176 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
March, 1913 
they were a negligible factor, but we covered ourselves and our 
clothes with the lime-sulphur solution. The lime ate into the 
flesh and made ragged wounds of small cuts, the sulphur clung 
to our hands until we darkened the table utensils, and the house¬ 
keeper kept silver hidden and made us eat with iron forks and 
knives. There were days when the rain washed the solution off 
the trees as fast as we could put it on, but time was pressing 
and we sprayed rain or shine. Hiram had tied his barrel of spray 
on a wagon and hauled it through the orchard with momentary 
chance of upsetting the whole outfit on a hillside. He had filled 
the barrel from the horse trough with a pail. I put a hogshead 
on a platform six feet high and led the pipe from the spring 
into it. From the bottom of the hogshead a big hose could be 
led to the spray barrel and that filled in a moment by force of 
gravity. The truck for mounting it was made by the local 
genius of the town, to whom I described my needs. He took two 
old mowing machine wheels and lengthened the axle until the 
tread was five 
feet wide. He 
made a stout 
framework of 
wood in the form 
of an isosceles 
triangle, with 
sides five feet 
long. One of 
these sides was 
bolted on top of 
the mowing ma¬ 
chine axle, while 
the opposite apex 
was fitted with an 
iron through 
which the king 
bolt of the farm 
wagon could go, 
thus allowing the 
use of the for¬ 
ward wheels of 
the wagon in con¬ 
nection with the 
mowing machine 
wheels. Iron 
straps from the 
triangle sup¬ 
ported a platform 
a foot beneath it 
on which the bar¬ 
rel rested. An 
iron rod on each 
side was hooked over the top of the barrel and secured to the 
triangle with a nut. This held it immovably in place while the 
center of gravity was so low that it could safely be taken on the 
steepest hillside of the orchard. 
Day after day Jericho hauled this apparatus around the orchard, 
day after day we toiled at the pump until every blossom and 
every leaf of every tree had been drenched with the spray. We 
scarcely finished one round before it was time to begin the next 
one, for with two leads of hose it took us ten days to go over all 
the trees. But it was this thorough work that saved the crop, 
for the bugs and fungus destroyed that of every other orchard 
in the county. 
The story of the year is one of driving, hard work for long 
hours; of plans arranged to utilize every minute of time what¬ 
ever the weather; and of records broken for results. The new 
orchard of young trees is the best exhibit of this care and hard 
work. We set out 498 young trees, and at the end of the season 
496 were alive and well. A local laborer was hired to dig holes 
for the planting. Fifty holes the first day finished him and he 
went home at night “sick.” David and I tackled the job. Work¬ 
ing together, we dug one hundred in four hours. When the 
trees arrived the holes were ready for them. In this locality 
young trees are never sprayed. Every other morning, before 
breakfast, I patrolled the long lines of young hopefuls, caught 
the caterpillars before they had done any damage and called the 
spray wagon into action. Again the caterpillars (of another 
variety) were repelled soon enough to prevent damage. A third 
time the spray wagon went over the trees to stop the attack of 
the aphis. Deer were frightened off, after a raid or two, by an 
ounce of sulphur sprinkled about each tree. The ground was 
cultivated, the weeds kept down, and the bugs kept off by this 
sort of eternal vigilance. We took no chances, allowed no prec¬ 
edents to lure us to a sense of safety, but watched those trees 
day by day. On another hilltop, not far away, other trees from 
the same nursery 
were planted at 
the same time. 
The owner of 
them knows more 
about apple tree 
culture than I do, 
but he likes to 
sleep late in the 
morning and to 
drive down for 
the mail behind a 
fast horse. The 
weeds, the bugs 
and the deer got 
up as early on his 
hilltop as they did 
on mine and— 
they had a better 
time. His trees 
were devoured by 
pests and hidden 
by the weeds; 
mine out-grew all 
expectations and 
are one of the 
wonders of the 
country side. 
The harvest 
season was one 
long time of 
doubt and trial. 
Last year, with 
Hiram at the helm, every condition had been ideal, and it had 
seemed like a simple proposition, but now, left by myself, nothing 
went right. Lack of sunshine had prevented the apples from 
attaining their usual size and color. It was impossible to pick 
them uncolored, and it daily became impossible to leave them 
longer on the trees for fear of a freeze. Hiram had picked the 
red apples first last year, leaving the green varieties until the last. 
I knew no better and waited in the hope of sunshine and color, 
leaving all the fruit on the trees. I was near despair and had 
about determined to pick, color or no color, when, one day, Mr. 
West came driving up the hill! Then he suggested the obvious 
thing—that which has already occured to you—to pick the green 
varieties at once, risking the red ones on the chance of the long 
overdue sunshine. We had had intermittent rain for a month or 
more, but Hiram assured me that I could definitely count on 
clear weather throughout October for picking. They “always 
(Continued on page 202) 
From the vantage point of these months of perspective I know that the orchard is better prepared 
to produce another year than any of those carelessly tended ones in the neighborhood 
