1U124. 
THE RURAL NEW-VORKER 
1283 
NORTH CAROLINA APPLE GROWING. 
An Undeveloped Country in Sight. 
Chance took me to Northwestern North Carolina 
recently, and into the sections of the great Yadkin 
Valley, centering at North Wilksboro. It is a great 
valley indeed, lying full 35 miles in width between 
the Blue Ridge to the north and the Brushy Range to 
the south, and at the river level, quite 1,000 feet above 
the sea. It pictures itself into a wonderful pano¬ 
rama of mountains, valleys, plateaus, hills, knobs, 
ridges and spurs. Hardly a fifth of the land is yet 
developed, though settled long before the Revolution, 
and here one has to travel up the mountainsides only 
to the first range of the knobby foothills and see 
some of the orchards before he is forced to admit 
that here is a wonderful apple region, not excelled 
in the United States. The first orchard one enters* 
and sees the trees bending under their loads of per¬ 
fectly grown and colored Limbertwigs, one is ready 
to affirm that the half has never been told. And yet 
all this country has for a half 
century been a great apple section, 
but never until the last few years 
has the idea of growing apples for 
the great markets been thought a 
possibility. Orchards are old 
here. Apple trees 100 years old 
are common, but this was known 
—that the trees grew better, bore 
larger burdens of fruit, and were 
safer from frost, Spring and Fall, 
if these orchards were planted on 
the spurs, ridges and knobs of the 
low mountain ranges, at least 400 
feet above the river. So one finds 
few trees on the flat lands, and 
all through the Brushy Mountains 
of this particular section one sees 
the orchards crowning the round¬ 
ed knobs, hanging upon the steep 
hillsides, up to and on to the sum¬ 
mits of the high ridges, for the 
Brushy Mountains seem made up 
of three at least parallel ridges, 
Poor’s Knob being the towering 
sentinel and landmark for the 
roiling, tumbling confusion of 
hills, yet two-thirds wooded, that 
make up this local range. 
The story of this particular sec¬ 
tion and its new discovery is in¬ 
teresting, and may be told in few 
words. This section of North 
Carolina was once noted for the 
excellent brands of “apple jack” 
made hereabouts, and fruit rais¬ 
ing was a farm industry that had 
a money income, for the apples 
were bought readily by the dis¬ 
tilleries, and the farmers were 
inspired to grow the kinds of 
apples that produced the most 
cider. So it came about that the 
big red Limbertwigs were found 
best adapted to that demand, and 
so great orchards were set to 
these apples, with some Royal 
Limbertwigs, Winesaps and Balti¬ 
more Reds planted for a cider 
quality, and not for consumption 
as an apple to be eaten or made 
into pies, but rather to be 
“drunken.” But the sequel showed 
the finest of commercial apples, 
and wonderful keepers, were thus 
chanced upon. 
Then in time North Carolina 
voted herself a prohibition State, and the making of 
apple jack went out, as a business, to be carried on, 
if at all, by the ‘ moonshiners” in a most limited and 
proper pruning raised its production from less than 
900 bushels in 1911 to 2,800 boxes, 2,000 in 1912 
which are graded as No. 1. 
On this same mountainside are to be seen the great 
orchards of Dr. Willis, Dr. Morrels, the Townshends, 
Pierces, and a score of others, each man in rivalry as 
to the quick redemption of his purchase and superior 
quality of his fruit. The picture at Fig. 537 shows 
the picking and packing crew at work on a day in 
which something over 300 bushels were picked, sorted, 
graded and boxed, arid put into storage, the owners, 
Gould and Squire, standing on either side of the sort¬ 
ing table. The pickers are the native mountaineers, 
men, women and children. 
Another picture is that of an average Limbertwig 
tree, loaded with fruit. The tree is naturally low¬ 
headed, pendulous branches reaching to the ground, 
very tough wood, not easily broken or splitting down, 
and a profuse bearer. Apples are large and uniform 
size, richly red, fruit a great keeper, and at its best 
in March. It may be well to state that the two faces 
A LIMBERTWIG APPLE TREE. Fig. 536. 
phenomenon. In the valleys, on the hillsides, on the 
hilltops and peaks one sees the little white kiosks, 
with their complements of all sorts of thermometers, 
wet and dry, barometers and the like, with a man in 
charge who is trying to solve this mystery, but a 
mystery the fruit men count very valuable. 
These fruit men have an “exchange” and fruit 
market, and are pushing their fruit into the most 
remunerative markets, and the demand seems already 
up to the supply, at actually fancy prices, for most of 
the fruit goes into Southern markets, yet last Winter 
it was put upon the New York market in a limited 
way with the best of returns. These orchard men 
are building cement storage barns, the Gold Medal 
orchard having erected one good for 8,000 boxes that 
is pronounced to be in a class by itself for utility. 
Of course all this has stimulated other fruit men to 
try their chance here. While there we met orchard- 
ists who have come from the far East, and from 
even Mexico, and bought not only orchards, but wild 
land, and land is being cleared, new orchards set and 
sites purchased; and an Oregon 
expert who is here now has de¬ 
cided to buy and plant out a large 
commercial orchard, as he “makes 
no bones” in saying that it is a 
better fruit section and the fruit 
is of better flavor than that of the 
Hood River Valley. Of course all 
this is seen through a cow man’s 
eyes, but, nevertheless, it was a 
surprising, revelation, and a most 
pleasing one, for it confirmed 
what my good friend Henry E. 
Van Deman has to say about this 
section—and when Mr. Van De¬ 
man says a thing is so I never 
further question the matter. 
JOHN GOULD. 
PACKING NORTH CAROLINA APPLES. Fig. 537 
that appear in the picture are not Limbertwigs, but 
the Experiment Station professors, who declare this 
particular tree unapproachable in the amount of fruit, 
stealthy way, and the future of the orchard industry perfection and color of its burden for so small a tree, 
seemed doomed. There was no thought by the owners the actual fruiting being eight boxes of Class A, No. 1. 
that the orchards could be made a matter of even 
greater revenue by putting this fine fruit upon the 
market. So the orchards were neglected for years, 
until by some means the fruit growers of the North 
One of the strange, unexplainable things about the 
Brushy Mountain ridge is its thermal belt zone, so to 
speak, along its north side, that is very rarely sub¬ 
jected to a frost. This line, or zone, commences about 
were attracted here, and the orchards began to be 400 feet above the level of the valley and has about 
bought for small prices and then cleaned up, cleaned 
out, trimmed, sprayed in and out of season to drive 
out scale, bitter rot, fungus and nearly all the diseases 
that apples are beir to, a result of utter neglect, and 
with the result that these neglected orchards are really 
400 feet of altitude, which means about two miles up 
the mountain, and is practically free of frost. Morn¬ 
ing after morning we saw the frost line in the valley 
come up to Jim Pink’s house, heavy white frost freez¬ 
ing ice, then skip this 400 feet of altitude, and then 
a wonder. Now on these hills and ridges there are the frost would whiten the top part of the mountain 
fully 2,000 of these orchards being developed, and 
supplying the markets with the finest of fruits. A 
brother of the writer is one of a firm handling the 
“Gold Medal Orchards,” and by care, spraying and 
Dew very rarely falls in this belt—not twice a year 
enough to wet one’s shoes—and the orchards in this 
belt are counted as about immune. The United States 
Government is trying to find out about this singular 
GASOLINE PLOWING. 
I have just read the article 
about the gasoline tractor on page 
1217. I am surprised that Mr. 
Bush has counted the cost so 
cheaply. He claims that a trac¬ 
tion farmer can plow stubble 
land, from 12 to 14 acres a day, 
with these engine plows. He gives 
the cost 'of gasoline lubrication, 
the owner’s time and the plow 
tender, and this makes the cost 
72 cents an acre. I would like 
to ask where the cost of re¬ 
placing the machine comes in. 
The depreciation of such a piece 
of machinery ought to be counted 
in estimating the cost of plowing. 
Perhaps Mr. Bush will know more 
about that after he has owned 
the tractor for 10 years. Is it 
wise for him to omit that item 
just now? 
He says that he has never hired 
plowing done for less than $2 an 
acre, and board the men and 
teams besides. At that price we 
would assume that the owner of 
the team was charging enough to 
cover the item of depreciation. I 
think, as a rule, teamsters expect 
to earn enough with their outfits 
to enable them to buy new horses 
when necessary. If they do not, 
they have to work for very. low 
wages themselves. Mr. Bush al¬ 
lows $1 for the plow tender in 
his summary of the entire total of 
day’s expenses. It must be a very cheap hand who 
can tend those gang plows acceptably for $1 per day 
and board. Since the plowing demonstration which 
was held a few weeks ago, one of the tractors which 
was exhibited at that demonstration has lingered here 
to do a considerable amount of plowing on the Uni¬ 
versity Farm. The consumption of gasoline for a 
certain acreage was kept track of, and the time re¬ 
quired by the crew to plow the field was also kept. 
The results showed that for fuel and labor the plow¬ 
ing could be done for about $1 an acre, but in this 
computation no allowance was made for depreciation, 
which cannot be demonstrated in one single test. 
T hope that the traction farmer will not become so 
enthusiastic over his machine that he will forget 
the first cost of the machine and the subsequent 
charges for keeping it in repair. I firmly believe in 
taking the drudgery off the horses wherever it can 
be done economically, and I also think that a man who 
likes machinery and knows how to run it will ac¬ 
complish more farming if he can do it by machinery. 
I am for farm tractors wherever they will justify the 
investment and the up-keep. e. r. minns. 
Cornell University. 
