1930 - Annual Convention Report

              S I X T E E N T H A N N U A L C O N V E N T I ON
little or no improvement through time. Some were not worth gathering 1.1
the tall and were treated accordingly, while others were dried and stored; \ va
could have us. ed a cider mill to advantage on that farm, but we might thereby
have lost caste locally. It must be admitted that we did but little to assis't
this old orchard, with the exception of cultivating a strip between the rows,
where we planted potatoes in the spring and harvested a sparse crop in the
fall. There was but little attempt at pruning and no thought of spraying,
although we did destroy the caterpillar's tents— those old trees just naturally
persisted in spite of and not because of the treatment they received.
Between house and barn lay the " little orchard." perhaps twenty trees
a l l told. These were of later planting, with the exception of the big tree that
stood in the middle, a widely spreading tree that was withheld from disaster
by a section of logging chain that served to prevent its splitting into two
segments. This was the only early tree on the farm— not so very early at
that— but at any rate it was the first to produce edible apples, even if they
did make a fellow's teeth become rather tender, and the only proof of ripe­ness
was the colored seeds. We used to store the surplus apples that fell
from this tree in one of the long drawers of the old mahogany bureau until
they became mellow, a wait of a couple ot weeks; as I look at the old
bureau I see in retrospect a barefoot lad. tip- toeing through the cold dew of
early_ morning, to see how many apples he would find under the old family
tree.
F r om the other trees in the small orchard a few may be selected for
special mention. There was one that bore sweet apples, and stood nearest
to the kitchen door; I know now that it was a Tallman Sweet; beside it was
a tree that should have produced Russets, but that somehow used to produce
" Rusty- Coats." There were three crabs, and we Jcnew the names of two;
Transcendant. whose fruit made great preserves, j m d Montreal Beaut}', that
gave us rosy- cheeked crabs that were not bitter, and that were always above
par value for purposes of barter at school; there was a small yellow crab
too, but I have used up all my powers of description on those awful plums,
yet I can say that this tree was the most generous bearer in the two orchards.
Between the row of plum trees and the row of Balms lay the plot of
ground that we called the garden. The greater part of it was used for the
growing of early potatoes that we planted in hills, three cuttings to a hill.
At one end. however, several beds of vegetables in raised plateaus of about
four feet in width and of varying length, a scheme for which Jethro Tull is
often given the credit, and which was no doubt imperative in countries of
heavy rainfall. There would be a bed of onion sets or potato onions, another
bed of carrots, one of beets, and one or more of onions grown from seed; we
were not strong on growing garden herbs, perhaps because there was always
a herb crank or two in every district, and these grew enough for all hands.
The weeding of this vegetable garden was generally carried out in the gloam­ing,
when one needed a free hand to combat the mosquitoes. Before leaving
this garden it may be added that it was bounded on one side by a row of
currants, black and red; we never tried out garden raspberries, perhaps
because there were so many " slashes" within reach, wherein grew more rasp­berries
than the people had time or inclination to pick.
Inside the road fence, to the right of the gate, there grew three trees
that served to distinguish our steading— these had been planted years before
by an aunt, who had died before I was born, and to whom the trees were
regarded as a monument— surely a splendid memorial. One was the biggest
Balsam Fir I have ever seen, and from the " pods" on its trunk we gathered
many ounces of that viscous gum, to be taken upon sugar when one had a
cold." The next tree was a Cedar, of fair proportions, when one considers