49o 
THE  RURAL  NEW-YORKER 
July  30 
that  payed  and  discarding  those  that  did  not.  They 
first  raised  parly  cabbages  to  the  extent  of  one  acre,  and 
now  they  raise  18  or  20  acres,  so  as  the  amount  of  the 
crop  progressed  the  means  of  transportation  had  to 
progress  also.  They  found  that  early  cabbages,  straw¬ 
berries  and  early  potatoes  sold  for  more  money  in  the 
New  England  markets  than  in  New  York  until  the 
native  New  England  stuff  came  in,  so  the  problem  was 
to  get  them  there.  As  their  farm  adjoined  the  bay,  they 
conceived  the  idea  of  having  a  dock  of  their  own  and 
a  vessel  also,  as  this  plan  would  enable  them  to  ship 
this  bulky  produce  just  where  and  when  they  had  a 
mind  to.  The  difficulties  in  the  way  were  that  the 
channel  leading  out  into  the  bay  was  crooked  and  nar¬ 
row  and  the  water  was  so  shallow  that  the  mud  had 
to  be  dug  out  before  a  vessel  could  reach  their  dock. 
Lucius  built  a  mud  digger  to  open  a  channel  out  into 
the  bay.  People  laughed  at  him,  said  he  was  a  fool, 
and  that  he  was  throwing  his  money  away,  that  he 
would  never  dig  a  channel  and  that  it  would 
not  pay  him  if  he  did,  and  if  he  had  never  done 
any  more  business  than  his  critics,  they  would 
have  been  right.  They  did  not  realize  the  fact  that  a 
man  who  had  the  enterprise  to  build  a  dock  would 
have  enterprise  enough  to  use  it  after  it  had  been 
built,  and  the  dock  of  Messrs,  llallock  &  Son  is  worth 
$1,000  a  year  to  them  now.  At  last  steam  had  to  sup¬ 
plant  the  uncertainty  of  wind  and  sails,  and  three 
years  ago  they  bought  the  steamer  Jud  Field,  con¬ 
verted  her  into  a  freighter,  and  she  has  steamed  in  and 
out  from  her  owner’s  dock,  bearing  his  produce  and 
also  that  of  the  very  men  who  called  him  a  fool  for 
digging  mud.  The  purchase  of  the  steamer,  which 
was  a  necessity  for  marketing  the  early 
crops,  led  him  incidentally  to  another 
business  apart  from  the  farm.  The  ex¬ 
pense  of  running  the  Jud  Field  back 
from  New  York  would  be  no  greater  if 
she  were  loaded  than  if  she  were  light, 
so  the  proprietors  wished  to  freight 
the  coal  for  the  dealers  here,  but  were 
refused.  The  consequence  was  that 
they  put  up  coal  bins  of  tbeir  own  and 
went  into  the  business  of  selling  coal  on 
their  ow  n  hook,  and  in  a  few'  years 
Messrs.  Hallock  &  Son  will  be  the  only 
dealers  here,  because  they  buy  and 
sell  for  cash  only. 
A  Vegetable  Factory  Plant. 
To  any  one  who  had  not  seen  this 
place  for  the  past  20  years,  it  would 
seem  almost  like  going  into  another 
world.  Coming  from  the  wrest,  we 
arrive  at  the  residence  of  the  proprie¬ 
tors,  a  large,  two-story  double  house, 
or  rather  two  houses  under  one  roof, 
as  one  side  is  the  duplicate  of  the  other, 
and  they  are  separated  only  by  a  large 
hall.  See  Fig.  210.  It  was  built  some 
three  or  four  years  ago,  and  the  elder 
Mr.  Hallock  occupies  the  east  side  and 
his  son  the  west.  A  steam  heater  in 
the  cellar  warms  the  whole  house  in  the  most  economi¬ 
cal  manner.  Just  to  the  east  stands  the  old  house 
w'hich  .sheltered  our  friends  during  their  struggles 
with  fate  and  fortune  years  ago,  and  which  is  now  occu¬ 
pied  by  one  of  their  foremen.  On  the  other  side  of  the 
new  road  stand  the  barn,  sheds,  stables,  cribs,  ice¬ 
house,  etc.  In  1890  three  cold-storage  rooms,  w’itli  a 
capacity  of  about  2,000  bushels,  were  placed  in  the 
east  end  of  the  old  barn,  and  the  ice-house  was  built 
adjoining.  The  barn  is  surmounted  by  a  large  Chal¬ 
lenge  windmill,  with  two  eight-feet  wheels  furnishing 
the  motive  power  to  run  a  feed  mill,  rip  saw',  pump,  a 
drill  and  a  small  circular  saw  for  sawing  crate  laths. 
All  the  Orient  farmers  use  bushel  crates  or  boxes  for 
carting  produce  from  the  field  to  the  wharf  and  for 
cribbing  corn.  The  shed  on  the  w'est  side  of  the  barn 
contains  the  tools,  and  all  of  them  that  are  used  dur¬ 
ing  the  day  are  cleaned,  greased  and  hung  up  at  night. 
To  the  south  across  the  farm-yard  stands  the  two-story 
shop  with  the  smithy  in  the  rear.  The  little  room  in 
the  corner  of  the  shop  is  the  office,  the  headquarters 
of  the  whole  business,  which  has  grown  so  that  it 
w'ill  soon  need  to  be  enlarged.  Messrs.  Hallock  & 
Son  have  a  private  telegraph  line  of  their  own,  one  in¬ 
strument  being  in  the  office,  one  in  the  residence  and 
another  at  the  w'harf,  and  all  connect  with  the  West¬ 
ern  Union  telegraph  line  at  that  company’s  office  in 
Orient.  During  the  height  of  the  shipping  season  they 
have  daily  telegraphic  market  reports,  so  that  if  Nor¬ 
wich  and  Boston  markets  are  glutted,  the  day’s 
shipments  can  be  sent  to  Hartford  or  Worcester  or 
somewhere  else.  In  this  way  the  telegraph  line  is 
w’orth  several  hundred  dollars  annually  to  them.  To 
the  east  stands  the  new  cook  house  built  the  past 
year,  consisting  of  kitchen,  pantry  and  dining-room  on 
the  first  floor,  with  the  second  floor  as  a  dormitory. 
The  pay  roll  shows  the  number  of  farm  hands 
during  the  harvest  season  to  be  from  40  to  45  and  this 
year  it  will  show'  over  50.  With  too  many  farmers  the 
help  problem  is  a  domestic  one  and  a  bad  one  at  that, 
but  by  doing  a  little  more  business  a  cook  can  be  hired 
and  the  problem  becomes  a  commercial  one.  To  make 
the  tired  housewife  sweat  over  a  hot  stove  all  summer 
to  satisfy  the  appetites  of  four  or  five  Castle  Garden 
graduates  is  hardly  the  fair  thing.  Mr.  Hallock  settled 
the  question  long  ago  as  to  whether  it  paid  to  hire 
farm  hands  or  to  do  all  the  work  oneself.  Mr.  Lucius 
says  it  will  not  pay  him  to  do  any  work  that  he  can 
get  anybody  else  to  do.  Following  one  of  the  farm 
roads,  which,  by  the  way,  are  kept  in  better  shape 
than  those  of  the  country  highways,  and  passing  the 
cold-frames  where  nearly  $1,000  worth  of  glass  pro¬ 
tect  the  coming  cabbage  crop,  and  past  the  bean  barn 
and  the  artificial  ice  pond,  we  come  to  the  dock. 
CHA8.  L.  YOUNG. 
(To  be  Continued.) 
Clematis  Erecta  Pleno. 
Several  years  ago  The  It.  N.-Y.  received  a  single 
root  of  this  charming  clematis  from  John  Saul,  of 
Washington,  D.  C.  The  species  is  a  native  of  Austria 
and  has  been  known  in  Europe  since  about  1600.  It 
is  a  hardy  herbaceous  plant  and  resembles  in  many 
ways  our  Clematis  Virginiana,  except  that  the  flowers 
are  double  and  borne  in  closer  cymous  panicles  (see 
Fig.  209,  page  489).  While  far  more  durable,  they  do 
not  fruit  and  are  therefore  not  adorned,  after  the 
flowers  have  bloomed,  with  the  whirligig  plume-like 
styles.  Each  flower  has  four  reflexed  sepals,  the 
sepals  tw'ice  the  width  of  what  in  this  case  we  must 
call  the  petals.  These  petals  are  in  five  or  six  whorls, 
each  petal  directly  over  the  others,  making  a  12- 
pointed  star-shaped  flower  lialf-an-inch  in  diameter. 
The  petals  narrow  to  abortive  stamens  forming  a  con¬ 
ical  center.  These  abortive  stamens  never  expand, 
but  bend  over  and  cap  the  immature  pistils,  remaining 
long  after  the  sepals  and  petals  have  fallen. 
The  plant  grows  about  three  feet  each  year,  forming 
a  bushy  mass.  It  blooms  in  mid- June,  continuing 
about  tw'O  weeks.  The  illustration  is  a  photo-engrav¬ 
ing  which  fails  to  show  the  dainty  little  blossoms  as 
distinctly  as  desirable. 
Mr.  Saul  speaks  of  this  clematis  as  a  beautiful  hardy 
perennial,  with  small,  double,  white  flowers.  Its 
origin — that  is,  the  origin  of  this  double-flowered 
variety  of  C.  erecta — is  not  known  to  The  R.  N.-Y. 
Horticultural  Gossip. 
Mr.  George  Q.  Dow,  of  New  Hampshire,  makes  his 
July  report  on  strawberries.  It  is  interesting,  especi¬ 
ally  as  it  furnishes  more  evidence  of  the  necessity  of 
wide-spread  tests  of  new  fruits.  The  Parker  Earle, 
which  has  been  almost  universally  rated  as  being  very 
productive,  he  condemns  and  says  :  “  What  people  can 
see  about  this  berry  to  deserve  the  slightest  praise,  I 
am  at  a  loss  to  understand.”  In  southern  New  York, 
and,  so  far  as  I  have  heard  from  it  in  New  Jersey,  this 
berry  is  generally  rated  as  hardy  and  very  productive, 
with  a  similar  general  verdict  from  the  South  and 
West.  I  do  not  doubt  the  accuracy  of  Mr.  Dow’s 
observation,  but  it  shows  simply  that  the  Parker  Earle 
is  not  adapted  to  the  soil  and  climate  of  his  farm. 
I  call  especial  attention  to  his  report  on  the  Gandy. 
He  says  :  “  It  was  exceedingly  firm  with  me  this  year, 
and  gave  me  much  more  fruit  than  last  year.  The 
hulls  being  very  large,  green  and  prominent,  are  a 
very  attractive  feature,  as  they  make  the  berries  look 
tine  in  the  baskets.  1  had  thought  of  discarding  it, 
but  it  has  done  so  well  with  me  this  year  and  brought 
such  good  prices,  that  I  shall  continue  to  keep  it  on 
my  list  for  cultivation.”  It  has  come  to  our  notice  in 
more  than  one  section,  that  the  Gandy  was  gaining 
friends.  It  has  always  been  rated  a  good,  high  quality, 
firm  berry,  late,  but  rather  unproductive.  Recently 
it  seems  to  be  improving  in  productiveness  and  bids 
fair  to  increase  in  popularity. 
By  the  way,  here  would  be  a  good  opportunity  to 
test  the  virtues  of  “  pedigree  plants,”  as  suggested  by 
the  late  E.  P.  Roe.  Let  some  cultivator  go  over  a 
patch  of  Gandys  during  the  fruiting  season  and  mark 
about  50  of  the  most  productive  plants.  Then  let  him 
grow  a  few  plants  from  these  and  set  out  a  new  patch. 
When  this  fruits  let  him  go  through  the  same  selective 
process  and  keep  it  up  for  five  or  six  generations. 
Can  any  one  doubt  that  he  would  evolve  a  plant  much 
more  productive  than  the  Gandy  of  to-day  ? 
The  influence  of  heredity  is  seen  very  clearly  in  the 
gradual  decline  and  dying  out  of  the  Elkhorn  Cherry 
in'  the  Hudson  River  regions.  At  least,  I  attribute  its 
decline  to  some  hereditary  taint,  as  I  can  in  no  other 
way  account  for  it.  I  have  seen  in  three  different 
cherry  orchards,  the  rows  of  Elkhorn  all  dying  out, 
while  other  varieties  side  by  side  with  it  were  flourish¬ 
ing  as  usual.  The  trees  were  young,  just  bearing 
nicely,  but  they  have  all  gone,  just  as  a  pear  orchard 
will  sometimes  wilt  before  the  blight. 
An  undescribed  disease,  or  whatever  it  may  be  called, 
is  doing  considerable  damage  among  the  black  rasp¬ 
berries  along  the  Hudson.  The  seeds  become  very 
prominent  on  the  outside  of  the  berry 
while  the  pulp  does  not  develop  save 
to  a  very  limited  extent.  It  is  not  the 
work  of  any  insect.  The  affected 
bushes  are  recognized  as  soon  as  the 
picker  sees  them,  and  none  of  the  fruit 
is  picked. 
The  cool  wave  which  followed  the 
heated  term,  and  reached  us  on  Satur¬ 
day,  July  16,  was  a  boon  to  the  vine- 
yardists,  in  whose  vineyards  the  rot 
had  begun  to  show.  Vigorous  spraying 
and  hand-picking  of  the  affected 
grapes  will  head  off  this  destroyer, 
though  had  the  hot,  humid  weather 
continued,  it  would  have  added  much 
to  the  difficulties  of  the  situation. 
The  Jewell  Grape  may  as  well  be 
relegated  to  the  shade — gone  to  hiber¬ 
nate  with  the  Moyer.  Of  the  two  the 
Jewell  is  of  better  quality,  but  its 
bunch  and  berry  are  both  small.  The 
Moyer  has  a  larger  bunch,  but  the  fruit 
is  by  far  too  insipid  ever  to  become 
valuable  or  popular.  There  are  too 
many  that  are  better. 
The  Diamond  seems  to  be  about 
the  best  of  the  hardy  white  grapes 
among  the  larger  ones,  and  the  Green 
Mountain  or  Wincliell  among  the  early  and  smaller 
hardy  sorts.  The  Duchess  is  much  better  than 
either,  but  it  is  somewhat  capricious  and  not  always 
hardy.  By  the  way,  it  rather  looks  as  if  the  furore 
for  white  grapes  was  about  at  an  end.  I  believe  that 
hereafter,  other  things  being  equal,  a  red  or  purple 
grape  will  sell  for  more  money  than  a  white  one.  f. 
A  Strawberry  Talk. 
EXPERIMENTS  ;  NEW  VARIETIES  I  PICKING. 
The  Rural’s  notes  of  experiments  are  always  inter¬ 
esting,  its  strawberry  notes  particularly  so  ;  but  they 
are  always  to  me  convincing  that  each  grower  must 
have  an  experiment  ground  of  his  own  if  he  would  suc¬ 
ceed  in  getting  the  best  results.  I  am  convinced  that 
there  is  probably  no  fruit  grown  more  fickle  in 
its  ways  than  the  strawberry,  and  one  man’s  experi¬ 
ence  is  no  sure  guide  to  another,  though  he  may  be 
only  a  few  miles  away. 
In  The  Rural’s  report  of  T.  J.  Dwyer’s  grounds 
mention  is  made  of  the  clayey  nature  of  the  soil.  In 
my  own  case  and  that  of  a  neighbor,  who  is  a  very 
large  grower  here,  in  Queen’s  County,  Long  Island, 
both  have  a  fine,  light,  sandy  loam,  well  underdrained, 
though  well  able  to  stand  drought,  but  the  experience 
was  quite  different  with  some  standard  sorts.  Notably, 
Haverland  is  spoken  of  as  “lacking  vigor,”  etc., 
whereas  in  my  experience  it  is  very  vigorous,  making 
so  many  plants  as  to  choke  each  other  without  severe 
thinning,  and  the  size  of  the  fruit  is  fair  and  the  vines 
very  productive.  Jessie,  reported“  entirely  worthless,” 
bears  here  a  large  crop  of  very  fine  berries.  Warfield 
No.  2  is  of  no  value,  and  will  be  discarded  in  future. 
Sharpless  bears  here  a  few  large  berries,  but  there  is  no 
profit  in  it.  Bubach  No.  5  has  more  money  in  it  than 
any  other,  but  appears  to  have  fallen  off  a  little  in  the 
last  two  years.  Parker  Earle  seems  of  great  promise, 
Residence  of  G.  W.  Hallock  &  Son.  Fig.  210. 
