248 An American Fruit-Farm 



possible. Winter seemed to be the favorite season 

 with him for feeding the soil. Not a row of grape- 

 vines or of trees was overlooked in the dis- 

 tribution, and seemingly his ground never froze, 

 for I have known him to plow when the snow lay- 

 several inches thick. But beneath the snow lay 

 his last cover of fertilizer. 



It was Neville who introduced vetch and soy- 

 beans into the Valley, and, possibly, cowhorn- 

 turnips as a cover- or soil-crop. The vetch and 

 the clovers often stood ten inches high at grape- 

 picking time. He would smooth the growth down 

 with a stone-boat and, sometimes, by paying a 

 little higher wage than usual. *' Blanket the 

 ground and it will keep warm and be ready for 

 you, '' he would say when putting in his cover-crop. 

 " Don't let the soil get cold feet, " was his prescrip- 

 tion for a large crop of berries in June. I never 

 quite agreed with him about sub-soiling — a soil- 

 treatment he always practiced if possible, but as 

 his orchards and vineyards became older and their 

 roots possessed the ground he abandoned sub-soil- 

 ing. If he had a fad it was for drainage. I think 

 he was always ditching and tilling his land; his 

 farm, as I remember it, was like a city street — • 

 always torn up. Most farmers would have been 

 contented with the natural drainage, as those whose 

 property sloped to the North, but Neville must 

 improve on Nature and drain every pocket. 

 *'More money in drains than fertilizers, '' he would 

 say. And he drained deep, digging wells far 



