STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 73 



have had diiriug the past ten or twenty years we must diversify our 

 crops. There is something wrong here in Aroostoolc county when you 

 are selling a barrel of potatoes at forty or fifty cents, and paying the 

 same amount for a peck of apples. We want to change that, and we want, 

 so far as we can in this county, to diversify our crops, 'i'here are some 

 things about this small fruit culture that perhaps you and I understand 

 better than those who have not been here and spent years with us. In 

 regard to having an abundance for our own use, I think we have quite an 

 abundance of it now throughout the county. We do not raise very many 

 of what we call cultivated strawberries, but throughout all of our 

 fields in the southern part of the county we can go any day and get the 

 most delicious of field strawberries, in their season, and they can be 

 bought for ten cents a quart in abundance. I like them better than 

 any cultivated ones that I have been able to get. But we never 

 have been able to do anything sending those away. We have no market 

 this side of Boston, and I have never known of anything being done in 

 shipping them. So far as the raspberry is concerned, there is no part of 

 the world in which it grows wild so large and bountifully, and with so 

 good a flavor, as in this county. For several weeks in the summer you 

 cannot I'ide out on our roads but you can get out and pick all you want 

 almost anywhere, and as has been said we ship them by the carloads. 

 But we have to ship them so long a distance that we can only sell them 

 for making raspberry wine. I have seen the cultivated raspberry in 

 Massachusetts, and [ think that I have never seen the red raspberry 

 growing any better or larger than on a great many bushes here in this 

 county. 



As to the blackberry, there are not many of them in our county, but I 

 can think of places near Houlton w here I can find quite a number of wild 

 bushes bearing blackberries. I have never seen better cultivated black- 

 berries than on the farm of Senator Nutter. 



I am confident that we can cultivate these small fruits here, but the 

 difticulty that stands in the way of most of our people, for we have not 

 accumulated capital, is that we must have ready returns, and be sure of 

 returns. The market for strawberries is far off, and if we get them into 

 the market they go in late. While strawberries from the south which 

 are poor, green things will sell, coming so early, jet if you put that same 

 kind into the market and have it last I do not think it will sell at all. 

 The gentleman says truly that the strawberry is something that is wanted 

 all the year around, but I would rather have my crop go into the market 

 first than last. 



These remarks apply simph' to Aroostook couutv; the climatic condi- 

 tions are somewhat different in the center of the State. I have onlj- 

 known one or two j'ears in which tomatoes would ripen here, l)ut they 

 will ripen in Somerset county. One reason may be that we are much 

 higher, and cold depends, especially in the night time, quite as much 

 upon height as it does upon latitude. We have cool nights always, that 

 is why we grow such large crops of potatoes and grain. Tlie rust does 

 not trouble them. 



