THE CUBA REVIEW. 



BUILDING A HOME IN CUBA. 



An American Colonist's Interesting Story of Six YeaYs' Hard Work — Success to the 

 Man Who Works Assured by a Healthful Climate and Unexampled 



Soil Fertility. 



La Gloria, Cuba, December i, 1907. 

 To the Editor of Cuba Review : 



IN the " fall of 1901 I decided to emigrate 

 to Cuba and try my hand in the grow- 

 ing of citrus fruits. The growing of 

 oranges always possessed a sort of fascina- 

 tion for me, and although I was born and 

 raised in and around New York City I 

 never saw an orange grove until I came 

 to Cuba, and selected a fine lo-acre piece 

 of land in a virgin wilderness. I was 

 pretty well discouraged to see what work 

 I had ahead of me before I would have a 

 grove in bearing, but I made up my mind 

 to stay and rough it out. I found the 

 prices for clearing new land were very 

 high, and as my capital was limited, I de- 

 cided to do the work myself. 



I found this very hard, as I never did 

 such work before, but I kept at it and in a 

 few months succeeded in clearing 7 acres, 

 which I considered sufficient for my needs. 

 The burning of the timber after it was 

 cut took me another few months, after 

 which my land was in condition for plant- 

 ing. 



Budded trees at this time were scarce 

 land high in price, so I bought some native 

 wild sour seedlings, as these are the best 

 to bud on, and set them out in grove form 

 25 feet apart ; besides this I also gathered 

 about io_ pounds of seed from the wild 

 oranges in the woods and planted out a 

 nursery, considering they would pay me 

 well after they were budded. I also set 

 out 250 cocoanuts, 1,000 banana plants, 

 1,000 smooth cayenne pineapple plants, or- 

 dered from Florida; 150 Florida fruit trees, 

 consisting of 100 peach trees of 12 varieties, 

 TO mulberry trees, 6 pear, 12 persimmon, 6 

 plum, 6 pomegranate, 10 fig, 2 date palms, 

 also 12 grapevines and 100 strawberry 

 plants. I decided to plant a little of every- 

 thing. I also put up a strong fence to 

 keep cattle out, as they were running loose 

 every night. The most durable wood for 

 posts grows here, which lasts practically 

 forever when put into the ground; it is 

 called jicie. 



It was not until in the fall of 1902 that I 

 finished clearing and planting. My next 

 step was to build a comfortable frame cot- 

 tage, and as imported lumber was scarce, 

 I had a lot of cedar logs cut at the mill,' 

 some of which I got ofif my property. 

 The building operations took me a few 

 months, but I felt satisfied at the end, as 

 I had as good a house as in the States 

 I was kept busy all the time, and, in fact, 

 I found joy in seeing how my trees were 

 growmg. I never let the weeds get a hold 

 on the land, and had everything slick and 

 clean. Vegetables of the North grew 



wonderfully. Our vegetable season begins 

 in September and lasts till May. I raised 

 some fine cabbage, tomatoes, turnips, let- 

 tuce, beets and, in fact, nearly all the kinds 

 we grow up North. In the winter of 1903 

 I made quite a little from my vegetable 

 garden. 



My bananas started to bear and I had no 

 difficulty in disposing of them here among 

 the colonists. Pineapples came into bear- 

 ing shortly; the plants were beautiful to 

 look at, some being four feet across, and 

 the pines were monsters, weighing from 

 5 to 18 pounds. I managed to dispose of 

 most of them here in the colony. The soil 

 here seems to suit the growing of pine- 

 apples. I had pineapples which were 27 

 inches around and 16 inches up to the 

 neck where the top comes out — this is an 

 honest fact. 



In the winter of 1904, after deciding 

 which were the best varieties of oranges 

 suited for Cuba, I selected the Valencia 

 late, also the pineapples and the Triumph 

 grape-fruit, and budded my grove trees 

 with them. In my judgment, these varie- 

 ties are the best suited for Cuba. The 

 Valencia late orange is very late, ripens in 

 April and hangs on till July; has good 

 color, nearly seedless, thin skin, heavy, 

 juicy, of various flavors. 



The pineapple orange ripens about 

 Christmas ; medium size, good color, thin 

 skinned and heavy, spicy flavored and 

 prolific. 



The Triumph grape-fruit is of medium 

 size, thin skinned, less seed than other 

 varieties, and very finely flavored. I think 

 it the best of all pomelos and it ripens 

 before Christmas. These are my three 

 choice varieties. My peach trees came 

 mto bloom in 1904, but I was disappointed, 

 :.'s they did not set much fruit, although 

 the trees were quite large and some of them 

 had trunks three inches thick. At the 

 present time (December, 1907) they are 

 four years old, and I had quite a little 

 fruit from three varieties out the twelve, 

 gathering a few bushels of 'fruit from the 

 dozen trees. The varieties which do well 

 are the Bidwell's early, Waldo and the 

 Angel _ peach. My other northern fruit 

 trees did not set any fruit except the pome- 

 granates and mulberry trees. My mulber- 

 ry trees are now quite large, 18 'feet high 

 with trunk 24 inches around; bear ^4 

 months in the year; fine large berries. 

 Figs_ do poorly; pear and plum trees do 

 nothing at all. I have one grapevine 

 which bore some fruit this summer; it is 

 the California mission grape; the others 

 don t amount to anything. I think in time 

 ^e shall find a grape which will do well 

 ni this country, the same with the fio-s 



