An American fruit-farm

Front matter

■TO i mmsmffl ts Selection and Manageme

: m

HP

Foreword

THE fruit-farm, of which this book is a record, lies in the Lake Shore Valley, on the southern shore of Lake Erie, in Pennsylvania, a region rich in horticulture. The book is a record of many years' experience at home, of much observation abroad, and is offered as a modest contribution to a subject of greatly increasing interest in our own country. Successful horticulture implies ceaseless attention and obedience to the laws of climate, planting, and cultivation, not excluding such elements as soil-fertility, labor, administration, and birds. The biography of any well-conducted fruit-farm is a chapter in the history of success. Horticulture in America is opportunity, but as yet we are merely at the threshold of knowing how to use the land. The illustrations are from photographs taken — with three exceptions — on the fruit-farm whose history is here related.

F. N. T.

Indian Arrow Vineyards, April, 1915.

Contents

PAGE

I. — Time and the Tree i

II. — Selecting the Fruit-Farm ... 33

II

CLIMATE and location determine the value of the farm. In selecting the site, we must consider climate first, for we are prisoners of climate. It is climate that determines what seeds shall grow and what shall not. Farming is onlyone of the uses man makes of climate. It is because of climate that the earth brings forth fruit after its kind. Location means convenience, and the most convenient use of climate is the most convenient use of the land. Yet all land is not equally convenient for use. The man himself must know. He contributes to the conclusion of the whole matter, for his decision in choosing a climate determines his future. There are climatic belts, or regions, each having possibilities and limitations. Man cannot change these. The kind of farming possible depends upon climate; therefore one must go to the proper region for fruit-land, grain-land, or grazing-land. True, tropical fruits may be made to grow in hothouses; man may supply the climate after the fashion of things artificial; but we do not look for orange

3 33 groves amidst snow-banks. The supreme law in farming is adaptation. Perfect adaptation means perfect farming, and degrees of adaptation shade off into utter failure. The farm is largely man-made; it cannot be said to be wholly natural. Indeed, the most productive farms are adaptations which illustrate man's farthest departure from the wild. Such adaptation, for human ends, exemplifies the best use of climate. Thus a ranch in the Lake Erie Valley, or a vineyard among the Idaho mountains is not an example of the nice adaptation of climate to human wants. The sun settled this matter ages ago.

Usually, in seeking a farm, a man is dominated by his associations. Nearness to the old home, to friends, to city or town, determines his choice rather than the suitableness of the land itself to the uses he purposes to make of it. The idea is common that any land will raise anything possible within the zone in which it lies. Thus most people believe that oranges and cocoanuts grow in strings along the equator, and apples anywhere in the temperate zone. Yet we are assured that all grains and fruits, all roots and leaves and stalks, used by man as food, thrive best close to the northern, or southern, limit of climatic production, like oranges in Jaffa, Florida, and California, and wheat in British America. If a man would raise any farm product in perfection, he must select his farm within the climatic belt adapted to such production. This means specialization in farming on a grand scale. In a general way every man considers climate when he deliberately locates his home. He thinks at least of the extremes of heat and cold, of drouth and rainfall, of sunshine and cloud. His instincts guide him. He inherits from his kind the experience of the ages ; from cavedweller and lake-dweller, from the man of the Stone Age, of the Bronze Age, and of the Iron Age, — from that innumerable throng of men and women who have filed across the earth from the beginning, bequeathing to him experiences of long ago which yet dominate our lives. Most serious of experiences is of the art of making a living. So man considers wind and weather when he seeks a home. In a rude way he avoids total failure, for wind and weather drive him into a corner in which he can eke out existence. If climate be not too unfavorable, he concludes that he has made a good choice. At least he proceeds to farm his land.

But most men come into possession of a farm without being consulted about the climate. Each thus receives a tool as a gift and continues to handle it as did his fathers before him. So near is he to wind and weather; so close a prisoner of climate is he, life with him is static ; he gives climate no serious thought, save to grumble at the biting frost, the scorching heat, the engulfing rain. Who has not witnessed the transformation of a region from grain to fruit; from potato fields to truck gardens? The thoughtless farmer is ignorant of his own sky and tries to raise wheat when he should be growing peaches; grapes, when he should sow his fields to buckwheat. It is the old story of the round farm in the square hole; of meadows in Florida and orange groves in Vermont.

Within any climatic belt, the chief problem for the farmer to solve is the selection of the site for his farm. This means, primarily, convenience. A well-located farm is like a corner lot on Broadway. Remembering always that land unadapted to farming cannot be made farm land by mere location, of two farms the better located is the more valuable. Everybody desires convenient land, — that is, land most accessible for making a living. Good roads shorten the distance to market and cut down the cost of farm administration. The test is transportation. A farm many miles from the city but connected by good transportation is nearer the city than another lying quite close yet inaccessible. Location determines the cost of farming. Land remote from markets, though producing heavy crops, eats itself up in transportation; the farmer is attempting the impossible. He may starve amidst plenty. Poorer land well located is worth more than choicer land badly located. The best farms being best located always command the highest price; they cost most and pay best.

Climate is the constant factor in farming; the value of location varies with world conditions. Every inch of American soil was once out of relation to the world-market. Much of it is now in relation to that market and lands are ever coming into favorable location. The larger currents of world events, the smaller American currents, affect land values. Within fifty years the wheat region in America has shifted from the Middle States to the Western, centering about Illinois, and again northward, across Minnesota, into Canada and British America. The potato belt has removed from the latitude of Boston and Chicago to that of northern Maine; the cotton belt, from the Sea Islands of the Carolinas to the coast of Texas. Truck-farming is more profitable in Florida than on Long Island. Nature, that is, climate, makes this possible. Transportation solves the problem. Every market town in America is now close to the fruit-lands of California, the cotton fields of Texas, the truck-farms of Florida, the vineyards of Chautauqua and the Lake Erie Valley, the potato fields of Maine, the berry fields of New Jersey, the tobacco fields of Virginia and the Carolinas. Though we commonly think in terms of our political geography, our real geography is economic, — a geography of lines of trade and travel, of railroads and steamship lines. The real distances in America are best learned in the market place.

Lines of trade and travel, general and local, determine the value of location, and by such lines must be understood the available ones. A through railroad may traverse a farm, yet the farm itself may be practically many miles from a railroad. It is the most accessible farm land that is most valuable for farming. Most purchasers must be content with " second best" land, — with the less or even the least valuable location. One must come first, or command equivalent resources, would he have the pick of the land. Every farm has its price, and youth and cash are the best credit. Land best located is a permanent asset and may be sold at any time with slight risk of loss. In ease and opportunity of transfer such land resembles the most valuable personal property, such as jewels and the precious metals. He who owns the farm everybody wants owns the best farm. The best located farm is, economically, the most productive. Primacy of location is the supreme advantage. Only the wise man discovers this. He recognizes the possibilities of the site; he foresees favoring changes, — markets, roads, trade, commerce, associations.

Or, indifferent to conveniences, the investor ignores all demands save his own, subordinates himself as a world-producer and selects a site exclusively pleasing to himself. He deliberately cuts himself off from relations which the world at large demands. He locates in isolation, apart, by himself, remote from men; beyond the whistle of steamer or train ; beyond trolleys and even beyond automobiles. He builds a retreat, a little world of his own. His site, however delightful to him, cannot be called other than exceptional. Few shall ever desire it; it is not a commercial article. His is the exception, not the rule, in locating a farm.

His isolation is in these days artificial. The world to-day lives in, by, and through its relationships. He ignores them. In this he consults his own mind. He pays the price of isolation precisely as another, who has primacy of location for every convenience, pays the price of his primacy. A home in the woods, remote from the haunts of men, has its price, and to many, a prohibitive price, just as to many, corner lots on Broadway and best located farms have a prohibitive price. So, after all, valuation depends upon the man. In him we come to the inconstant quantity. His tastes, ideas, whims, theories, notions, desires, passions, determine for him the value of any land. His selection of a site is determined by his racial instincts, his age, his education, his temperament, his previous associations. If his motive be wholly to buy and sell, his choice differs from that of him who yields to sentiments of association. Men at some time turn to the scenes of their childhood and youth. Many never remove from these scenes. Some select a farm within a region with which they are familiar because there they feel at home and know how to proceed. In other words, these have most courage when on their native heath. But thus to yield to sentiment may be to ignore the laws of climate and location.

Very few men proceed, as one may say, scientifically in the selection of a farm. New Zealand may, scientifically, be preferable to a township in Pennsylvania, but you locate in the township without for a moment weighing the superior opportunities of New Zealand. Indeed, the instances of scientific procedure in locating farm lands are almost limited to capitalists who combine for profit in the exploitation of a region, as a Texan fruit-belt, or a wheat-belt in British Columbia; rubber fields in Central America, or guano beds On the Pacific islands.

Ordinarily the man who buys a farm buys within a region limited by his own associations. He buys land which reflects himself. The farm is a landed edition of himself. The so-called economics of farming is essentially the psychology of the farmer. He doubtless never thinks of himself as a psychologist. His mind is his farm. The psychology of farming may seem an obscure, not to say a rare and uncertain crop, though it truly includes all the labors of the farmer all the days of the year. He may miss the moon at bean-planting, but he cannot escape the psychology. Indeed, the psychology of farming is the function of which the farmer is unconscious his life long. But in selecting the site for his farm he responds to this function. No nice analysis of motives strains his mind, when, rapidly casting his eye about him, he resolves that the site suits him, or can be made to suit. He desires himself in the site and so is satisfied.

When you have decided to purchase a farm [says Cato, that rare old Roman farmer], be careful not to buy rashly; do not spare your visits and be not content with a single tour of inspection. The more you go, the more will the place please you, if it be worth your attention. Give heed to the appearance of the neighborhood, — a flourishing country should show its prosperity. When you go in, look about, so that, when needs be, you can find your way out. Take care that you choose a good climate, not subject to destructive storms, and a soil naturally strong — in a healthy situation, where labor and cattle can be had, well watered, near a good-sized town, and either on the sea or a navigable river, or else on a good and much frequented road. Choose a place, which has not often changed ownership, one which is sold unwillingly, that has buildings in good repair. Beware that you do not rashly contemn the experience of others. It is better to buy from a man who has farmed successfully and built well. *

What motive, then, in buying a farm? To sell again and quickly, at a profit? Then you are a dealer in real estate, not a farmer. Do you buy in order to indulge in an avocation? Then it is diversion you are seeking. Would you experiment with seeds, roots, and soils? Then it is a chemical laboratory or pure science you are after. Are you timid as to stocks and bonds, shares and industrials generally. Then it is an investment you seek, — something you may be able to find when you would take an inventory. Do you want the farm as a home — a site for yourself where land and sky, the procession of the seasons, springtime and harvest, rain, snow, hail, fungi, insects, and the pleasant anxieties of life weave their warp

1 The copy of Cato on Agriculture which lies before me bears the date 1598, is the edition of John Meursum, printed at Antwerp, by Plantin. I follow the admirable translation of Fairfax Harrison.

and woof? Then you say to yourself: "Here will I live; I have found the site on which to make my farm." Imagination translates opportunity into realization: this is the psychology of farming.

The Chautauqua fruit-belt in New York and the Lake Erie Valley in Pennsylvania extend for fifty miles parallel with the beach of the lake, beginning seven miles east of the city of Erie. This entire region is a narrow valley, not wider than six miles between the lake and the range of low hills to the southward. It is a rolling country, rising from the lake level to the crest of the hills some thirteen hundred feet. The hills are cut across by deep gulches, which begin at the crest and open northward and northwestward to the lake. The streams are swift and shallow, though in ancient times sufficient to cut chasms half a mile wide and in places three hundred feet deep. The exposure is of the earliest formations known to geology: the Silurian, the Devonian, and the Carboniferous, abounding in fossils both of plants and animals. The enormous elevation of this mass of hills gave the swift descent of waters to the lake and caused the extinction of possibly a dozen species of shellfish whose remains now compose the rocky basis of the hills, — a vast heap of shell buried amidst the stone. For ages the waters have seeped through this formation, impregnating the entire Valley with a solution of lime. In the Lake Shore Valley is the oldest land on the globe and the rocks tell their own story. From the crest of the hills to the edge of Lake Erie these streams cut deviously upwards of a dozen miles. The ravines disclose layers of mollusks, coral, fossil lilies, cone-in-cone — that puzzling formation which awaits explanation, — and innumerable layers, in varying thicknesses of sedimentary rock.

In this Valley the Garden of Eden has been located by a writer of some eminence in his day. Vestiges of inhabitants during the Stone Age abound in arrow-heads, spear-points, stone pestles and mortars, skinners, and rude pottery. The region is a fruit garden, whether or not Adam and Eve ever dignified it by their melancholy presence. The land slopes northward toward Lake Erie, and the area suited to orchard and vineyard is sharply defined by the crest of hills at the south, the lake at the north, the level plain of Ohio at the west, and the high hills of Chautauqua County to the east. It is a narrow valley containing not over three hundred square miles. Within this domain grapes, berries of all kinds, peaches, pears, apples, prunes, cherries, cereals, melons, vegetables, grow in perfection, attaining the maximum in quality and quantity. The contour of the Valley makes this possible. Fruit of any kind attains perfection at the northern limit of its production. The Valley marks this limit, for fruits that are adapted to it, in the United States. The lay of the land is favorable. It slopes towards the north, thus preventing too early start of sap, leaf, and bud in the spring. The soil is deep, as tested by borings of innumerable gas wells in the Valley, attaining a depth of one hundred and seventy-five feet in many places. Lake Erie tempers the weather, preventing extremes of heat and cold, making spring late and prolonging autumn till all fruits and the wood of the new growth are well ripened. The lake is part of an immense waterway, some two thousand miles long, a depression which is the natural highway for winds and storms, affording perfect ventilation of a body of air warmer than otherwise would be found in this latitude. This ventilation secures against frosts and cold and storms of all kinds, for most storms which threaten the Valley move down the lake without harm. The lake winds protect orchards and vineyards, and every field they sweep, from untimely frosts. On an early September day, the traveler who passes over the crest of hills to the south of the lake and thus emerges into the edge of the Mississippi Valley notices at once a change of temperature. He sees a region blackened by early frosts. The demarcation is sharp: on one side of the highway purpling vineyards, peach trees bending low with fruit; on the other side, cornstalks blackened by frost, and everywhere the sere and yellow leaf. It is useless to attempt to raise fruit outside the fruit line of the Lake Erie Valley. Here, almost in sight of the lake, one may raise cherry trees for shade but not one cherry will ever ripen on the tree.

Nor is this the conclusion of the matter; Nature protects the Lake Erie Valley with blankets of clouds from November till April, moderating the winter and thus sheltering all kinds of berries, vines, and fruit trees. The moderate snowfall is sufficient to cover the ground with this best of all winter covers. From May till November the weather is ideal, rarely attaining eighty degrees of heat, and the coldest winter day seldom shows zero weather. Within this Valley are upwards of thirty million grapevines in highest productivity ; thousands of acres of berries, peaches, apples, prunes, plums, cherries, melons, corn, wheat, potatoes, peas, beans, and vegetables. The Valley was the far "West" until a few years after the close of the Revolution, when settlers began entering at the east from New England and New York, and from Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh, through the west, near Erie. La Salle discovered the region in 1679, while voyaging on the Griffon westward along the south shore of Lake Erie, accompanied by Father Hennepin, that charming romancer, and others, first of Europeans to behold this garden of the New World. Baron La Hontan, in 1688, penetrated the region at the command of Denonville, Governor of New France; and Charlevoix, in 1720, traversed the Valley, recording the prodigality of Nature, the abundance of wild apples, plums, grapes, the forests of nut trees, the deer, bear, elk, and buffalo on every side. It was Charlevoix who left the name " Aux Boeuf " which yet lingers in Erie County, though better known as French Creek. But it was not until Perry's victory in 1813,

"On the tenth of September, The day we remember,"

that the western country became indisputably American soil, and New France — the hope of the great La Salle — became at last America. For more than half a century the Valley has been traversed by one of the principal railroads of the country, giving swift transportation to the markets of the world. To-day it is teeming with population and every rood of ground supports its man. There are many fertile farming regions in America; this is but one of them. Here fruit land sells for a thousand dollars an acre and some of it produces five hundred dollars an acre. If the net return be capitalized at five per cent., the land would be worth from seven to ten thousand dollars an acre. The explanation lies wholly in the climate. Nature has made the Valley a fruit garden. She has made other regions a fruit valley, a grain field, or a truck-garden. We are wise if we take her as she is, get on her side and use climate to supply our wants. We can do no more, and most of us do less. In selecting the site for a farm the purchaser rarely gives a thought to the geology of the region. He will discover, however, if he pursues the matter, that every fruitful farming region owes its fruitfulness, as does the Lake Shore Valley, to climate and soil, — and that is as much as saying, to its geology and its climate. The immense productivity of the Lake Shore Valley is due chiefly to its geology — to the lay of the land, hollowed and leveled, twisted and heaved perhaps sixty million years ago. Three hundred feet of dead shellfish, a mass of dissolving lime, is a strong basis for producing fruit. Elevation, the northern slope, perfect ventilation, the protection of a vast body of fresh water, a coverlet of clouds in winter, a deep and responsive soil, and primacy of location, impart qualities which are rarely combined.

Many are the rich fruit valleys of America, each having charms of its own, but no man can describe life in all these valleys. Climate, soil, and the man are the three elements in every fruit valley. The accessories are only slightly less essential, — neighborhood, markets, transportation, schools, churches, amusements, relationships with the whole world. Any fruitful valley in America might be taken as a unit of horticultural measure ; comparisons make heroes of us all. If I have taken the Lake Shore Valley as a unit of measure, it is because of familiarity with that measure, not because other measures are lacking. The essentials of contentment are not on a sliding scale; ten thousand a year may not be had from fifty acres in any fruit valley. But the laws of fruit-farming apply in all fruit valleys, and whether we live in the east or the west, in the north or the south, in Pennsylvania or California, in Florida or Michigan, we must obey these laws. We must be careful of the type. So the three hundred square miles of the Lake Shore Valley hint at means and methods quite as significantly as do the larger or the lesser areas of other American fruit valleys.

It might seem then that farming is a profession quite as truly as law, medicine, or theology. No longer can farming be continued by mere rule of thumb ; one of the oldest of occupations, it at last is becoming exact, — that is to say, scientific. There are thousands who yet do " light farming," and they have their reward. The call "back to the land" is a very worldly one because tested by all worldly tests it is profitable. If the farmer who owns the finest farm could at will turn it into an oil-field abounding with "gushers," he might not be unwilling to make the change. Many a farm has suddenly become a forest of derricks. The mere by-products of farming, — fresh air, pure water, pretty scenery, singing birds, and everchanging skies cannot, as attractions, fully explain the return to the land now for some years going on in America. It is the products of farming which bring men back to themselves and to their own. Competition in every vocation is now so fierce, farming is discovered as an open approach to sanity and comfort. If this be true now when the population of America is but one hundred millions, what will it be three generations hence when population exceeds four hundred millions? How shall they get food? The land area does not, cannot increase. Yet the land must respond — and easily — by intensive farming. But first the wild lands of all the continents shall have been inclosed as farms. South America, the land-hunter's paradise, will fill up with immigrants long before the twentieth century shall have passed. But intensive farming has already begun in our America. Corn cannot be raised on Broadway, yet Broadway must have corn. Cities must be fed and the world henceforth will ever be demanding a yet more varied, abundant, and invigorating food supply. The essential measure of farm values is human necessity. Hence, in selecting the site for a farm, when the mind is made up as to what sort of farmland is desired, the would-be farmer may well pause and weigh conditions. In order to do business one must go where business is done. In order to farm successfully, profitably, satisfactorily, one must use land best adapted to the sort of farming he affects. Climate, location, associations, are the three factors which properly determine the choice of the site. Climate determines all; soil can be made; so too railroads, highways, schools, churches, post-offices, markets. Associations grow. In brief, given a favorable climate and primacy of location, all that remains to be done man can do.

All the traditions declare that health lies in farming, doubtless because no man can be a weakling and a farmer. The hayfield is supposed to restore lost health; when doctors fail, we take to a farm and carters. This tradition of identity of health and farming seems to be as old as the race. Yet in no vocation is invalidism a prerequisite. Farming compels good health for it puts the man to the test. No vocation demands abler or saner men. It is an illusion that farming does not require brains; that when a man has failed at everything else he may resort, successfully, to farming; that nobody can fail at that. The professional collector of statistics has neglected a field here quite untouched, as to the number of farmers who fail as farmers. Horticulture is expert-work and he who is not an expert need not hope to raise fruit, — perfect fruit and in ample quantity. There is a difference. To raise peaches and not peachpits, merely, requires peach-thinking; not peachpit thinking. A man's mind must be attuned to the keynote of his vocation, and his vocation is to be measured as it conduces to the general welfare. Thus to a healthy mind horticulture has its pleasures ; to a diseased mind, no vocation is pleasurable. We come then again to the man; his vocation depends upon his health. A sick fruit-grower means a neglected fruit-farm. The farm never misrepresents its owner. In order to have healthy farms the fruit valley must have healthy farmers. Mere residence on a fruit-farm does not generate either health or the fruit-farming sense. Fruit-farmers, like poets, are born, not made.

Yet, ignorant as we are of the laws of health, we know that earth and air are the mother of sound mind and body. The billionaire who trudges barefoot through the dewy grass in chase of health is more likely to find it than by going barefoot down Wall Street. The air of the fruit-farm has more ozone than the air of the office or the factory. So the conceit follows that health may be had simply by standing in the open on the farm, gazing at the scenery, and retaining your breath while you count seventeen. All this is a delicate compliment, possibly a tribute, to Nature, though rendered by a dress-suit. Were earth and air the sole elements of longevity, country people should die young as centenarians and many who knew Washington should still be among us. Indeed, some wide-eyed peasant should yet linger who could tell us whether Caesar fell in the Capitol or at the base of Pompey's pillar, and some domestic of Elsinore could give us back-stair information whether Hamlet was really mad.

The fountain of perpetual age does not bubble up even on the best fruit-farm in the Valley, and I have seen but two and known but one centenarian there. My neighbor, at seventy-five, is renewing his youth by returning, after fifty years' absence, to the old homestead, and is converting it into a fruit-farm. Yesterday, said he to me: "If I had only known what I was to miss in life, I would never have left the Valley; there is more pleasure and satisfaction in raising fruit than in any other occupation in the world. The trouble is, we do not find it out until we are old." He had spent his life in electrical engineering in many lands; had amassed a fortune. He had not tried all occupations, but he was now generalizing in very bold fashion. One of the best fruit-growers in the Valley became one after having given forty years of his life to the shoe business, acquiring wealth. "I wish I had begun at the start, and not when I was old," he said. "I never suspected what I was missing of pleasure," and he was thinking, though not aloud, "of profits also."