30 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



peaches may be grown but only a few are making a business of it. 



Success in peach growing depends on several things: First, 

 location; we must get back on the hills to escape frost. Second, 

 soil. But the most essential thing of all is the man. One must 

 make up his mind to meet with some failures in any place, north 

 or south; and the orchard must receive the usual care when we do 

 not have a crop. 



On an average we have two crops in three years and have now 

 had three crops in succession. The past season, through some 

 unknown cause, we had the only crop in our section and practically 

 sold the entire production within four miles of the orchard; and 

 this without any soliciting, only an advertisement in the local paper. 



My father is the pioneer peach grower in our section. His 

 neighbors followed suit but gradually dropped out of the game 

 leaving him to master the situation alone, and he won. At the 

 present time there seems to be a new awakening; farmers are 

 going peach-crazy as they call it, but we do not fear competition, 

 even if they succeed, for Parker's peaches have a reputation made 

 by thirty years of honest dealing. 



New England, as a whole, offers many advantages for peach 

 culture over other sections. We have a good market right at our 

 very doors. Fruit picked in the morning can be on the market in 

 the afternoon, almost with the dew on it. We have low express 

 rates compared w^ith the enormous cost from the South; from our 

 to\\Ti to Boston there is a ten cent rate. We are gradually working 

 up new markets to the north of us and, although we enter into com- 

 petition with New York State and Connecticut fruit, our products 

 find a ready sale at advanced prices over our competitors. 



The cry has been that when the great orchards that are being 

 planted throughout the country come into bearing peaches would 

 be a drug in the market. Seldom, however, do all sections produce 

 full crops the same year; then those that fail take the surplus of 

 others. 



Were it not that there are insects, disease, and careless planters, 

 the peach business would be overdone. Just compare our lot with 

 the growers of the irrigated lands of the West — Utah, Idaho, 

 and Colorado — where land is high and a long distance from the 

 market; yet they can put fruit on the Boston market, and at a profit. 



