but as a
general rule, in our section I don't believe we are concerned with that
factor.

The Thomas, which we can watch carefully in a nearby orchard, is
definitely on one year and off the next. Quite a few are on one year and
off two years. We haven't found any way to make that an annual crop,
because when it sets a crop, it sets a bumper crop, and there is simply
not enough food in the tree to set a sufficient number of fruit buds for
the following year's crop. I am sure that a lot of you folks have
observed this, and I think, Mr. Magill, that you might sound out some of
them.

MR. MAGILL: Going back to an observation I made as a kid, money didn't
grow in bushes around our place, and back in those days you could go out
and kill ten rabbits and sell them for 8 cents apiece, and if you only
used 4 cents apiece for ammunition, you have made 40 cents off of the
deal and had $20 worth of fun, and that was a good day's work. You
remember those days, Pappy? Back in those same times, I used to get
money out of hauling black walnuts to an old corn sheller and having
people who didn't have an interest in the corn sheller sell them for 50
cents a bushel. That was also pin money. Come in mighty useful.

We had a certain group of trees on the farm I was raised on that bore
every other year, and I can think of two fields where we rearranged the
fences in such a way as to make pasture fields out of them, and two of
those trees were where 15 or 20 cattle pastured. These were the only
shade trees, and naturally they manured those trees. And I recall for a
few years I was getting annual crops from them. Apparently they got
something supplied by cattle that they didn't have otherwise. Others in
the foothills of Kentucky, have come to the same conclusion.

I know a man who has pecan holdings in Alabama. He told me up to the
time he got the farm the trees had a few blooms but wouldn't set pecans.
He applied 15 mineral elements and claims to have got results from it. I
have talked to at least three people in my travelling around who tried
the same treatment on pecans, one in Georgia, one in Alabama and one in
Mississippi. They reported that they had improved yield on pecans by
using complete mineral fertilizer. That's in addition to nitrogen,
phosphorus and potassium.

I am foolish enough to think that that nice, young orchard of Mrs.
Weber's would make an excellent place to try it. I understand that the
trees are not behaving as we