. 852 
Vht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
May 17, 1919 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
It seems to me rhat a miracle has been 
wrought with our fruit. Last week it 
did not seem possible that, the fruit buds 
could escape injury or death. Yet, -after 
a week of mild weather, the .sitrdition 
proves far better than we dared to hope 
for. The apples are all bi sting into 
bloom.- A few leaves crumpled up and 
died, but the flowers are all open, and 
on May 5 the ground near the erabapples 
looked as if a snowstorm had swept by. 
The bees worked at this bloom, and I 
have come to know that the honey-bee has 
a large share of that instinct which we 
call ‘‘common sense.’’ The bee will waste 
little time over dead flowers, lie is after 
nectar, and there is no sentiment about 
him. There is no benevolence about the 
good he is said to do in carrying pollen 
from one flower to another. 1 le just gets 
the “stuff” on his feet at one place and 
wipes it off at another. But. at any rate, 
when I see the bees crowding in}*), the 
apple bloom I am ready to guarantee the 
crop. How some of these buds could pos¬ 
sibly escape that terrible storm I cannot 
try to explain, but they have evidently 
comV-by. Of course there are sad-minded 
individuals who shake their heads and say 
“Just trait till the big June drop, and 
you 10111 tell another story.” M ell, we are 
obliged to wait, but on most of our trees 
the bloom is so heavy that a thorough 
“drop” will be a good thing. The trees 
will need thinning. 
* if * * if 
We are going right ahead to dust our 
apple trees thoroughly and feed them on 
nitrogen and phosphate. It is hard to 
state exactly when the dust or spray 
should be used, for good judgment is 
needed where you have an orchard of 
mixed varieties. For instance on May 5 
the erabapples were shedding their bloom, 
while, on the west slope, the Baldwins 
and Northern Spys had hardly begun to 
show any color, while McIntosh was just 
coming into bloom. Our own plan is to 
blow on the dust just as the little apple 
begins to turn its head down. It is hard 
to describe on paper just what 1 mean, 
and if I understand them the entomolo¬ 
gists would say we are too late for best 
results. Now in this, as in every other 
farm operation, a man must learn for him¬ 
self and gain a sort of “instinct ’ which 
tells him what to do and when to do it. I 
cannot imagiuj a man developing any great 
success at farming through a plan of de¬ 
pending on books or lectures alone. 1 riot¬ 
ed or spoken advice is often solid and 
strong, but unless the man can train his 
own judgment and observation he will 
never get very far. There is a certain 
time in the development of a plant or tree 
when spraying or hoeing or fertilizing or 
harvesting can be done to the best advan¬ 
tage, and no one can tell a farmer just, 
when that time is. The farmer must have 
the eye and judgment to decide for him¬ 
self. This is where the baek-to-the-lauder 
falls down. He may have land and cap¬ 
ital, but unless lie can learn this judg¬ 
ment or “instinct” lie will fail. 
* $ * * * 
it true that skilled labor i*s not 
needed for dusting trees'? 1 am told that 
anyone who can aim the hose at an or¬ 
chard can do a satisfactory job. J. K. 
I get a good many questions like that. 
Everyone is hunting for an easy way to do 
a disagreeable job. Using the liquid spray 
is hard and disagreeable work. It is a 
nasty job, and conies at a time when hun¬ 
dreds of other things are demanding at¬ 
tention. It requires skilled labor. Of 
course I know there are people who say- 
all you have to do is to point a spray 
gun” at a tree and turn on the power. 1 
know better than that. The liquid spray- 
will not float through the air as the dust 
—the operator must have good aim 
and great patience in order to cover the 
tree. Of all the jobs in connection with 
fruit growing I do not know of any re¬ 
quiring greater skill and judgment than 
that of spraying—particularly for the 
worm. It is true that dusting does not 
require as much skill, but it is no job toi 
a loafer or careless man. The dust floats 
in the air, particularly where there is a 
light wind, and seems to be more pene¬ 
trating than the spray. That may seem 
strange, when the liquid is driven with 
force, while the dust floats through the 
air, but our observation is that the foliage 
is more evouly coutpd with dust than with 
poison when the liquid dries. Many spray¬ 
ers seem to drench the tree, with the re¬ 
sult that the liquid concentrates at the 
tip of the leaf. On drying we find the 
sediment or poison deposited there. The 
light dust seems to cover the entire leaf. 
I have no quarrel with those who say the 
dust is “no good,” and that “no true fruit 
grower would use it. Lveby m,aii to his 
own. opinions. We make no effort to tell 
people what they ought to do. We are 
under what is close to a -military govern¬ 
ment at this time, but the proposed 
“League of Nations” seems to leave us 
free to adopt any form of warfare we 
please in fighting insect pests. The dust 
for us in fighting the worm. 
tf tf * * * 
But let no man take our word for it 
against the advice of scientists. These 
gentlemen ought to know such things. 
They are paid to find out. and they have 
little else to do besides learning what is 
best.. No one can properly measure the 
value of what we owe to the .scientists. 
Yet they are sometimes a little over-cau¬ 
tious about new things. I can remember 
when our Eastern entomologists told us 
that lime-sulpliur would never kill the 
scale or prove effective as a spray 1 When 
basic slag was first brought to this coun¬ 
try as a fertilizer most of the chemists 
said it was of little use, since its phos¬ 
phoric acid would not respond to their 
tests. It was left to farmers to try it out 
practically and prove its worth. When 
Dr. II. J. Wheeler of Rhode Island proved 
that the great majority of our Eastern 
soils cannot yield even reasonable crops 
without Mrue^lnnv much backing did he 
have fi m the other chemists? So little 
that he had to push the idea alone, though 
thousands of old farmers knew he was 
right. It seems to me that it is impos¬ 
sible for one to be a scientists and at the 
same time be what I call a “sport.” Per¬ 
haps science is so far removed from any 
suggestion of a guess or gamble that there 
is nothing to do but sit tight and wait 
until a thing has gone through what they 
call the acid test. And what is that? 
Sometimes a new method or material 
comes along and a number of good farm¬ 
ers are induced to try it. These men 
cannot give any scientific experiment. 
They do not know how. They use the 
method or the material as any farmer 
would, and watch their crops. At harvest 
they are satisfied that it paid. They 
know it through the eyes, the judgment, 
the scales, or through the money they 
receive. The scientist will not accept 
this judgment. It is not his idea of an 
“acid test.” If it is a fertilizer, for in¬ 
stance, he must get his soil just right 
and then use pots or plots or rows, with 
everything carefully weighed, and keep at 
it. for several years. Now. the point is, 
will a farmer be safer to take no chance 
and wait until science goes slowly through 
her movements, or shall he be something 
of a “sport” and take a chance on what 
practical farmers give as their results? 
We took something of a chance in blow¬ 
ing a dust of sulphur and arsenate of lead 
over our trees. Last year, as a result, we 
had very few worms. Did the dust kill 
them, or was it a bad year for worms 
anyway? We try it once more this year 
in order to save labor and time. You can 
do the same, or you can wait until the 
scientists have settled the matter through 
a long series of accurate experiments. 
lie * If if * 
While the apples seem to be in good 
condition, I am not so sure of the other 
fruits. The sweet cherries are very doubt¬ 
ful. The sour cherries, blooming later, 
seem in fair condition, and we have a 
number of seedlings. These are mostly 
black, rather small, and good quality. 
They are hardier than our cultivated 
kinds. Peaches were hurt. Here is a 
sure case where we cannot tell until the 
“June drop” occurs. I should say there 
is likely to be a small crop—perhaps more. 
Our currants seem to be unhurt, but a 
share of the strawberries turn black at 
the center of the bloom, and we know 
what that means. The asparagus was cut 
somewhat, but nothing else was in condi¬ 
tion to suffer. We have very few plums, 
having pulled our orchard in the convic¬ 
tion that plums do not pay us. Prof. 
Hedrick advises growers to plant plums, 
but I shall not take his advice here. There 
was too much trouble from brown rot and 
black knot. As for pears, we have not 
much of anything left except Kieffers. 
These have bloomed properly and look as 
if they would bear as usual. An orchard 
of Bartlett pears ought to pay here, but 
I do not think this is suitable pear soil, 
and we have concentrated our efforts on 
apple culture. 
s{c jje jJs # 
I often wonder what has become of the 
weeder as a farm tool? I saw the begin¬ 
ning of that tool, and knew Mr. Breed, 
who started the first one. For some years 
it had a great run, filling the papers much 
as tractors do now. Then suddenly it dis¬ 
appeared, and I have not seen one in use 
for some years. Of course, most of us 
know that this was a combination of long, 
slender, steel fingers, which scratched and 
dug the soil somewhat as a hen scratches 
with her claws, or as an iron rake works 
up the soil of the garden. It was a good 
tool. I have one, but we seldom use it. 
We do use a straight or peg-tooth har¬ 
row. We have one with GO teeth and 
have just been dragging it over the po¬ 
tatoes and corn. Our plan this year has 
been to plant potatoes in drills and corn 
in hills. Just before the plants came 
through fertilizer was scattered on the 
hill or drill, and then this peg-tooth har¬ 
row was dragged over the ground with 
the teeth back at a sharp angle. In this 
way there is no danger of tearing opt. the 
young plants, while the straight teeth 
break the crust,-mix in the fertilizer and 
kill millions of little weeds by uprooting 
them to the sun. This is good work, and 
• an be kept up after the corn is three or 
four inches high. In some ways this har¬ 
row is a better tool than the weeder. 
* S<! * * * 
Someone wants me to tell how many 
children there are now at Hope Farm. 
At this moment there are seven who would 
help me out with exemption in the in¬ 
come tax. The latest is little James, a 
small brother of Rose. We may take one 
or two more for the Summer. The larger 
• •hildren are in school now. During the 
Summer they will help on the farm. I 
pay them as we do others, and they have 
an interest in certain trees and crops. 
The little ones do a little work and a 
great deal of play. The main object with 
them is to gain a clean, healthy body and 
grow up with the memory of a care-free 
childhood. They drink milk enough to 
supply a email restaurant and cut great 
Economy in Postum 
Boil Postum as long as you please, 
and you will extract only healthful 
goodness. You’ll get no caffeine — 
the coffee-drug—for there’s none in 
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The Original 
Postum cereal 
in fact, should be boiled fully 15 min¬ 
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kept going from meal to meal, adding 
more Postum and water for the new 
service. 
Postum is the favorite of large numbers 
of former coffee-drinkers and can be 
secured from grocers everywhere. 
Two Sizes, usually sold at 15c and 25c. 
JI Delicious, Invigorating 
and Healthful Drink 
it 
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