s around their orchards with considerable detriment to
their orchards.

We find that we need air drainage there just as much as we need
protection against the wind. If I were in Minnesota I might change my
mind after studying the conditions, but if I was going to plant in
Minnesota and I should plant evergreens I certainly would trim them up
from the bottom so as to get air drainage. I have known of instances
where orchards were protected and where there was air drainage they were
all right, but where they were closely protected by the trees they were
injured by the frosts by their starting too early in the spring. If you
get a warm atmosphere around the trees you start your buds pretty early,
several days earlier than they would if they had the right kind of air
drainage, and it does seem to me that the experience we have had would
be against close planting around an orchard for protection from frost,
though you do want to protect them against winds, but air drainage, it
seems, is not a detriment to orchards. (Applause.)

Mr. Richardson: I wish to say that in my observation and my experience
if I was putting in a windbreak I would put it on the south and west
sides; I wouldn't have any on the north and east.

Mr. Brackett: Our prevailing winds are from the south and west during
the summer, and the Wealthy is an apple that is bad for falling off when
it gets to a certain stage, and I think it is very necessary for us to
have a windbreak on the south and west if we are going to protect our
orchards here.

Mr. Ludlow: The wind comes from the northwest generally in the winter,
when we have storms, and if snow falls and it comes from the northwest,
and the orchard is protected on that side by a windbreak, the windbreak
will catch the snow and it will pile on top of the orchard, and I have
known at least a dozen trees to be broken down by the storms of winter
getting in that way.

A Member: I think crab apple trees make a good windbreak, if they are
set twice as close together as trees in the orchard.

A Member: I think location has more to do with it than anything else. I
have two or three orchards in mind where five years ago, when we had
that hard frost, they had an abundance of apples, and it was protected
from the northwest. I have another orchard in mind that was protected
from the north and northwest, and this year they had over 1,400 bushels
of Wealthy apples. Mine wasn't protected particularly from the north,