History of Richardson County, Nebraska : its people, industries and institutions, Part 25

Author: Edwards, Lewis C
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Indianapolis : B.F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 1742

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THE CRIME OF AGRICULTURE.

The past is gone, aud with it its train of mistakes. One of these was in mining our soil instead of farming it, in selling its fertility at wholesale in grain instead of in con- centrates of meat. Another was in neglecting clover, alfalfa and the other legumes. Another was in allowing out lands to be gullied and washed into the sea. Another was in trying to produce beef and pork on much corn and little roughage. Another was in planting orchards, then allowing the cattle, bogs and insects to destroy them. Another was in raising wheat year after year on the same land, and then corn, year after year on the same land. Coburn of Kansas, in referring to the average of thirteen to fifteen bushels per acre on Kansas wheat land once said, "Men write of the "Shame of Cities' and the 'Crime of Society,' but this is the 'Crime of Agriculture'." These old methods were sad mistakes, and were indeed costly, not ouly to the individual, but to the aggregate wealth of the community. And today we congratulate ourselves and the country that we are teaching and practicing better ways.

We kuow now that we must farm and husband the land instead of mining it. We know now that if we would preserve the fertlity of the soil, we must bandle live stock and market our erops in the form of beef and pork and mutton. We know now that clover and alfalfa are as necessary to the life of our land as red blood is to the life of our bodies. We know now what nitrogen and humus are, and that they are the soil's capital. We know now that lands which wash away never return, aud that ngly ditches, like ugly wounds, are not only unsightly, but are sometimes fatal. Fields have been ruined by being gullied and washed to pieces. Nature's remedy is grass. We know now that cornstalks in a silo are better for the farmer and bis herds than cornstalks in winter-swept and snow-bound fields; and that we must save this and all other roughage, if we are to handle live stock successfully on high-priced land. We know now that the hog is a grazing animal and that alfalfa should be on his bill of fare the year round. He should not only have alfalfa pasture from April to November, but should be fed alfalfa bay the rest of the year in racks, the same as cattle. We know that while the hog is growing we should furnish him with this cheap protein ration, but that when he is fattening on a full feed of corn, alfalfa hay should be supplemented with a concentrated protein ration in the form of tankage. Feed a hog all the alfalfa he will eat and at the present price of corn you cut off twenty cents on every bushel. We know now that every hog-yard should have its cement feeding floor, for every bushel of corn fed on a feeding floor saves a pound of pork. We know now that lice and worms are the two greatest enemies of the hog raiser, and that these are easily controlled. We know that the great hog sconrge can be prevented by vaccination, and that the man who properly gnards his hogs need spend no sleepless nights on account of hog cholera. These observations are made from some experience in the hog business. Weaver Brothers raise two thousand hogs every year, and we believe that hogs and alfalfa are the most profitable combina- tions on the farm,

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Yes, we used to think that anybody could be a farmer. We know better now. It requires as much or more brains to farm successfully as it does to succeed in any other business. We used to think that we had to sow and reap like our fathers. We know better now. We even change our own methods in the light of our own experience. We used to think that orchards were planted to grow small. imperfect and scabby apples. We know better now. A new age is here, and, regardless of our occupations, we should be in sympathy with it. No matter what our vocation, we are all farmers in this country, in the sense that it is our one great community business and asset. Farming is the basis of all wealth, and especially in the Middle West, and we should doff our hats to the modern, up-to-date farmer, and accord to him the dignity and worth he merits as one of our most useful citizens.

ORCHARDING.

I have been requested to deliver at this session a brief address upon orcharding in the Missouri valley. While I am but incidentally engaged in raising apples, and would rather talk about hogs and alfalfa, silos and cattle raising and general conservation of the soil, yet orcharding, and particularly apple raising, is a great industry in this section, and if given the same attention as grain or live-stock farming, would become a notable industry and highly profitable. I make this statement from my own observations of the orchard business in the Missouri valley, and particularly my experience in southeastern Nebraska, where Weaver Brothers own and control and operate over two hundred acres of apple orchard. We produce annually from thirty-five to one hundred . car-loads of apples, and sell on an average more than twenty thousand dollars worth of apples each year. These orchards will produce annually a net average revenue of ten thousand dollars a year or fifty dollars an acre. This takes into consideration the original investment, the frost damage in occasional years and unfavorable seasons. both as to production and markets. The average orchard in this section and particularly the small orchard, is not profitable, and on the ordinary farm may be considered as a liability instead of an asset. This is because of the failure to properly care for the same. Success in the orchard business will come only with proper cultivation, fertiliza- tion, pruning, spraying, proper grading, and reasonable ability to market the crop. In other words, commercial apple raising is a business and must be handled on business principles, if it is to succeed. An orchard handled in this way will not only yield a nice profit, but will afford a great deal of pleasure to the man engaged in it. The apples produced in this section are the equal, if not the superior. iu flavor and quality of any produced in the United States, and the fruit from sprayed and cared-for orchards is eagerly sought by the buyers for the best city markets.

Fortunately the values of our best apple lands, which are the hill or bluff lands adjacent to the Missouri river, have never been inflated and can be purchased from fifty to one hundred twenty-five dollars an aere. Upon this basis orcharding is a safe business venture, particularly so when we consider the inflated values of orchard land in the irrigated sections, from which points the freight rate to Minneapolis and Chicago is as much per bushel box as it is for a three-bushel barrel from St. Joseph to the same markets.

A large fruit dealer from Minneapolis, who has just returned from the Pacific coast, and who is familiar with every detail of the apple-marketing business told me last September, that the orchardists of the Missouri valley, who escaped the expense of irrigation and the expensive long haul, were the masters of the apple situation, and that all that was necessary to the highest success was proper methods. I might add that the highest compliment I have ever had, as an orchardist. was paid me when this

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man, introduced me to two large orchardists of the Yakima valley, Washington, as one of the very few men in the southwest who knew how to raise and pack apples. These two men, one of them an ex-superior court judge, were in Minneapolis to sell their crop of Western box apples. I don't know what success they had, but after a thirty-minute conference with the fruit merchant, I sold him thirteen cars of Nebraska apples, and have in previous years in less time, sold him as many as thirty cars, and always at a satisfactory price. Our apples are sold year after year to the same parties, ou the same basis as your grain merchant sells No. 1, No. 2, or No. 3 wheat and corn, and with no dispute over the grades and quality. Raising apples under these conditions in the Missouri valley, where natural conditions are almost ideal, makes the business a desirable one. I will now discuss the essentials necessary for the production of good apples, as practiced in our own orchards.

SPRAYING.

We spray our orchards thoroughly. We spray three, and sometimes four times during the season. The first is the dormant spray, before any foliage has appeared, with either Bordeaux mixture or lime and sulphur. We prefer the lime and sulphur. We use Bordeaux spray after the foliage appears, as it produces a rusty appearance of the apple, especially on the Ben Davis variety. These sprays are used as a fungicide, controlling all diseases of a foreign nature, such as scah, scale and kindred diseases. For the dormant spray one gallon of lime and sulphur should be used with twelve to fourteen gallons of water. Where Bordeaux is used it should consist of four pounds of copper sulphate, four pounds of lime and fifty gallons of water.

The next most important spraying is what is known as the blossom spray, which is a combination of lime and sulphur and arsenate of lead, the arsenate of lead being the recognized insecticide for all leaf-eating insects, and the one great apple pest, the codling moth. This spray is made by using lime and sulphur diluted, one to thirty-five, into which is added three pounds of arsenate of lead to fifty gallons of water. This spray should be applied with a pressure of from two hundred to two buudred and fifty pounds so that the poison spray will be forced into the calyx cup of every blossom. The spray nozzles should be attached to the spray rod with a forty-five degree elbow, so that every blossom can be reached from any angle.

The man handling the spray rod is the "man behind the gun." Carelessness and indifference here may cost an orchardist hundreds of dollars. Every inside and top blossom should be reached. To do this continuous driving with the sprayer is impossible. The machine should be stopped at each tree so that thorough work can be done. If the blossom spraying is not thorough and complete, the apples will be wormy, no matter how many sprayings you give later. I will briefly explain the reason for this.

The codling moth is of a brownish color and about one-half inch in length. It deposits its eggs on the bark of the tree and on its foliage shortly after the petals of the blossom falls. These eggs are white specks about the size of a small pin head. Tiny worms which hatch from these eggs gradually work their way to the small apples and through the calyx cup into the apple core. If the spraying has been thorough this calyx cup is full of poison and the little worm dies from poison food withont getting into the apple.

In this latitude there are generally two broods of these worms, the second brood appearing in from forty to sixty days after the first. This brood comes from the full- grown worms surviving from the first. After about three weeks spent in the apple these survivors come ont. seek a hiding place and here spin cocoons and change to

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a chrysalis. From this comes again the codling moth, then the eggs, then the brood of worms.

In the South, and sometimes here, this operation is repeated a third time, hence more spraying is necessary in some sections and seasons than in others. In this latitude we have been able to control the moth with two poison sprays, one immediately following the first at the time of the calyx spray. This catches the late bloom and also any of the earlier bloom missed in the first application.

To spray successfully and economically, the orchardist should provide himself with a first-class high-power spraying outfit. We use in our orchards seven power machines. one New Bean machine, with a magneto and six Cushmans, manufactured in St. Joseph, Missouri.

PRUNING.

Next in importance in the care of an orchard is systematic and heavy pruning. Do not do it all in one year, but do part of it every year. Keep the tops cut back, the center cleaned out and the lower branches cut away, so that the air and sunshine will be admitted. After doing this have your pruners take stepladders and go around the tree, thinning the sides of the tree which are liable to become too bushy. This side trimming is very important, a lesson which we have learned within the last few years. In this connection, however, I would caution the orchardist against cutting away too many side branches on the south and west. These parts of the tree get enough sun in any event to properly color the fruit and too much pruning on the south and west may subject the limbs and trunk of the tree to injury from the hot summer sun. We keep all water sprouts out of the trees by sending a foreman with eight or ten boys through the orchard, the last of Jume each year, and with gloved hands all sprouts are rubbed off with no injury to the tree, and at small expense.

In pruning leave no stubs as these are a source of infection from disease and borers. Stubs do not heal readily as the wound is too far from the sap circulation of the tree. Many orchards have been ruined and are being ruined by the stubs left in priming. The limbs should be taken off close to the trunk or at the fork. Paint every wound at once, that means within two or three days. If you allow the wood to dry and check you have left an opening for disease, insects and the weather. We have always used white lead and oil, colored with lamp black, to produce the tree-trunk color. The last two seasons we used a pruning compound, an asphalt paint. which had been recommended to us, and found it very satisfactory.

We prune only in May and June, and in any event not later than the middle of July. These are ideal months, both for healing and painting. In the winter time wounds cannot always be promptly painted and are subject to the killing process of zero weather.

After a tree is put in shape and properly trimmed, a little work each year will keep it in good condition. I would urge on every orchardist the necessity of making pruning secondary only to spraying. We have learned that we cannot grow both wood and good fruit on the same tree. We have also learned that fancy apples do not grow in dense foliage.

CULTIVATION AND FERTILIZATION.

As spraying and pruning are the Siamese twins of orcharding, so are cultivation and fertilization likewise twins in the same family. You can grow good apples which are well colored, fair size and free from worms by pruning and spraying properly. hut you will have larger apples, more of them and come nearer raising a crop every year by adding proper cultivation and fertilization.

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We use the ordinary disk as soon as the ground is dry and free from frost and then harrow after every rain. This keeps a dust mulch in the orchard and conserves all the moisture. This cultivation should be kept up until the middle of July, even until the first of August. If there is any sod in the orchard this should be plowed up, and then the disk and harrow used.

Every bearing orchard should he systematically fertilized. We use the ordinary barnyard manure every year, where available. When not, we use nitrate of soda and get even better results. This year we used a carload of nitrate of soda purchased of Swift & Company, St. Joseph. Some day we expect to have a soil analysis made in all our orchards and then supply only those elements in which we are deficient. We have secured excellent results, however, from the ordinary manure. A few years ago we manured, heavily, ten acres in one orchard. Since then we have noticed the increased yield and superior quality to the very tree row. This was the best investment we ever made in the orchard business.

We contend that by conserving the moisture by cultivation, and feeding the trees by fertilization we can raise apples every year, barring loss by frost. We have been raising apples every year from the same trees for the last three years and if we can continue this for the next three years, will be quite sure that this continued production is from proper cultivation and fertilization.

By spraying and pruning, the tree is kept healthy and vigorous; by cultivation and fertilization, there is enough moisture and strength of soil to set healthy and strong fruit buds every year.

CURRY TIIE TREES.

Each spring the hanging bark on the trunk and limbs of the trees should be removed. This should be done just before the dormant spray. This clinging bark furnishes a breeding place for insects, worms and disease. For its removal we use the ordinary mud curryconib, the surface of which has no sharp points but consists of circular pieces of corrugated tin. These can be purchased at any hardware store and are the best things we have found for this work.

BORERS AND CANKER.

The old uncared-for orchards in this country are dying as if by an epidemic. Some day we will wake up and find that the only orchards which are left are the commercial orchards, which have received proper care and attention. The flat- and round-headed borers are doing this deadly work. Each summer we go through our orchards and cut away all diseased parts, dig out the borers and cut away the affected part back to the live wood and bark, disinfect the wounds with Bordeaux mixture and paint the wounds.

The round-headed borer works in the wood, the flat-headed borer works between the wood and the bark and keeps killing back the bark. Poor pruning, especially where stubs are left, is responsible for much of the trouble from borers.

There is also considerable Illinois canker in the orchards of this territory, which especially affects the Ben Davis. The same treatment is recommended and by use of the Bordeaux spray at the dormant state, and the use of lime and sulphur, combined with arsenate of lead, as a summer spray, it is claimed that the ravages of this new disease can be kept in check. We have thoroughly tried this treatment and in normal years had fair success, but the last two dry seasous have shown the weakness of such trees, and where a tree is much affected, we recommend its destruction.

The planting of an orchard should be with great care as to distance between the trees and the selection of varieties. Apple trees should be planted forty feet apart and upon

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good rich ground. This will enable the trees to develop to good size and give room for work in the orchard. There is also sufficient room to grow crops between the rows during the productive period, and thus raise the orchard at small expense.

As to the selections of varieties, I would plant one-sixth Winesap, one-sixth Jonathan, one-sixth Delicious, one-sixth Grimes Golden, one-sixth Blacktwig and one-sixth Ben Davis. In a small orchard it might be advisable to increase the Jonathan and Winesap, but in a larger orchard I would limit these varieties, on account of their propensity to drop before the proper packing season. The separate varieties should be planted in separate blocks on account of economy in picking and packing.

The figures I have given in this address as to the production and returns of our orchards are based on the Ben Davis variety, nine-tenths of our trees being Ben Davis, and we never regretted this proportion, notwithstanding the prejudice existing in some sections against the Ben Davis apple. On account of the serious ravages of Illinois canker during the last two dry seasons, however, we would not be enthusiastic about planting too many of this variety.

The Ben Davis is really a high-class commercial apple. The Ben Davis may be an inferior apple in the East. but in the Missonri valley it grows to perfection, attains size and color, has few superiors as a cooking apple, is a large aud regular producer, and packs, ships and stores better than any apple that we can raise.

The foregoing observations on orcharding are but the essentials of this important industry. There are many other interesting phases of this business, but I will not discuss them owing to lack of time. One thing, however. I would emphasize, and that is that · profitable fruit crops are not the gifts of Providence any more than the other crops we grow.

In conclusion. I desire to say that orcharding in the Missouri valley country is but in its infancy, and that the time will come when the famous orchards tributary to the Missouri river will be famed the world over. and their fruit will not only add wealth to the owners and this section. but will bring health and happiness to peoples who are not so fortunately situated as we are.

APPLE ORCHARDS.

From the Falls City Journal, December 12, 1912.

Who had the honor of planting the first fruit tree in Richardson county has not been recorded in the annals of the pioneers. The presumption is fair that some of the ox-teams that treked covered wagons into this section in 1855, holding all the hopes and possessions of the incoming settlers, had stowed away some plants, herbs and small fruit trees from the home land. While many of the new homeseekers and makers were from distant states and lands, there were many also from nearby Missouri, sections of which had been settled from thirty to fifty years and already enjoyed some of the home comforts that come with the possession of a fruitful orchard. How- ever, after the start was made a few years only were required to find some fruit trees growing near the dwelling house of the thrifty citizens. Of course, there were those who had been born to the inheritance of a nomadic and shiftless frontier sort of life, who failed to plant even the cottonwood

PACKING FRUIT IN WEAVER BROS.' ORCHARD NEAR FALLS CITY.

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and box-elder and seemed to prefer the bleakness of the wind-swept prairie to the groves and orchards that soon sprang up around the buildings of the settlers from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New England. No thought was given to commercial orchards at that early day. The plantings were of a few trees to a very few acres. This land was too remote from markets to think of anything but trying to supply the needs of the planters. The Germany colony that settled in the wooded hills along the Missouri river and founded the town of Arago, in 1858, were impressed with the idea that where forest trees grew so luxuriantly that fruit trees would also do well. They had occasion to remark the abundance of wild fruits such as crab apples, plums, pawpaws, cherries, haws, mulberries, grapes, straw- berries, gooseberries and many other kinds, and after the first year's expe- rience in farming in 1859 or 1860 sent to Buffalo, New York, from whence they had come, for fruit trees. The treasurer and general agent of the Arago colony at the time was Hon. Gust Duerfeldt, Sr., still residing at the age of eighty-six on the farm he settled upon in Barada township in 1858. It was through him that the trees were purchased from the eastern nursery and he may be regarded as the first fruit-tree agent in the county. A number of farmers planted small orchards from the trees so obtained, some of the trees are yet alive and producing fruit, but most of the trees were of varieties that did not respond to the change in climate and soil and have long since been displaced for varieties that proved better adapted to the new situation. While the settlers along the Missouri river bluffs took early to the planting of fruit trees, the people who were forced to take the open prairie lands, because all the wooded hills had been gobbled up by the first comers, were in doubt about trees doing well and because of this doubt and the high price of the trees and the lack of money were much slower in starting.

INFLUENCE OF DOWN-EAST FARMERS.

There was not much done towards planting small orchards on tliese prairie lands until after the new settlers began to pour in from the country east of the Mississippi river, about 1870. Then in a few years it was not difficult to tell the homestead of a man who was born and reared on the frontier from one of the down-east farmers, who surrounded his buildings with fruit trees and groves and settled down to grow up with the country and develop its agricultural and horticultural possibilities, while the fron-

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tier's man had it in his blood to love cows, ponies, dogs, and herds, and nearly always had a ramshackled, run down, shiftless, treeless sort of a surround- ing to his habitation. Between the planting of an orchard and the eating of fruit therefrom from five to ten years intervened and it was back to old Missouri in the neighborhood of St. Joseph that many an early settler went with a load of corn to exchange for apples before his own began to produce. This trading of corn and wheat and money for Missouri apples went on from the settlement of the country to 1880, with this difference, that after about 1875, the Missourians came with loaded wagons seeking a market and but few from this county crossed the Missouri river seeking fruit. About 1880 the local orchards were able to supply the home trade, but for some years longer wagon-loads of Missouri apples went through this county seventy-five to one hundred and fifty miles west to the newer settle- ment where fruit was scarce; but after a while the Missouri apples and the apple wagons disappeared and the Nebraskan who wanted apples came to Richardson county and, finding all and more than he could carry away, returned home ladened, spreading the news of a new land of Egypt to which all might come and be satisfied, with fruit. It was probably this wagon traffic in apples that attracted the attention and induced some to plant larger orchards, believing that for many years, and perhaps always. there would be a market for this fruit in the semi-arid portions of this state. The farm journals, nursery men, tree agents and agricultural lecturers, at least since 1875, had persistently preached the planting of trees and orchards. This free advice had some effect, for there were but few farms on which an orchard of some size was not planted, but it was not until about 1890. or later that orchards of much size were planted in this county. Then there was an era of planting, but after several years it was apparent that there was considerable labor and care necessary to start an orchard; that there were hail storms, insects, rabbits, mice, weeds and droughts to fight and guard against and loss of grain crops on the land set apart for orchards. and the enthusiasm for this method of getting rich quick and without work. lessened and has never been regained. Then as the orchards grew and began to come into bearing there was an occasional frost or an unsea- sonable year when the fruit was poor, undeveloped. wormy and unsalable. and in the years when there was a good crop the markets were overstocked and the price was so low that the orchard was a burden and many were tempted to uproot them. as a few did.

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History of Richardson County, Nebraska : its people, industries and institutions, Part 25

Author: Edwards, Lewis C Publication date: 1917 Publisher: Indianapolis : B.F. Bowen Number of Pages: 1742

Author: Edwards, Lewis C
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Indianapolis : B.F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 1742