REPORTS OF DISTRICT DIRECTORS. 59 



did a very extensive business in furnishing trees at that time. There 

 are quite a number of instances where the trees have been cared for 

 in a manner as becometh good husbandmen; they are now in good 

 bearing and produced the past season an abundance of fruit. Yet as 

 high as the price of apples is this winter the crop failed to be a profit- 

 able one from the fact that it matured (a very large majority of it) in 

 the summer and early autumn, and of necessity had to be put upon 

 the market as soon as matured or it went to decay and was lost. This 

 state of aifairs caused an oversupply and the price went as low as 25 

 cents per bushel, and many farmers refused to leave their other press- 

 ing work at this season of the year to market apples at so low a price, 

 and quite a large amount of fine fruit went to waste. I found some 

 orchards of from fifty to one hundred trees with not a tree that pro- 

 duced winter apples; others would contain all the way from fifteen to 

 twenty, or thirty crab apple trees, comparatively worthless as far as 

 profit is concerned. Other orchards where several choice varieties of 

 winter apples were ordered, all of which, when they commenced to 

 fruit, bear one variety of summer or fall apples, such as Duchess or 

 Haas. Many of these men are ready to affirm to-day that the or- 

 chard business or the business of apple growing is overdone, or that 

 it is a failure as an investment for profit in these counties. Others 

 who have been more successful in getting a better selection of fruits, 

 say one-half or more winter apples, are more encouraged. One man 

 in Washington county with whom I conversed says, tell the farmers 

 that an orchard of five acres of good winter apples, well cared for, is 

 the best investment that they can make. Another man in Burt county, 

 who has ten acres out of three hundred and twenty in orchard, says his 

 orchard pays him more profit than all the balance of his farm, and there 

 is no farm in Burt county better improved or better stocked than this 

 one. Other instances may be mentioned where the orchard is giving 

 remarkably satisfactory returns, but enough ; we will let this suffice 

 for the apple orchard and look a little to other fruits. 



We have no encouraging word for pears, as the trees seldom attain 

 bearing size, and when they do, one or two years of bearing ends 

 their existence. Peaches are about as uncertain as pears, and last 

 about as long, although the past year there were many bushels of very 

 fair peaches grown in this district. Plums were very nearly a failure 

 in northeastern Nebraska, in 1889, and what few there were that ma- 



