58 An American Fruit-Farm 



and round and over again is the game. A scratch 

 here and a scratch there do not raise peas or 

 cherries. Each section of a farm at its best, the 

 whole is a fruit-garden. 



This routine is Cato's, Washington's, Webster's, 

 ever3rwhere the best farmer's *' succession of crops." 

 This year this section has its soil-crop of clover, 

 next year, that section ; but a third section requires 

 special treatment : we know the needs of the ground. 

 We have a map of the farm always in mind, and 

 we follow the principle of the Declaration of Inde- 

 pendence, ''all sections are equal." Regularity and 

 routine are the conditions of fruit-farming, but 

 the farmer must mix them with brains. Land has 

 its peculiarities like folks and must be htmiored. 

 A ton of ashes on this piece; a ton of phosphate on 

 that: stable manure on this; Alsach clover on the 

 other. There is no hard and fast rule; one must 

 know his land. Here is occupation for leisure 

 hours. 



We go much by colors in fruit-farming: a scanty 

 growth of foliage, a light shade of green, a pre- 

 mature brown, — ^we recognize the signs; the soil is 

 hungry for nitrogen. Small, scanty, dropping 

 fruit means tree-hunger for potash. But abundant 

 foliage year after year and no fruit means practi- 

 cally the wrong sort of tree. Why cimibereth it 

 the ground? We cut it down, grub out the root, 

 and cast both into the brush-pile, strike a match 

 and scatter the ashes around the tree that has both 

 leaf and fruit. To trees as to persons that have 



