ting back to Dr. MacDaniels.

PRESIDENT MACDANIELS: The next two talks have slides to be shown, and it
is suggested that you take about ten minutes, take a stretch and then
come back when the slide projector is set up.

My Experiences With Chinese Chestnuts

W. J. WILSON, _Fort Valley, Ga._

When I was asked to appear on this program to tell my experiences as a
grower of chestnuts, I felt like a child, appearing before a group of
grown-ups to tell them how to make marriage succeed. When I see the
sages of chestnut knowledge seated before me I realize that I can only
relate my experiences and ask your advice.

My father was a pioneer peach and pecan grower; he loved trees and has
told me time after time that if I ever made more than just a living,
farming, it would have to come from trees, not row crops. He was what I
would call a self-educated man. He had small chance of formal education,
being the sickly son, one of eight sons and three daughters, of a couple
who eked out an existence on the poor, unproductive, sandy, soils of
Crawford County, Georgia, growing the one and only cash crop of those
days, cotton. The combined wages of these boys often amounted to more
cash money than their own cotton crop returned because the supplier got
most of the money from their own crop. They helped neighbors pick out
their cotton crops after finishing their own. Grandfather must have
liked to experiment in his limited way. Each spring as Grandfather would
plant his small patch of Spanish peanuts and yellow corn, Grandmother
would tongue-lash him, saying, 'so long as you fool away your time with
Spanish peanuts and yellow corn you will remain a poor man. Time has
proven Grandfather right and Grandmother wrong. Spanish peanuts is a
huge industry; most of our hybrid corns, which have added millions of
bushels to our yields are yellow.

My father wasted his time back at the turn of the century planting a
peach orchard on his best cotton land. He planted pecans each winter,
beginning about 1912, often to the ribbing of friends who still
worshipped at the feet of King Cotton. One told him that he had a pecan
tree or two about his home and the damn flying squirrels ate all of the
nuts. Another told him that if he wanted a load of stove wood he would
just as soon cut down a pecan tree as any other kind. At his death in
1942, my father had planted six hundred acres of pecan orchards, each
acre having been interplanted with peac