1914. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
340 
THE TRACTOR ON A FRUIT FARM. 
Three years ago we lost two horses by 
overfeeding and the other through sick¬ 
ness within six days after purchase from 
a horse dealer who had worked off a sick¬ 
ening horse on us. IIis guarantee was 
worthless. These experiences, together 
with the difficulty of obtaining reliable 
teamsters, made me look more fully into 
the tractor. I determined that if it were 
possible to get something to relieve the 
teams of the hardest work in the Sum¬ 
mer it would mean a lot of saving in 
horseflesh. 
After considerable correspondence a 
manufacturing firm agreed to put one of 
their machines at work on 30 days’ trial, 
provided we would pay the freight. It 
is a one-man plowing outfit, and we tried 
it at plowing first. There were so many 
defects in that particular machine that 
it was always in trouble of some kind, 
and even at that it did about as much 
work as four horses and two men would 
have done. The 30 days’ trial went into 
six months, with considerable loss of pa¬ 
tience. The makers were always fair. 
After doing all they could for us on the 
old machine they sent us a new one with 
many improvements on it, which over¬ 
came a large proportion of our previous 
troubles. They sent an experienced man 
to start it and stay with us until the 
machine was satisfactory. 
The plowing was not perfect, as the bot¬ 
toms were fashioned for the West, and 
are not the best for us. However it 
did better work than four-fifths of our 
teamsters do, and it will plow any depth 
you desire. It is kept so busy doing 
other work that it is seldom used for 
plowing. We find it very valuable as 
a tractor pulling machines that four 
horses could not start and eight horses 
could not work steadily in hot weather. 
For level cultivation in orchards and 
preparation of seed beds for grain and 
grass we use an eight-foot double-cuta¬ 
way engine disk harrow with 20-inch 
disk. It pulls this as fast as my driving 
horse will walk for eight hours per day, 
week after week in the hottest weather. 
The time spent on repairing will not 
amount to any more than horseshoeing 
would have totalled for equal amount of 
work. The upkeep will not exceed the 
feed bill of the extra horses, and pay for 
the extra men to work and care for the 
horses would more than pay for the run¬ 
ning expenses of the tractor. It costs us 
about $3.25 per 10-liour day for oil, grease 
and gasoline. This particular machine has 
very high wheels, which makes it less 
desirable for orchard work than a low- 
wheel tractor, but it has so many uses 
on our farm that really we would not 
know how to get along without it now. 
We do a lot of deep work with a deep 
tiller, we found this a horse-killer, but 
for our tractor it is child’s play to plow 
12 inches wide and 1G inches deep. Dur¬ 
ing the past Fall in digging fruit trees 
in the nursery we were able to dig sev¬ 
eral inches deeper by using the tractor 
than we could have possibly done with 
horses. We had less damaged trees and 
did the work in about one-tliird the time 
usually required for this work. 
I can readily understand why the trac¬ 
tor has been condemned, as has been 
every new farm machine yet introduced. 
It takes time, patience and some mechan¬ 
ical knowledge to find the best use for 
these innovations, and to condemn with¬ 
out trial is a very common practice. 
We have seen many machines, and never 
saw a perfect one yet, but our tractor 
gives us no more trouble for service ren¬ 
dered than does our binder or mower. 
Is it true that, to the average farmer 
and fruit grower, these troubles seem 
more difficult to overcome, yet after two 
years’ experience we find them no more 
annoying. In conclusion, let me advise 
the man who has neither patience nor 
mechanical ability to leave the tractor 
out of his equipment. 
New Jersey. Walter c. black. 
PREPARING FOR STRAWBERRIES. 
I have a field now in rye that I wish 
to set to strawberries one year from this 
Spring. This field was in a sparse 
clover sod in the Spring of 1911. The 
sod was plowed under and buckwheat 
sown and plowed under, followed by rye. 
The rye was manured the next Spring 
and the field set to strawberries. By 
the Fall of 1912, the white grubs had 
practically taken the whole field. The 
field was picked and plowed up, and 
sowed to buckwheat, followed by rye. 
We expect to manure the rye and plant 
corn next Spring, manure again in the 
Fall, and use about 500 pounds of 2-8-10 
fertilizer in the Spring. The land is a 
gravel loam, that “throws” lots of sorrel 
and gives other evidence of being pretty 
sour. Do you think I can depend on the 
cultivation of the corn to get rid of the 
grubs? Would I better plow in the Fall 
at the proper time as a further safe¬ 
guard against the grubs? H. T. 
Michigan. 
But for the grubs, this plan properly 
carried out would seem to be first-rate 
preparation for a strawberry crop. From 
choice we should keep the manure off 
the rye, and not use manure at all be¬ 
fore the strawberries. We should plow 
under the rye as you suggest, and use 
more fertilizer if need be, rather than put 
on the manure. You cannot entirely de¬ 
pend on killing out the last of the white 
grubs this year, but with the most 
thorough cultivation possible there will 
be few of them left. They may still 
cause some trouble, as their life history 
shows that they carry over a number of 
years, but the work you suggest doing 
is probably the best plan that you can 
take up for killing out the grubs. At the 
last cultivation of corn we should sow 
buckwheat and Cow-horn turnips, in 
order to add as much humus as possible 
to the soil. Then late in the Fall we 
should plow these crops under, leaving 
the furrows rough through the Winter. 
Fall plowing does help to clean out the 
grubs, and if it is possible to have a 
flock of poultry, or a drove of active 
young pigs follow the plow, these helpers 
will get many a grub that would other¬ 
wise be left over. The plan is a good 
one, but for its full success the most 
thorough cultivation snouhl be given up 
to the time of seeding the cover crop. 
TRACTOR AT WORK IN ORCHARD. 
A XY particular type of soil requires entirely differ- 
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producing maximum yields of different crops. The 
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plant food it already contains, and the kind of crops 
you intend to grow on each field. 
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