1894 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



6()7 



ly great quantities of Catawba grapes raised 

 here; but they are now cutting them out and 

 putting in peach-trees instead. The trees are 

 planted between the rows of grapes, and the 

 latter removed when the trees begin to bear. 

 One of the passengers asked me wtiat I supposed 

 they called those peach orchards worth an 

 acre. I guessed two or three hundred dollars. 

 He said the orchards along the lakeshore. in 

 full bearing, were valued at from two to three 

 thousand dollars per acre. Surely, farming 

 does pay— at least, some kinds of farming. 

 Even away back from the coast, he said, the 

 orchards were frequently sold for from five 

 hundred to ten hundred dollars per acre. I 

 supposed that we should, of coi;rse, have 

 peaches on the bill of fare: but one of the guests 

 told me they would have no peaches while they 

 were so high-priced as at present, fine early 

 ones bringing *:3.00 and upward per bushel by 

 the wholesale. I greatly enjoyed ray ride 

 tlirough the great peach-groves, some of them 

 comprising sev^eral thousand trees, and so on 

 through to Port Clinton. 



It was at the latter place that I had a pleas- 

 ant visit with our friend Julius Johannsen, 

 who has written somewhat for these pages. 

 The drouth has been unusually severe in his lo- 

 cality; in fact, great cracks or fissures showed 

 themselves in the rich black ground comprising 

 his garden. He had an opinion that it was not 

 of much use to cultivate while the weather 

 was so very dry; but I felt quite certain he 

 could stop the ground from cracking and get 

 tolerable crops by keeping two or three inches 

 of the surface soil stirred constantly, and kept 

 fine and mellow. This is the secret of their 

 raising crops without irrigation, in California; 

 and. in fact, the finest peach-orchards on Ca- 

 tawba Island are cultivated so constantly that 

 the ground was as fine and mellow as a posy- 

 bed, and not a weed was to be seen. 



Of course, there is not any honey when 

 months pass without any rain. If I am correct, 

 friend Johannsen has not yet taken a pound 

 from his hives. Hi-^ ground is nicely under- 

 drained, and he is getting small fruits well 

 started. His Uuid is a little oiitsidi! of the 

 peach locality; but plums do beautifully, and 

 he has something like 200 as handsome and 

 thrifty trees as I ever saw. His plum-orchard 

 is well-cultivated, and the earth is kept tine 

 and loose. 



A beautiful graveled road runs from Port 

 Clinton to Lakeside. Just a woi'd here about 

 graveled roads. Through the sandy regions of 

 the northern part of the Stats of Ohio I have 

 been delighted to find some of the Hnest roads 

 for wheeling that can be made. In fact, one 

 can make better speed on them than he could 

 on a road made of planks, paving-stones, or 

 even sawed flagging. None of these can be 

 laid so that there is not an unpleasant vibra- 

 tion as the wheel goes over the joint. With 

 the graveled road, however, there is no break 

 and no jar. It may be undulating a little, but 

 these undulations are like the waves of the sea; 

 and one feels, while riding at high speed, as 

 if he were on the water. I have found the fin- 

 est roads in Marion County. There they have 

 also a soft dirt road at the side of the graveled 

 road; and in stimmertime some of the teams — 

 sometimes all of them— take the dirt road in 

 preference to the hard gravel; this leaves the 

 well-built and expensive road entirely for the 

 wheelmen. As the surface of the road is made 

 crowning, the summer rains wash off all soil, 

 dust, and trash, and the rubber tires strike 

 nothing but the smooth, unyielding graveled 

 surface. One day, after plowing through sand 

 and dust I struck one of these graveled pikes, 

 with a pretty good wind at my back. It seem- 



ed like flying; and I pretty soon discovered 

 that my rate of speed frightened the teams in 

 the adjoining dirt road, and therefore I had to 

 slow up in passing. I once had an opportuni- 

 ty, however, of nuining four miles without any 

 thing to hinder; and as 1 looked at my watch 

 it showed that I made the four miles in ten 

 minutes. 1 do not think this can be, however. 

 I must have made a mistake of about five min- 

 utes in looking at my watch. In making these 

 fast runs, the chickens from the farmhouses 

 are a great annoyance — not so much those that 

 happen to be in the way, but those that get 

 frightened by such an unusual sweeping ap- 

 parition. I don't know what ails chickens' 

 sense. Instead of running out of danger, they 

 seem bent on running ixto it. They will man- 

 age to get right before your wheel, even if they 

 have to run several feet in order to get there; 

 and they will squall, and make the gravel fly 

 with both legs and wings, in an insane attempt, 

 apparently, to beat the wheel in a straight run. 

 Of course, we do not want to hurt them; and I 

 hope no wheelman is guilty of running over 

 chickens when it can be avoided. If it can 

 not, I think he had better offer to pay a reason- 

 able price for the damage done. 



By the way, where there is not a graveled 

 road, there is now scarcely a road in Northern 

 Ohio where the wheelmen have not apparently 

 chosen a path on either one side of the road or 

 the other. After one wheelman selects a fair 

 runway, all the rest seem to follow by general 

 consent ; and the more the wheel-track is used, 

 the firmer and smoother it becomes. Where 

 the roads are very sandy, in a little time a very 

 good path (a very ndrrow one) will be made 

 right through the grass on the roadside. Such 

 a path is not hurt at all by foot-passengers. In 

 fact, the more it is used by the barefooted boys 

 and girls on their way to school, the nicer it be- 

 comes. It is a great mistake, however, to let 

 horses get into the wheelmen's path. I judge 

 that something will soon be done for the pro- 

 tection and encouragement of a way expressly 

 for wheels, where they will not interfere with 

 other travel, and where other travel will not 

 interfei-e with them. 



In our next issue I will tell you something 

 about my exceedingly pleasant visit at Lake- 

 side; but I wish to mention one little incident 

 right here. At one point on my ride I saw a 

 fellow beating a poor old horse unmercifully. 

 Without thinking of the consequence. I turned 

 my wheel into his barnyard and was standing 

 by his side so quick that he hardly knew where 

 I came from. I asked him to stop whipping his 

 horse. He was mad at my sudden intrusion, 

 and refused. When I got out my pencil, how- 

 ever, and told him to please give me his name, 

 he cooled off a little. He said the horse came 

 very near running over his little girl, and he 

 was going to teach it not to do it again. I told 

 him I was a Christian man. but I believed in 

 fair as well as gospel, and that, unless he would 

 give me his promise not to whip the horse any 

 more, I would feel obliged to teach him some- 

 thing about the law. He finally promised, and. 

 to make sure he would keep his promise, I told 

 him I would ask a neighbor to keep watch of 

 him; and if he whipped any more horses in 

 that way he would be called to account. The 

 neighbor told me that this man had been fined, 

 several months before, for whipping the same 

 horse. Now, here is a suggestion: Have such 

 men put under this kind of bonds for good 

 behavior. It may be best for several of the 

 neighbors to join hands, in some cases. 



Every tiling: is O. K. That Crane smoker is a dan- 

 dy. ~ Thos. Myers. 

 "Carsonville, Mich., May 22. 



