HOW THE ADVENTURER AT ORCHARDING FOUGHT A BAD APPLE YEAR BY HARD WORK AND A PERFECTED 
SYSTEM OF MANAGEMENT—THE ADVANTAGE OF IDEALS AND OPTIMISM—TRIUMPH OF MODERN METHODS 
by John Anthony 
Author of “Adventures with an Apple Orchard ” 
Editor’s Note. — Subscribers to House & Garden will recollect the account given last year by Mr. Anthony of how he acquired an apple orchard 
and the success of his first year’s efforts. Another season has gone by and again he has conquered further difficulties. The story of this second year 
takes up new problems of vital interest to House & Garden readers. 
F ORTY-SEVEN years and one day after they had driven up 
the hill together, Hiram West and his wife departed with 
all their belongings. I was left behind in complete possession, but 
with such a sense of loneliness as I hope I may never feel again. 
My foreman and myself, strangers in a strange land, were left 
to work out our own salvation. 
And now as I look back on the season’s work, remembering 
the physical toil and the 
nervous tension of fighting 
adverse weather conditions 
for weeks at a stretch, I am 
impelled to repeat the warn¬ 
ing given last year: 
“The country offers op¬ 
portunity to the man who 
wants to work and work 
hard; who wants to get up 
in the morning with the birds 
and go to bed long after they 
are at rest; who is ready to 
fill every minute of the many 
hours with work and thought 
and plans. This life is for 
the man who doesn’t like the 
city because it thwarts him 
in his wish to work, because 
it does not give him the 
chance to develop, to use his 
energy.” 
I was busy eighteen hours 
a day and worried for 
twenty-four. But from a 
semi-invalid I have become a strong man and know what it 
means to live; from a nervous wreck the farm has developed a 
mentally sound individual. I am happy in the certainty of suc¬ 
cess and — I am my own boss! And then there is Mrs. John who 
came into my life at the same time that faith and hope came back. 
But the year was a queer mix-up of success and failure, of 
certainty for the future and uncertainty for the present. The 
weather hindered us in spraying, in picking, in shipping. It 
badly injured the crop in quality and shortened the quantity. And 
when this fruit, inferior to our usual standard, was sent to market 
it ran foul of the low prices set by a country-wide bumper crop! 
And yet, from the vantage 
point of these months of 
perspective, I know that 
every item of the season’s 
events was for my future 
good. The weather that 
only injured my fruit, des¬ 
troyed that in the uncared 
for orchards in the neighbor¬ 
hood, thus opening wide a 
market hitherto unthought 
of. For a portion of my 
crop this local outlet is the 
most profitable possible, as 
there is no commission, 
freight or package charge 
against it. The lack of sun¬ 
shine taught me more about 
pruning than a dozen years 
of favorable conditions could 
have done, while even the 
shortened crop was of ad¬ 
vantage, for it gave me a 
light season to get my or¬ 
ganization into smooth run¬ 
ning order in the anticipation of heavier ones. Last year I had 
the apples but not the system. This year I had the system but 
not the apples. Such apples as we had were handled to the 
queen’s taste, no mangling and bruising as in tbe former times. 
When winter came on with a chance to look back upon the worn, jonn 
Anthony felt that his adventures had left him nearer success than ever 
(U 4 ) 
