Selecting the Farm 



57 



chair. Leisure usually is sickness and the doctor. 

 If he is a lover of gold he will treat leisure with 

 respect ; it is his best friend. There is leisure on the 

 fruit-farm but not of the hopeless kind ; it resembles 

 Sunday, rather than an indefinite vocation. On 

 Monday the weeds are still growing; indeed, they 

 work full time, and botany fails to root them out. 

 The fruit-grower*s leisure is his opportunity to 

 stop and think. The more the thinking, the more 

 the fruit. Land thinks weeds and stones, unless 

 you make it think fruit. Trees and vines think 

 sprouts, insects, fungi, and toil for man. Once he 

 gains the upper hand, there was never a more 

 faithful servant than his orchards and vines, — 

 indeed, his whole farm. But once it gets the upper 

 hand, he is amidst the wild again, — a jungle of 

 weeds, a tangle of superfluity, a burden of mort- 

 gage and bad debts. No fruit-farmer ever catches 

 up with lost time. Nature is punctuality. This 

 is the greatest lesson learned on the fruit-farm. 

 May-plowing cannot be done in July. Regular- 

 ity of life is health. Nature loves rhythm and 

 cycles, the regular swing of seed time and fruitage. 

 Once the grower is in tune with his land and keeps 

 on playing the tune, there is wonderful harmony 

 in the harvest. But out of tune, he must expect 

 barren orchards. It is not merely rising with the 

 sun and going to bed with the Big Dipper that 

 makes a fruit-farm; it is the work done between 

 these interesting events that counts. Order and 

 system are Nature's formula for health; so roimd 



