682 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
May 7, 1021. 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
WpII, that 'Void wave” has come and 
gout*. and as a result the flag still waves. 
Our cherry crop was just about destroyed. 
There will he a few scattering fruits, but 
Jack Frost has n monopoly of cherry pie 
this year. There is some compensation in 
Ihis. The auto thieves will give ns some¬ 
thing of a rest this season, for if they 
have any choice in their robberies, it 
seems to lie in the cherry trees. The 
robins, too. may be compelled ' go to 
work this year, and hunt somet ing be¬ 
sides the harmless earthworms. When¬ 
ever we are fried on the broiler of calam¬ 
ity. it is well to turn over and hunt for 
the sunny side. We shall have a few 
peaches, as it now looks, but we have 
been working away from the peach busi¬ 
ness ever since the apples began to get 
growing. Peach growing is quite a gam¬ 
ble at best, and somehow we have never 
been able to handle it as efficiently as we 
do the apples. Some strawberries were 
killed, but we dropped out of the business 
during the war, and now have only a 
small space in our improved Marshalls. 
Now we are getting back, and this Spring 
we planted a good-sized area to several 
standard sorts. Thus far the apples 
seem to be unharmed, and the trees are 
surely loaded for bearing. They are not 
out of danger yet, but we expect them to 
get through. 
❖ * ❖ * * 
T never did knew just what happened 
to that “cold wave.” It was headed for 
us, and we watched its progress across the 
country, driving straight for New Jersey. 
Something happened out by the Great 
Lakes. Some mighty force seemed to 
reach up and catch that dry blizzard by 
the tail, and give it a twist. At. any 
rate, its course was changed and it went 
howling and crying to the north of us. 
We got the shadow of it, and not much 
more, and this was a case where the 
shadow was far more acceptable than the 
substance. Had it come this way our 
trees would now be black and desolate, 
while as it is they stand like great masses 
of pink and white. In all the years that 
We have lived on these hills. I have never 
before known Spring to come with such 
beauty and promise. Near our barn is 
an orchard of very old trees—70 feet 
high—and many of them seem to be vet¬ 
erans of the Civil War. I think some 
of them were planted about 1860, when 
the outlook for sweet apples seemed as 
promising as does that of McIntosh to¬ 
day. We have given these old fellows up 
several times. It looked as if their day 
was ended, yet here they are today, great 
towering masses of bloom, with the white 
petals falling from them like snow. Let 
any elderly man walk through this or¬ 
chard today and he would have to be a 
confirmed pessimist if he did not get, the 
inspiration and plan to do somethin# in 
his old age. From the road as we look 
up to the west, parte of our hill look 
like great heaps of snow where the 
bloom is bursting from the trees. And I 
can remember when, as you looked up 
there, you could see only a collection of 
little sticks outlined against the sky. They 
were the nursery trees which we had just 
planted. It was 18 years ago that I 
Stood in the road looking ur> the hill at 
these “sticks.” Tt was a Sunday after¬ 
noon. and we had finished planting the 
day before. I had cut great two-year-old 
trees back to about three feet, and they 
did look small with the sun shining be¬ 
hind them. And up the road came my 
old neighbor, wrinkled and bent and sour 
as the result of planting and harvesting 
50 crops of rye and grass and potatoes- 
each one leaving the ground a little poorer 
than before. 
“Ho ! ho ! ho !” chuckled the. old man. 
“Another fool parting with his money. 
You cut the life all out of ’em.. They 
won’t grow up there. Ain’t I tried it? 
’Sposin’ they do happen to grow, how 
you going to work ’em amongst them 
stones? ’Sposin’ they do live by some 
miracle, how you expect to pick the fruit? 
Even if you do pick it. where you. going 
to sell it? Every year Paterson is full 
of apples. You can’t sell ’em and you 
can’t give ’em away. I’ve farmed here 
for 50 years, and T know.” 
“But,” I remember saying, “what can 
T raise then to help pay the mortgage 
and keep me going?” 
“Nothing—with such a family as you’ve 
got. Nothing will pay any more. Farm¬ 
ing is dead. The Republican party has 
killed it. . Job was a farmer, and his 
wife had it right when she said to him: 
‘Dost thou still retain thine integrity? 
Curse God and die.’ ” 
Tt was rather pitiful to see. the bent 
old man mumbling his complaint as he 
pointed with his stick. 'Somehow my 
poor trees on the hill had started him up. 
“But.” T answered, “job did not take 
his wife’s advice, you remember. He 
told her: ‘Thou speakest as one of the 
foolish women speaketh.’ and T think he 
was right. I am planting that orchard 
for the future—for the family. T have 
faith to believe that it. will serve them if 
it does not serve me.” 
“But you ain’t got the right kind of a 
family for a farmer. Your wife don’t 
like to work well enough. I’ve seen her 
sitting down reading when she ought to 
be on the washboard. A woman on a farm 
ought to work and save. What else is she 
there for? And look at all these children 
you have around. T see them out playing 
ball when the weeds are in your potatoes. 
They tell me these girls are taking music 
lessons. No farmer can afford that. 
You’ll go bankrupt and the sheriff will 
put you out. Don't I know? Ain’t I 
farmed for 50 years right in this neigh¬ 
borhood? And them trees! Bah!’ And 
the old man stumped away too disgusted 
to continue his favorite topic. 
* * * $ * 
I think of that interview today as I 
watch the shadows crawling over the hills 
and the bloom falling like a snowstorm. 
If we do not have a late frost I suppose 
these trees will produce a crop worth 10 
times as much as any ever grown on the 
farm in the old man’s time. We shall 
find ways of handling it, and every apple 
will be sold. Not only that, but these 
trees have hardly begun to show what 
they can do. Ten years from now—I 
hardly know how to estimate the possible 
crop if the orchard is cared for liberally. 
And I remember the old man’s wife—bent 
and gray and wrinkled, with the spirit of 
youth ground out of her by long years 
of unending toil, with no relief from 
laughter or music. I remember his grown¬ 
up children. They must have been bright 
boys and girls, but their childhood had no 
touch of play or fun or family faith in 
the future. It seemed as if some hard 
hand pinched the bud of spiritual growth 
out of their lives, and left them narrow 
and without flavor. T think of these 
things and I am glad that Mother’s life 
has been such that memories of her child¬ 
hood can still bring back a little of the 
bloom of youth. As for “spirit.” it is 
almost a pleasure to have her get after 
me when I fail to do my duty. And the 
children ! Here they come, a great com¬ 
pany, down the hill, carrying bunches of 
wild violets and apple bloom. Little Rose 
sees me and comes running out ahead, 
waving a paper in her hand. Think of 
it!. She actually “got 100 ” in her little 
arithmetic lesson at school? Some very 
great men have stood up before audiences 
at Yale or Harvard or Columbia and 
bowed low as some begowned dignitary 
handed them a certificate which penned 
“LL.D.” or “Ph. D.” like a rudder be¬ 
hind their names; but not one of them 
ever felt the joy which came to little 
Rose -when she added 3 + 5-fl and the 
teacher marked “ 100 ” on her paper! 
What are we farming for, anyway? The 
old man’s ancient plan hardly suits me. 
I will never admit that the farmer and 
his family must be denied the right to 
satisfy the common human cravings for 
the pleasant things of life. 
sjs :Jc sjc s|i 
We got our strawberry plants in at 
just about the right time—before a gentle 
rain. The ground was in sod last year, 
and was plowed and well worked up and 
seeded to turnips. This Spring we put 
on a good coat of chicken manure and 
plowed it under deep. Then the field was 
worked with disk and peg-tooth harrow 
until it was fine as an ash heap—finer if 
you figure the cinders in coal ashes. We 
planted four varieties, Big .Toe, Senator 
Dunlap. Chesapeake and Gandy. Of 
course, T know that some of you will say 
at once that there are better ones. Very 
likely, but these suit me. Big .Toe. or 
more properly Joe, where the soil suits 
it. is one of the best. Tt was originated 
by E. S. Black of New Jersey. Others 
seem to have taken it up and renamed it 
“Big .Toe,” “Black .Toe.” “Early .Toe.” 
“Joe Johnson,” and so on. By any name, 
however, it is a fine berry. Senator Dun¬ 
lap is a good variety for our soil, named 
after a fine public citizen from Illinois. 
Chesapeake is, to my mind, next to Mar¬ 
shall, the best berry to g'-ow in hill cul¬ 
ture. As for Gandy, with all its faults 
of low productive power, it remains the 
best late berry we have. Of course, we 
continue planting Marshall, but in a sep¬ 
arate field, where they cannot possibly be 
mixed with other varieties. Marshall is 
all right for fine, beautiful fruit, but it 
does not produce plants or fruit enough to 
make it commerciallv profitable unless 
one has a special trade. T usually plant 
one row of wild plants. T have one or 
two of these runaways now that look very 
promising. 
❖ :}e * * * 
The way we did this year was to 
stretch lines across the field so as to make 
the rows straight and four feet apart. 
Then the plants were set in two feet 
apart. We drive a trowel or spade 
straight into the ground and work it back 
and forth to open a deep hole. Then 
taking the plant by the crown, with a 
quick whisk of the hand, the roots are 
put down behind the trowel. Then the 
trowel comes out with a quick jerk, leav¬ 
ing the roots well spread out in the hole. 
You can step with your foot and crowd 
the soil up to the roots, or fill in with 
your fingers. The object is to crowd the 
soil firmly up to the roots without punch¬ 
ing around them and leave a little loose 
dirt on top. The plant is put down so 
that the crown shows just above the 
ground. But why put them four feet 
apart? Why not three feet? We might 
run a row of dwarf peas or Golden Ban¬ 
tam sweet corn down the middle. This 
crop would be taken out in August. On 
a small patch it might pay, but there is 
too much hand work in keeping it clean. 
The four-foot space will enable us to give 
thorough work with the cultivator. This 
will help keep down the white grubs and 
leave the soil open. Then in July we 
shall take up the best runner plants and 
transfer them to the middles, thus making 
a new row between the present ones. 
These will be kept clear, and we shall 
|-<5>—g— S=S= <=>— & =5=S= < *=l 
Its So Easy to 
Make the Change 
There’s no bother and no 
sacrifice in turning away 
from the ills which some¬ 
times come from tea and cof¬ 
fee, when you decide on 
Postum Cereal 
Tken you have a rich, full-bodied 
table beverage which lully satisfies 
the taste —and there’s no ingred¬ 
ient to harm nerves or digestion. 
Thousands have changed to Postum 
as the better meal-time drink 
and they don’t turn back. 
Suppose you try the change for 
ten days and note the result. 
“There's a Reason for Postum 
Made by Postum Cereal Co., Inc., Battle Creek,Mich. 
F- <?—^>'57^-. P 5?—£ 
<3- 
[Houses r. 
hrsinfedinj Stables 
'gprayinj Vejetabkj 
AUTOMATIC 
BRASS 
NOZZLE 
THROWS 
LONG 
DISTANCE j 
FINE 
MIST J 
OR I 
COARSE I 
SPRAY fl 
gNlTHS Ns 
BANNEI 
BRASS 
CASTINGS 
A Farmer’s Idea 
Our Mr. D. B. Smith, born and brought up 
on a farm, found the old way of killing bugs 
and insects, with brush and pail, slow, hard 
work and inefficient. After years of experi¬ 
ment he invented the first Hand and Com¬ 
pressed Air Sprayer ever produced. 
Being familiar with a farmer’s require¬ 
ments, Mr. Smith recommends to you 
SBANNER 
COMPRESSED AIR SPRAYER 
for all around farm or garden use. 
Sprays trees, shrubs, potatoes and field 
crops for insectsand fungus; spraysstables, 
pig and poultry pens; barn yards for lice 
and vermin and for disinfecting. Used for 
whitewashing stables, poultry houses and 
fences and for washing windows, buggies, 
autos and for spraying cattle. 
1 Built for work. Heavy brass or”galvanized 
steel, well riveted tank—holds 4 gallons. 
Seamless brass pump —2 inches diameter; 
brass castings. Automatic Brass Non- 
cloggable Nozzle, throws long distance fine 
mist or coarse spray. Easily operated by 
man or boy. 
Be sure and ask your dealer for it by name, 
if he can’t supply you, write 
D. B. SMITH & CO., Manufacturers 
50 Genesee St., UTICA, N. Y. 
On sale in New York City at No. 98 Chambers St. 
We make 50 different styles and sizes of sprayers. If 
you are interested in smaller or larger sprayers send 
for catalog. 
When you write advertisers mention The R. N.-Y. and you’ll get a 
quick reply and a “square deal.” See guarantee editorial page. 
