and reaps and digs and sows according to 
the authorities—and the authorities cost 
more than the other farming implements 
do. As soon as the library is complete the 
farm will begin to be a profitable invest¬ 
ment. But book farming has its drawbacks. 
Upon one occasion, when it seemed morally 
certain that the hay ought to be cut, the hay 
book could not be found, and before it was 
found it was too late and the hay was all 
spoiled. Mr. Beecher raises some of the 
finest crops of wheat in the country, but the 
unfavorable difference between the cost of 
producing it and its market value after it is 
produced has interfered considerably with 
its success as a commercial enterprise. His 
special weakness is hogs, however. He 
considers hogs the best game a farm pro¬ 
duces. He buys the original pig for $1.50, 
and feeds him $40 worth of corn and then 
sells him for about $9. This is the only crop 
he ever makes any money on. He loses on 
the corn, but he makes $7.50 on the hog. 
He does not mind this, because he never ex¬ 
pects to make anything on corn anyway. 
And any way it turns out, he has the excite¬ 
ment of raising the hog anyhow, whether 
he gets the worth of him or not. His straw¬ 
berries would be a comfortable success if 
t 
the robins would eat turnips, but they 
won’t, and hence the difficulty. 
One of Mr. Beecher’s most harassing diffi¬ 
culties in his farming operations comes of 
the close resemblance of different sorts of 
seeds and plants to each other. Two years 
ago his far-sightedness warned him that 
there was going to be a great scarcity of 
watermelons, and therefore he put in a crop 
of twentj'-seven acres of that fruit. But 
when they came up they turned out to be 
pumpkins, and a dead loss was the conse¬ 
quence. Sometimes a portion of his crop 
goes into the ground the most promising 
sweet potatoes, and com os up the infernal- 
est carrots—though I never heard him ex¬ 
press it in just that way. When he bought 
his farm he found one egg in every hen’s 
nest on the place. He said that here was 
just the reason why so many farmers failed- 
they scattered their forces too much; con¬ 
centration was the idea. So he gathered 
those eggs together and put them all under 
one experienced old hen. That hen roosted 
over that contract night and day for eleven 
weeks, under the anxious personal super¬ 
vision of Mr. Beecher himself, but she 
could not “phase” those eggs. Why? Be¬ 
cause they were those infamous porcelain 
things which are used by ingenious and 
fraudulent farmers as “nest eggs.’’ But 
perhaps Mr. Beecher’s most disastrous ex¬ 
perience was the time he tried to raise an 
immense crop of dried apples. He planted 
$1,500 worth, but never a one of them 
sprouted. He has never been able to under¬ 
stand what was the matter with those ap¬ 
ples, 
Mr. Beecher’s farm is not a triumph. It 
would be easier on him if he worked it on 
shares with some one; but he can not find 
anybody who is willing to stand half the 
expense, and not many that arc able. Still, 
persistence in any case is bound to succeed. 
He was a very inferior farmer when he first 
began, but prolonged and unflinching as¬ 
sault upon his agricutural difficulties haa 
had its effect at last, and he is now fast 
rising from affluence to poverty. 
Protecting Peach Trees in Winter. 
At a spring meeting of the Wisconsin 
State Horticultural Society the protection 
of peach trees in winter, to prevent the de¬ 
struction of fruit buds, was discussed at 
length. One member said that he had suc¬ 
ceeded in successfully wintering his peach 
trees by trimming them late in the fall in 
such a manner as to admit of their being 
bent down and the tops covered; these trees 
were raised again in the spirng. A mem¬ 
ber who had grown peaches for more than 
twenty years in Wisconsin stated his plan. 
After the trees are trimmed in autumn the 
rows are covered with a frame on which is 
placed a layer of marsh hay; two inches of 
earth are thrown over the hay. This meth¬ 
od insures their wintering safely. Another 
successful cultivator preferred evergreen 
branches to earth for covering, but he lost 
a part of his fruit when the murcury went 
to sixteen degrees below zero. One member 
had successfully sheltered his trees by put¬ 
ting shocks of corn around them. The pro¬ 
tection,to be efficient, must leave the space 
between the tree and ground so that the 
warmth may come up from below, and to 
this end the tree should be bent down as 
near the ground as practicable. 
