THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 1 67 



The value must be calculated from the cost of land and trees and the 

 labor and the deferred dividends until the orchard comes into profitable 

 bearing. Selling price is never a safe gauge with the peach, sales usually 

 being made under conditions more abnormal than in almost any other 

 phase of farming and showing great variability in every locality. Suppose 

 we place the value at $400 per acre, a sum sufficiently high to cover, besides 

 the cost of the orchard, the overhead expenses of houses and bams that 

 would fall to ten acres of a New York farm. Interest now runs at five 

 percentum so that the first expense item is $20.00 per acre on investment. 

 Assessment rates on land so valued would bring taxes up to $1.00 per acre. 



The equipment needed to care for a peach-orchard is quite uniform 

 the State over and the cost of the several items varies scarcely at all, so 

 that a very close approximation may be made of the total cost. The 

 items run about as follows: Team and harness at present price, $500; 

 spraying outfit, $250; wagon, plow, harrow, ladders, crates, pruning tools, 

 etc., $250; total, $1,000. These figures are below the mark rather than 

 above but the instances are few in which the equipment itemized would 

 be used exclusively for a ten-acre peach-orchard; in fact, with this equip- 

 ment thirty acres could be cared for. It is not total cost, however, but 

 depreciation and interest on money with which we are concerned. Setting 

 these at 20 percentum, we have $20.00 per acre to charge to maintenance 

 of equipment. 



Year in and year out, tillage is the most costly ingredient in the 

 making of a good peach-orchard. It consists of plowing once a year, fall 

 or spring, and harrowing on the average at least ten times a season. High 

 cost of labor brings this item up to $10.00 per acre which includes seeding 

 the cover-crop but not the cost of seed, for which an additional charge of 

 $2.50 must be made for a combination crop of red clover and oats or of vetch 

 and barley. 



It would seem easiest of all to ascertain the cost of fertilizers for the 

 peach but the practices are so diverse and fertilizers are applied so irregu- 

 larly by those who use them at all that the data at hand are almost worth- 

 less. Those who plow under cover-crops regularly, spend little for fer- 

 tilizers; an occasional dressing of stable manure answers for fertilization 

 with many; still more, so uncertain of results as to feel they are " buying 

 a pig in the poke," spend nothing for fertilizers. We shall enter a charge 

 of $5.00 per acre for fertilizers though this is without question above the 

 average even if only successful orchards be considered. 



