arrels for winter use, carefully shaken and
pressed; mark with the grade and name of variety and haul to market on
wagon. I always sell in the orchard by car lots, when I can. I retail
the scattered ones; send the third grade to the cider-mills. My best
markets are sometimes both east and west of here. I never ship to
commission men; it don't pay. I don't dry nor store any. I do not
irrigate. I employ men and boys (men preferred). Pay one dollar per day
and dinner.

* * * * *

W. D. KERN, Baldwin, Douglas county: I have resided in Kansas
thirty-nine years. Have an apple orchard of 775 trees four years old.
For market I prefer Missouri Pippin, Ben Davis, and Willow Twig, and for
family orchard Yellow Transparent, Maiden's Blush, and Jonathan. I
prefer a loose, porous subsoil on a north slope. I prefer one- or
two-year-old trees, set twenty-two feet apart north and south and
thirty-three feet east and west. I plant my orchard to corn, potatoes,
and clover, and keep up the cultivation until they are bearing well,
using a diamond plow and one-horse cultivator. I never cease cropping.
Windbreaks are not essential, but if they were I should make them of
four or five rows of maple or some quick-growing trees, on the south and
west sides of the orchard. For rabbits I use wooden tree wrappers, and
dig the borers out. I prune to give the tree shape and let in the sun; I
think it pays, as it keeps the tree from overbearing. I do not thin the
fruit while on the trees, but think it would pay. I fertilize my orchard
with barn-yard litter, and would advise it on all soils when it needs
it. I pasture my orchard with hogs; I think it advisable, and that it
pays. My trees are troubled with canker-worms, tent-caterpillars,
borers, tree-hoppers, and leaf-rollers, and my apples with codling-moth
and curculio. I do not spray. I hand-pick my apples into buckets and
sacks from step-ladders. I sell my apples in the orchard at wholesale. I
sell the best to shippers, and the second and third grades the best way
I can. I sell or feed the culls to the stock. Never tried distant
markets. I do not dry any. Some years I am successful in storing apples
in barrels and boxes in a cellar. Winesap and Missouri Pippin keep best.
I never tried artificial cold storage. I have to repack stored apples
before marketing, losing about one-fourth of them. I do not irrigate.
Prices have been from sixty cents to one dollar per eleven-p