1912. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
699 
THE CROP OF STONES ON A RHODE ISLAND ACRE. Fig. 219. 
FARMING ON STONY SOIL. and the handling of such soil, are slowly passing away, 
Every year some of our Western readers, who live yet we must all remember that the foundation of our 
on the prairie, ask us to print a picture of a stony agriculture in this country was built upon this kind 
Eastern farm. There are two motives back of this of soil, and this kind of farming, 
request. One is to show the young people now living With changing conditions we have learned how to 
in the West what their fathers 
used to do in struggling with the 
old stony fields, the other mo¬ 
tive is to prove the great su¬ 
periority of the clean and level 
Western fields. This week we 
print two such pictures which 
are typical specimens of fields 
in certain parts of the Eastern 
States. It must not be supposed 
that all Eastern farms are like 
this, for we can take the reader 
to Massachusetts and find him 
a field as stony as the one bere 
shown, yet in half an hour’s 
ride we can find him a level 
plain where it would be impos¬ 
sible to find a stone large enough 
to throw at a dog. The upper 
picture, Fig. 219, shows the crop 
of stone on an acre of Rhode 
Island soil. These stones were 
blown out and dug out, and 
have now been hauled away to 
make stone walls or put under 
the ground as underdrain. It 
might make a Western man’s 
back ache to look at this stone 
crop, but it would probably be 
hard to find five ordinary farm 
acres in the corn belt of the 
West which will earn the mon¬ 
ey, year after year, that will be 
taken from this Rhode Island 
farm. With a fair rotation, 
this cleared acre will produce 
more corn than the best yields 
in Illinois, while it will more 
than double the average yield. 
The White Flint corn grown in 
Rhode Island will bring twice as 
much per bushel as the Illinois 
corn will, but, of course, fer¬ 
tilizers are used heavily, and in 
these small fields the cost of 
cultivating an acre is much 
larger than the West. With po¬ 
tatoes, small fruits, or garden 
truck close to the great East¬ 
ern markets, this land, cleared 
of stone, can be made to give 
remarkable profit, and in many 
cases the stone itself has value 
for building purposes or for 
crushing to make a dressing for 
stone roadways. This soil, when 
once cleared of stone, is strong 
and capable of yielding large 
crops. It will amuse some of 
our young readers in the West, 
who have never seen such a 
field, to think of taking an old 
rocky pasture, blowing out the 
rocks, and using the fragments 
to fence the field, and also as a 
substitute for tile drains in tak¬ 
ing out the water. Some of this 
rocky soil, when properly han¬ 
dled, is almost ideal for grow¬ 
ing apples. We have found that 
Baldwin in particular gives 
fruit of high color and beauti¬ 
ful flavor when grown among 
the rocks. In some places such 
orchards are developed with 
very little culture, but by haul¬ 
ing in manure, straw, weeds, or 
even brush, to be piled around 
the trees. This is not ideal 
treatment by any means, but 
there are such possibilities. 
The picture of the hand sow- 
ing, big. 220 , will seem like a 
novelty to our Western friends, 
who are about as unfamiliar 
with this method of putting in 
grain as they are with handling a hand scythe in cut- make the best use of uninviting soil, and where 
ong grass. Some of these old farmers, however, will strenuous toil wrested a bare living from the sullen 
raise tremendous crops of grass or grain in these ground, we may discover that a new crop or new 
stony fields, and they know how to put on the seed treatment has worked a miracle in the increased 
with such skill that no mechanical seeder can match reward given. We are only now discovering that 
t ior accuracy. Probably such methods of seeding, the fanners’ promised land is not necessarily the new. 
SOME FELL UPON STONY GROUND—AND GREW. Fig. 220 . 
WHAT ABOUT THOSE LOW HEADS ? 
I was interested in B. F. W.’s article on page 46 O 
against low heads, and I am so thoroughly convinced 
that low heads are the thing with certain exceptions 
that I must take exception to him on heading. He 
wants us to remember when we 
were boys, and with our eye al¬ 
ways on the finest apple, we 
would climb to the highest 
branches for them, since that is 
where they grew. When we were 
boys did we ever hear of power 
sprayers, lime and sulphur, Bor¬ 
deaux, etc., to say nothing of the 
ever-increasing host of orchard 
pests which we have to fight 
to-day? I never did, and I feel 
sure that you did not. I do not 
think the boys of to-day go 
quite so high up after the 
finest apples, since they grow 
down where we can get at 
them better with the sprayer. 
We have some old high¬ 
headed trees, of which even 
with a tower we cannot spray 
the tops thoroughly. And 
right here in these tops, after 
tugging with a long extension 
ladder, we find the Codling 
moth in all his glory. 
What are B. F. W.’s points 
against low heads? The only 
one he mentions is that the 
fruit on the lowest limbs lacks 
color. Did you ever find as 
good color on the lowest limbs 
of a tree headed even- six feet 
high as you did on the highest 
limbs? I never did. Of course 
it would not do to head too low 
on low lands, or where fogs are 
prevalent, but with all we know 
to-day about air drainage, I do 
not believe anyone is going to 
plant that kind of a site. There 
is no certain height that will be 
best for all conditions, yet I 
feel sure that on higher eleva¬ 
tions we head too high. 
What are the advantages of 
low heads? They make every¬ 
thing connected with the or¬ 
chard work easier and cheaper. 
I will name some of them. Ad¬ 
vantage in pruning, since we can 
get at and see what we are 
doing much better and easier. 
Advantage in spraying, the 
trees are easier to reach, and 
one can do a much better job, 
since we can see when all parts 
are covered. It takes less ma¬ 
terial, since you have almost no 
waste of material by its being 
blown away in shooting into the 
tops of high trees. Advantage 
in picking; here is the greatest 
advantage of low heads. I was 
in an orchard two years ago 
where 15 pickers were working 
in a 15-year-old orchard, with 
trees yielding from three to five 
barrels, and only three of the 
15 pickers were using ladders. 
All the rest were picking from 
the ground, since no pickers 
were allowed to get in the trees. 
These trees were headed from 
12 to 14 inches, and kept at this 
height. And they had no more 
under-colored apples than we 
did on our high-headed trees. 
Advantage in windstorms; it is 
easy to see that low-headed trees 
will resist the wind better, with 
less damage to the trees as well 
as to the fruit, thus making less 
windfalls and leaving what we 
do have in a salable condition, 
since they are bruised less in 
dropping. Advantage in cultivation; on rough lands 
one of the greatest problems is cultivation. Scarcely 
any is needed with low heads after they begin to 
shade the ground, since no vegetation can thrive in 
the shade. The trees do well also, since forest con¬ 
ditions are what we have under the trees e. s. h. 
