64 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



enough to pay the freight. Perhaps nearer the Boston market 

 the conditions may be different. We have about thirty varie- 

 ties. The Baldwin was in great demand this year ; they took 

 everything we had, and paid us the price. Some years they 

 will not take them at all unless you have remarkably nice 

 Baldwins, or one or two other varieties to go with them. With 

 Baldwins selling at $2 a barrel, they will beat the Russet 

 to death selling at $4 a barrel. My best trees are in my pas- 

 ture, seedlings that came up themselves. Last spring I 

 staked out about 150 trees that had come up in the pasture, 

 driving a stake and taking a piece of poultry wire and putting 

 it around the trees, to keep the cows away. As soon as they 

 get big enough, we will graft them, and they will yield in a 

 very short time. Mr. John Anderson of Shelburne has an 

 orchard scattered around his farm, and he had three trees this 

 year that yielded him 30 barrels of apples, which he sold for 

 $2.50 a barrel. A vast amount of money came into our little 

 town this year from this source. They took every Baldwin, 

 and they brought from $2.50 to $3.25 per barrel, depending 

 on how they were packed. We had buyers from Illinois, 

 Rhode Island, Philadelphia, I^ew York and many other 

 places. 



Our apples were not colored quite as well as usual this 

 year. We began picking on the first of October, and then we 

 had no frost to take off the leaves. If we had known what the 

 conditions were to be, we might have waited two weeks longer, 

 and then the apples probably would have had a better color. 

 We had another condition this year ; the apples didn't drop 

 at all, but stayed on the trees. Even cider apples sold for 35 

 cents a hundred, and you would be surprised to see the amount 

 of money the farmers got for cider apples. If you see an 

 apple tree coming up on your farm, stake it up and graft it; 

 it will be better than any tree you can buy. I su]ipose there 

 are some conditions under which the Northern Spy can be 

 grown, but not with us. I am grafting all my Spy trees over, 

 as fast as T can. We cannot grow the Bellflower, either. 



But the apple business is a good business ; at $2.50 a barrel 

 they are a good side issue to ordinary farming. We have a 

 man who takes charge of the packing and assumes all the 



