State Convention—Success vs. Failure. 
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Blush. I think it is fifteen years ago; I got those trees to fill in; 1 
fill in every spring. I have trees that yield four or five barrels of 
apples in a good season. The first season of my orchard’s bearing, 
it bore one apple. We went down one Sunday, my wife and I, and 
the six children, and got that apple. The next year I made up my 
mind it was working a good deal of ground for a few trees. I sent 
down to Rochester for a hundred trees, and told them to send up big 
four or five-year-old trees. He filled my order to my satisfaction. 
I never saw nicer trees in the world. I went to work and planted 
them out between the rows one way. I made up my mind in a few 
years more I would plant them another way so that I could get 
them fifteen feet apart. In a few years I saw that I could not 
get in with a team. They have done well. 
The way I have treated my orchard is, to keep it well mulched— 
I have plowed it once in four or five years; I am going to plow it 
this spring again; I havn’t plowed it for four or five years, conse¬ 
quently the grass has got in; this is where I sowed the alsike clover. 
This June grass has run out the clover. The hogs have always ta¬ 
ken possession of my orchard; I want to keep them in there until 
the fruit gets ripe, for the very reason that when an apple drops 
there is a worm in it, and the hog has the apple and the worm too. 
I have had all the apples I wanted lor my family, and I have had 
apples to sell; I make twelve barrels of cider, and we have all the 
dry and green fruit we want. This year I am going to plow it up 
and spade around my trees; I am going to the lime-kilns in the 
spring and get about two barrels of lime for my orchard. I take 
the boys in the orchard and scrape down the trees; scrape them 
thoroughly; never mind if you take a little bark off, its so 
much the better. Once or twice a year I whitewash the trees thor¬ 
oughly; when my whitewash falls off of the bark, it is as smooth 
as can be. I can take a tree, I don’t care how lousy it is, and in 
whitewashing it twice it will be as good as a tree that never was 
lousy; that is my experience in making an orchard. My orchard- 
soil was heavy white-oak clay. I would further remark that you 
want a location so that the water will get away. A neighbor of 
mine made a pasture of his orchard two years ago last spring; he 
says to me he didn’t have an apple for his own use. He had an or¬ 
chard that used to grow bushels of apples when I came here, when 
I didn’t have an apple nor an orchard; he made a pasture of 
