The Canadian Horticulturist. 



105 



pT^Liihc 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT FRUIT FARMING. 



OUR years ago last November I bought a fruit and 

 truck farm between St. Thomas and Lake Erie. The 

 farm consisted of twenty-five acres beautifully situated, 

 the buildings good, and several acres were planted out 

 to small fruit. I may as well say, right here, that I 

 never farmed or gardened a day in my life, previously. 

 I had been a newspaper man, and the hand work and constant worry had 

 destroyed my health, and my physician ordered me forthwith to get as far 

 out of town as possible and use a hoe as much as my strength would permit. 

 It will be concluded from these circumstances that I have not got wealthy 

 in the fruit business. This is correct. But a good many things have come 

 under my observation, and being a man, who, in the parlance of the Press, 

 has " a nose for news," there has not much connected with the business 

 escaped my notice. There was a strawberry plantation of about two and a 

 half acres on the farm. The crop, the next summer, was magnificent. The 

 crop everywhere was'the best within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. 

 I sold a few early in the season at a fair price, but soon it went down, down 

 until two and a half cents a box was reached with no sale. Coming home 

 from St. Thomas one day with a load which I could not sell or give away, 

 I gave my hired man orders to hitch up the team and plow the strawberry 

 patch under, as I did not know of any other way to get rid of the berries. 

 He did so, and the next year I bought berries for the use of my family and 

 had to pay ten cents a quart for them. The two following 5ears I set out 

 small plantations, but the grubs or the frost destroyed them to such a degree 

 that I had but few to market, but this coming summer I will have a fine 

 plantation again, and the probabilites are that every body else will who is in 

 the business. The " flush " year a man living about two miles from my 

 place had a plantation of ten acres, which he sold at a small profit. He 

 had opened up a connection all over the northwestern portion of the Pro- 

 vince, and he knew where to ship his berries so as to get the best price for 

 them. Then, besides, he was a "hustler." It is the "hustler" who 

 succeeds in every business, especially in the fruit business. The two follow- 

 ing years he cleared $1,500 each year from his strawberries, while I had 

 none to sell. 



I have come to the conclusion that a man to be successful in fruit cul- 

 ture, must be first, a hustler ; second, he must know how to sell a crop ; 



