THE SOIL 71 



adequate control. We may trap them and 

 poison them, place wire protectors around our 

 trees and make mounds of cinders at the base 

 of the trunks, but the cursed mice will always 

 find a way of avoiding all our precautions and 

 getting at the roots of our choicest trees. 

 Since we changed much of our orchard from 

 a clean culture system to a grass mulch sys- 

 tem we have been bothered more and more 

 with mice each year. We have also been 

 too free about killing snakes, owls, hawks and 

 skunks, all of which are natural enemies of the 

 field mice. Eecently we have avoided killing 

 any of these mouse enemies except poisonous 

 snakes and I have even been known to pay a 

 small boy a quarter for a nice healthy, black 

 snake brought from another farm and turned 

 loose in the orchard. 



I mentioned the fact that we had changed 

 from clean culture to grass mulch in our own 

 orchards. There was a reason. In the first 

 place the Hickory Hill orchards are planted on 

 hills that are quite steep, — uncomfortably steep 

 in places and quite irregular in outline. For 

 several years after they were planted they were 

 not cultivated at all except by hand hoes and 

 then in little circles around each tree. That 

 was before I became a part of the landscape. 



When I entered the scene the first thing I 

 did was to begin "tearing up the earth." I 



