er and fall and every three weeks
during the winter. They should begin with the earliest and finish with
the very longest keeper. These varieties will overlap, so that the
farmer will almost always have two sorts to choose from. There should be
sweet apples among them--particularly winter sweets.

The names, characteristics, qualities, description, etc., of the twenty
to thirty varieties that make up an ideal orchard would require a long
chapter, if the subject was fully treated. Beginners in tree buying
should be cautioned not to let the nurseryman run in half a dozen trees
of each kind for the family orchard on them. Two trees of a kind are
plenty, particularly as the surplus of the family orchard commonly goes
to waste. The names should be carefully registered, so there will be no
wondering what an apple is when it begins to bear. You can't keep
company satisfactorily with an apple that you don't know the name of,
any better than you can an unknown man.

The best place to keep these family apples is in a dugout, in the side
of a bank if possible, at all events good and deep, with the door at the
north, and a good blow-hole in the south end. I don't know much about
soils or location. I found myself in possession of some Kaw river
timbered hills, clay soil carrying some sand; not good for much else; so
I planted them--tops, sides, and draws--with apple trees, which have
done well on the tops of the hills, sides of the hills, and in the
valleys between the hills. Am inclined to suspect there is a great deal
of gammon written about "slope" and "expanse" for orchards. My
conclusion is that that is a good slope which you happen to have. Trees
growing in the Kaw bottoms themselves, I observe, thrive and bear. The
only cultivation I have ever given trees has been such as they got by
being component parts of a corn-field, except that I have mainly given
the tree rows extra cultivation, keeping them clean of grass and weeds.
My orchards are now seeded to clover; clover is not valuable, for its
own sake, among trees, but the trees thrive with it. Its greatest use,
so far as I can see, is to make you mow the orchard where it is twice
during the season. I prefer to stop cultivation in orchards when they
are six years old.

I have no knowledge of windbreaks, but I have had a great deal of
"mechanical destruction" done by borers and rabbits. Both these pests
are good "mechanics" in their way and willing to work. I have the borers