Selecting the Farm 55 



bulb, as grape, apple, peach, potato, or currant, 

 and thus, meddling with its balance of function, 

 we make one part, say the pericarp, a giant, and 

 leave other parts weaklings. The sole fate, seem- 

 ingly the sole function, of weaklings is to perish 

 untimely. So while we are raising cherries of 

 mammoth size and exquisite color, we are killing 

 the cherry tree. This is fruit-farming. Every 

 cultivated plant is relatively short-lived. A fruit- 

 farm is an assembly of plants more or less diseased 

 because abnormal, and the burden of the fruit- 

 grower's toil is to maintain them in a productive 

 state. Defying Nature he yet depends on Nature. 

 Inviting disease, he gives trees and vines medicine 

 to cure it. He sprays leaf, stock, stem, flower, 

 and fruit. He puts medicine into the soil as soluble 

 plant-food. He stimulates the plant by cultiva- 

 tion. He invades the life of the plant and enslaves 

 it to his own ends. Domestication is interference. 

 Despite this bold invasion and conquest, he 

 maintains his plantation in sufficient health to 

 consummate his purposes, and trees and vines, 

 shrubs and roots bring forth some thirty, some 

 sixty, some a hundredfold. The healthy fruit- 

 farm is the farm which, year after year, bears its 

 heavy harvest. This means that the fruit-grower 

 has mastered the art of compelling Nature to 

 produce a pericarp, a pod, a root, a leaf, a stem, 

 to suit his ends. The plant no longer merely pro- 

 duces seed after its kind, but fruit after the owner's 

 kind. The difference is the difference between the 



