March, 191 5 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST 



59 



these have not wintered well. At present 

 Mr. Hartley is experimenting with the 

 Early Herbert, which his brother Wil- 

 liam of Sunnyside Farm has found to 

 be earlier and hardier than any of the 

 standard varieties. 



At the time of our visit the raspberries 

 were just starting to ripen. We re- 

 marked that there would be much pick- 

 ing to be done next week, and asked 

 where the pickers came from. 



"Oh we have little difficulty to find 

 pickers," was the ready response. "They 

 come from all directions. We have forty 

 that we can call on at any time. Next 

 week we will have over fifty pickers 

 here. We send a team to Milton and 

 bring a load of children from there. 

 Then there are always pickers available 

 in the families of the men who work in 

 the neighboring brick yards. The farm 

 children around, too, like to make a little 

 money picking for us." For cherries 

 the pickers are paid 15 cents for an 

 eleven-quart basket, and one boy has 

 picked as high as seventeen baskets in 

 a day. Strawberries are paid for at the 

 rate of one cent a quart, raspberries two 

 cents, and black currants two cents. 



Once a raspberry plantation is es- 

 tablished, the Hartleys plan to carry 

 It on for many years. Last spring, for 

 instance, they plowed down a plantation 

 that had yielded fourteen crops. The old 

 canes are cut out each year in Decem- 

 ber or the early spring and all grass is 

 cut away with a raspberry fork. Both 

 strawberries and raspberries are fertiliz- 

 ed with barnyard manure and with com- 

 mercial fertilizer. This year only part 



of the raspberry plantation got an ap- 

 plication of commercial fertilizer. "I 

 believe that that portion looks twice as 

 good as the unfertilized part of the 

 field," said Miss Hartley. 



THE TBEE FRUITS 



Having examined the thirty acre fruit 

 plantation we then passed back to the 

 front of the farm where are all of the 

 tree fruits. Of these, cherries take the 

 place of first importance. The major 

 portion of the plantation is six years old. 

 Having been well cultivated and fertiliz- 

 ed from the first they have made a splen- 

 did growth, and this year yielded four 

 baskets to the tree. Speaking of var- 

 ieties Miss Hartley said: "I heard fa- 

 ther remark that if he were putting out 

 five hundred cherry trees, four hundred 

 and ninety-nine would be Montmorency, 

 and he did not know but what he would 

 make the last one Montmorency too," 

 which would seem to indicate that the 

 Early Richmond, which is also grown, 

 has not proved as profitable a variety as 

 the Montmorency. In addition, there are 

 a few trees of sweet cherries, but these 

 do not yield as profitable crops as the 

 red ones, even when the higher price is 

 considered. 



The small fruit plantation consists of 

 five hundred bushes of black currants, 

 planted six feet apart each way, and 

 about two hundred bushes of red cur- 

 rants. These latter are not considered 

 so profitable as the black, as the price 

 is always low. 



THE PEAOH ORCHARD 



To the casual visitor the most sur- 



prising part of the Hartley operations 

 is their peach orchard. They have a 

 nice young plantation of five hundred 

 trees of Early and Late Crawford and 

 Elberta. The plantation is too young 

 to produce crops as yet, but the' Hart- 

 leys believe that they can make peach 

 culture profitable. Mr. Wm. Hartley 

 has been growing peaches for many 

 years on his farm a short distance away 

 and has harvested many profitable crops. 

 Another money-making crop with the 

 Hartleys is potatoes, of which they last 

 year had fourteen acres. Their potato 

 planter has a fertilizing attachment ; the 

 Hartleys are large users of commercial 

 fertilizers. This year they found it so 

 profitable to rent their planter to neigh- 

 bors that another year they are plan- 

 ning to get a second one for their own 

 use and rent the one they now have. A 

 digger is owned on shares. Cobbler 

 and Snider 's Early are the early varie- 

 ties preferred, with Dooley's and Rural 

 New Yorker for late. 



"And how do you like fruit farming?" 

 we asked Miss Hartley. 



"There's nothing like it," was the 

 enthusiastic response. " I wouldn't 

 chang-e to the city for anything." . 



Mr. Hartley's success as I see it lay 

 in his ability to see the possibilities of 

 his farm and district. He has developed 

 gradually and surely until now he has 

 a farm profitable enough to ensure him 

 a good living and more to him and his 

 family for the rest of his days; and he 

 does not consider himself an old man 

 by any means. One point he emphasizes 

 —the necessity of capital for the young 



heaTily ladeD buab of black ourrants Hartley is shown m the third «oene. holdluif a 



