lOO STATS POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



he built a storehouse in the orchard to receive the apples while 

 harvesting. There being no cellar, however, the fruit cannot 

 remain there long. 



During the early nineties, as you all remember, the apple busi- 

 ness was at a low ebb and the caterpillar years which followed 

 made matters still worse, so after my father's death in '99 we 

 found it impossible to sell the orchard except at great sacrifice. 

 Consequently we decided to keep it for a while and carry it on 

 as best we could. Ere long we found that we, too, had caught 

 the orchard fever and we have already refused to sell for more 

 than twice the amount which we were first offered. This is how 

 my sister and I have come to be in the orchard business. As 

 she is a teacher, the management of the orchard has fallen 

 largely upon me. 



Our first year was a discouraging one, being the worst of the 

 caterpillar years. We were fortunate, however, in securing a 

 reliable man to spend his whole time in the orchard during 

 caterpillar time and he did his work so faithfully that the foliage 

 was saved and the trees were uninjured. The apple crop, never- 

 theless, was small. 



The next spring we hired a man to remove the caterpillar 

 eggs from the trees and burn them. That year, as you doubt- 

 less remember, the caterpillars hatched in large numbers but 

 were soon destroyed by a parasite, so that orchards suffered 

 little. 



Just before the harvest time there came a high wind which 

 left us with about one hundred fifty barrels on the ground. 

 What to do with them was a serious question. There seemed 

 only two ways open — either to sell them at the cider mill, or 

 sort out the best and destroy the others. We saw that the 

 matter of selling apples for cider must be decided once for all. 

 We considered carefully and decided against the cider mill. 

 We could not take the position we wished on the temperance 

 question when there was a possibility that our financial gain 

 had been the means of some poor fellow's undoing. We 

 resolved that we would never knowingly sell apples for cider 

 unless we were sure that it was to be turned into vinegar. We 

 have kept our resolution. 



But what should we do with those one hundred fifty barrels 

 of windfalls? A good friend who approved of our decision, 

 came to the rescue, and obtained for us a chance to send them 



