liiairriii-.xru axxu.il mhhting. 



2() 



at least, it never was with me — l)ut t<i ask vou conceniinrr tlic 

 dififerent \arieties of plums or as to a remech' for black knot. 

 The Annapolis \'alle\- is practically one orchard, from one 

 end lo the other. It was there that 1 learned the most that I 

 know about the business of growing fruit. It is principally 

 from the standpoint of the Nova Scotia people that I am look- 

 ing at the fruit industry here. I don't know so much aboui 

 the conditions surrounding fruit growing in Connecticut as I 

 do about the conditions in Massachusetts, but I have been a 

 good deal disappointed in going over Massachusetts, and in 

 looking over the product of the orchards of that State, to find 

 that fruit growing is not of more importance; that more fruit 

 is not raised and that it is not better grown. 



It seems to me this condition of affairs comes about large- 

 ly from the fact that a man going- into fruit growing feels 

 that it is going to be a long time before he will get returns 

 from his investment, and he naturally prefers to go into some- 

 thing where he will get returns more quickly. If you buy a 

 cow you can milk her the next day, or if you plant a crop of 

 tomatoes you get your money out of them that season, per- 

 haps, but you cannot get returns as quickly as that from your 

 orchards. But this idea of the length of time required for 

 an orchard to come into bearing has been greatly exaggerated 

 because the fruit business in the past has been largely con- 

 ducted along entirely wrong lines. A man has set out from 

 a dozen to a hundred Baldwin apple trees upon a hill, using 

 the land for a hay field and letting the cows take care of the 

 trees, and in that way ten or fifteen years or even more elapse 

 before they come into bearing. It seems to me high time that 

 all that sort of thing was abandoned. 



We must take better care of our fruit, and bring it into 

 bearing in a reasonablv short time. 



I believe there is no line of farming which is more profit- 

 able, one year with another, than the fruit business, and I 

 would like to give you a few instances where it has proved so 

 down on Cape Cod. We ordinarily think of Cape Cod as a 

 cranberry country and nothing else, and yet I saw there a case 

 where a man had gone into tree fruits and made it profitable. 



