant on a gravelly knoll and keep the "harrar" going 

 and you will get enough of them. Now my son Isaac and his 

 wife Jennie and a young Frenchman picked ten barrels of apples 

 in two hours from a Northern Spy tree. Those ten barrels of 

 apples were worth as much as a middling fair-sized hog. Now 

 a hog is a money maker but I want to tell you that Northern Spy 

 farming is more attractive to women folks than hog raising. 



Last spring I sowed clover upon that ground, calculated to 

 plow it in next spring, but it has been a good year this year for 

 grass to catch and that clover has grown up and in some parts 

 has headed out, and so day before yesterday we turned over half 

 an acre ; we are going to turn the rest of it over in the spring 

 and then we are going to put a "harrar" in — all in the "harrar" 

 that is what it is. Take an old orchard — I don't care where it 

 is — and plow it up and cut off the dead limbs, plow it and keep 

 it "harrared" and you will get apples, — don't care whether 

 Northern Spies or anything else. I am not troubled with the try- 



