408 
THE RURAL N fcC W-VORKER 
March 21, 
Farm Management. 
COST OF AN APPLE ORCHARD TO 
BEARING AGE. 
Part III. 
Summary. —To summarize briefly, 
this orchard has still at the end 
of the eleventh year to return $157 an 
acre or $2.50 per tree before it can be¬ 
gin to show a profit. But it should be 
remembered that five per cent, interest 
on the investment and all labor has been 
paid each year. The showing in Orchard 
C is much more favorable. This is due 
to a better plan and to better methods of 
management. Four continuous crops of 
beans, one of our best cash crops, were 
grown in the orchard. The fillers were 
peaches instead of plums (the soil did 
not permit of peaches being grown in 
Orchard A, but pears could have been 
grown and these would doubtless have 
proved more profitable). As the apple 
trees have not yet come to the bearing 
age, we will consider the cost of the or¬ 
chard from the standpoint of the peach 
trees. Approximately there are three 
peach trees to each apple tree. The to¬ 
tal cost of growing to rour years of age 
when the peach trees began to make a 
net return over the current cost of opera¬ 
tion, was $106.35 an acre or $1 a tree. 
Nineteen dollars and thirty-six cents an 
acre or 18 cents a tree—18 per cent.—of 
this amount was labor. Interest amount¬ 
ed to 28 per cent, of the total cost, and 
management to 18 per cent. The four 
crops of beans grown between the tree 
rows reduced this total cost just one- 
half. A small crop of peaches in the 
fourth season took off $9.21 an acre or 
nine cents a tree more, bringing the net 
total cost at four years of age down 
to $43.73 an acre or 41 cents a tree. 
The crop of peaches in the fifth year 
netted enough to a little more than pay 
up the entire cost of the orchard. To 
summarize briefly the results in Orchard 
C at six years of age, enough has been 
obtained from the land not only to pay 
the entire cost of the orchard for the 
period but to give an average annual net 
return of $9.36 an acre (this is nearly 
twice the average net return from field 
crops) or 8% cents a tree. And with 
this total net profit of $59.19 an acre, 
the peach trees are just at their prime, 
and the apple trees half through the 
non-bearing period. 
Conclusions. —The costs of growing 
orchards to bearing ages are almost en¬ 
tirely a question of plan and manage¬ 
ment. With a wise plan well executed 
costs may be kept down to nominal fig¬ 
ures. Plans which do not fit conditions 
and poor management may result in such 
excessive costs that profits will be long 
delayed, if not made impossible. My own 
experience teaches me that under my own 
conditions, enough products may be ob¬ 
tained in an apple orchard, both from 
tree fillers and from crops between the 
tree rows, to pay the entire cost of the 
orchard at 10 years of age, except per¬ 
haps the profit lost from crops which 
might have been grown in place of the 
orchard. In my own case this has J 
amounted to about $5 an acre annually 
or about $50 for the period. But lack of 
experience and none too good manage¬ 
ment has made one apple orchard cost 
me $8 a tree at 10 years of age, besides 
losing the use of the land for this per¬ 
iod. Experience has also taught me that 
under my own conditions a peach orchard 
should be made to pay for itself at the 
end of the fifth or sixth year, leaving 
the net return above the cost of opera¬ 
tion as a profit to be distributed over 
the life period of the orchard. This 
should easily amount to $10 an acre a 
year for about 12 to 15 years or twice 
the average annual net return for field 
crops on my own farm. 
While the cost of growing trees 
varies directly with the conditions of 
soil, typography, markets, management, 
etc., every grower is competing with 
every other grower and every region with 
every other region. The man who can 
grow his trees the cheapest and produce 
his fruit at the lowest cost has the ad¬ 
vantage. Most of us do not know what 
our trees or our fruit costs us. If we 
did, we could see how we might reduce 
our costs and we would be likely to be¬ 
come more conservative in our business. 
Speculation would be reduced to a min¬ 
imum. Hence the great need of keep¬ 
ing records. Competition will in the end 
eliminate the orchardist who does not 
know his business and his costs of pro¬ 
duction and the man whose costs are too 
high. 
In determining the costs of growing 
orchards, we should be careful to include 
every item of expense. Labor, though 
important, is often a comparatively small 
part of the expense. In my own case it 
amounted to only 18 and 20 per cent. 
Interest on the other hand, made up 42 
per cent, of the cost of one orchard and 
28 per cent, on another. The cost of 
management amounted to 18 and 24 per 
cent. The costs of equipment, of the use 
of buildings, of taxes, interest, overhead 
and management costs, all or some of 
which are usually omitted in calculating 
costs, amounted to 69 per cent. of. the 
total in one of my orchards and to 60 
per cent, in the other. 
My experience leads me to believe that 
on an average, the net profits from or¬ 
chards during their entire lifetime do not 
greatly exceed the net returns from ordin¬ 
ary field crops. The net returns from 
an orchard in any one year are mislead¬ 
ing. Accurate records on orchards for 
their entire lifetime are very much 
needed, in order to avoid false ideas of 
profits and to steady land values. 
Under good management, however, my 
experience has also shown that orchards 
may be made to pay double the profits 
which can be obtained from field crops 
over a period equal to the lifetime of 
the orchard. As in all other lines of 
business, the profitableness of orchard¬ 
ing depends upon a wise plan formed 
from experience, properly interpreted, 
and upon good judgment in the execution 
of the plan. Careful records check up 
and make definite loose experiences and 
tend to make ones judgment sound. 
M. C. BURRITT. 
Stocking a Fish Pond. 
What kind of fish is best to put in a 
pond fed by a spring brook? It has 
some small minnows, was once a trout 
hrook, but is minus trout now. I have 
dammed the brook and it covers an acre 
or more, is from four to eight feet deep. 
I was thinking of stocking it with Wall¬ 
eyed pike, or woind crappies or bullheads 
be better suited to a place of this kind? 
North End, Pa. a. l. e. 
I would suggest bullheads, Yellow 
perch or crappie. The pond is not deep 
or large enough for Wall-eyed pike. The 
bullhead is the best for a food fish. 
J. A. 
Small Paint Costs Save 
Big Farm Costs 
Heavy farm repairs saved! How ? By protecting 
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W g row ers pay too 
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^ tlie ^ irst hoein o in tbe spring, iooo pounds of 
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