Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting / Washington D.C. September 26, 27 and 28 1923

by Unknown

PROCEEDINGS

AT THE

FOURTEENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE NORTHERN NUT GROWERS ASSOCIATION

New National Museum, Washington, D. C.

September 26-27-28, 1923.

(In making up this report the transcript of the stenographer's full report has been unsparingly cut, in accordance with the vote of the convention. Copies of the full report are in the possession of the secretary.)

The Convention was called to order at 2 p. m., Sept. 26, 1923, in the
New National Museum.

In his opening address the president spoke of the need for increased membership and improved financial condition. He also recommended a return to the old method of combining the secretary and treasurer in one office and that the secretary-treasurer should have a fair salary, suitable quarters, and adequate help. He spoke of his own efforts to increase the usefulness of the association and expressed his fears that they had amounted to very little. He quoted the statement of the editor of the American Nut Journal that what people want to know is whether they can make any money by the cultivation of nut trees. That statement led to a campaign to try to locate in the territory of the association groups of nut trees in profitable bearing. He felt satisfied that there are numerous paying nut orchards, and he recommended a continuance of the campaign for locating such orchards.

The president then went on to instance the experience of Mr. Frederick G. Brown of Salisbury, Mass., at whose place, about two miles from the ocean, there are two Persian walnut trees, 12 to 15 years old, one of them about a foot in diameter and twenty feet high, that have borne for two years. Peach trees will not live at this place. Two miles away at Newburyport is a tree a year or two younger that bore a half peck of nuts last year, and another tree 35 years old in bearing for 15 or 20 years. The nuts were spoken of as of high quality.

He referred to Edward Selkirk of North East, Pa., who has a grove of 250 trees about 22 years old of the Pomeroy variety. Last year the crop was one ton and brought in a little over $500.00. This year the crop is much larger. For best development of the trees the land should be given over entirely to their culture.

The president quoted a letter from E. A. Riehl of Godfrey, Illinois as follows:

My nut plantings are mostly young, many just coming into bearing, while many others have been top-worked to better varieties, so that money returns are not what they would be had I started out planting improved varieties. Part of my aim was to originate better varieties than we had when I began. In this, I think, I have been fairly successful.

My plantings consist mostly of chestnuts. These have sold readily at 35 to 40 cents per pound wholesale. It is rather a hard matter to give any idea as to profit, except that we gathered 23 pounds from one tree five years after topworking on a tree then about three inches in diameter. In 1920, the net return was $1,172.54, in 1921, $1,019.44, in 1922, which was about a half crop, $1,196.81. All this on land so rough no crop could be grown on it but pasture. This year's crop promises to be a full one.

As to walnuts, we have made no record of single trees. The Thomas, by actual test, gives ten pounds of meat to the bushel, which we sold to dealers last season at $1.00 per pound, and could not nearly supply the demand.

Walnut crop here a failure this season. Only a few Thomas trees have a crop.

If the meeting was after nut harvest, I would send the best chestnut exhibit that has ever been shown at any meeting.

H. C. Fletcher of Clarkson, N. Y., was quoted as estimating the nuts produced from two trees each year from 1911 to 1915 as $25 worth. (Presumably these were Persian walnuts, but this was not stated.) In 1916 and 1917 there were about six bushels of nuts, probably $75 worth. In 1918 a market basket full. In 1919 and 1920 about $40 worth, including some trees sold. In 1921 about $50 worth were produced and in 1922 $60 worth of nuts and $30 worth of trees.

In the president's own filbert nursery at Rochester over 300 pounds of fine nuts were produced for which 30 cents a pound were offered by grocerymen.

Mr. W. R. Mattoon of the Forest Service of the U. S. Dept. of
Agriculture spoke as follows:

Two years ago, when the Forest Service was planning to get up a bulletin on growing walnut trees for timber, we found the need to include information on the nuts also. Mr. C. A. Reed and I together prepared a manuscript on growing the walnut tree both for timber and for nuts.

It pays to grow walnuts in small groups and singly, rather than in large blocks, for while they have not proven altogether failures when planted in large quantities they have been disappointing. Many of the trees which we planted as close as 6 x 8 feet several years ago, have not given very satisfactory results because they have not had enough light and air. The black walnut grows singly in the forest, although there may be full stands of other trees around it. Our idea is to recommend planting the black walnut in spots around on the farm, in little inaccessible places and on the hillsides, where the soil is good; for the black walnut requires good soil, and we cannot find that quality in large patches, nor is it usual on slopes of ground. So we must put it here and there on the farm, along the fence rows and in various places, but not in groups. The farmer planting in this way becomes its wood which is used in the most expensive furniture. I believe that mahogany is the only other wood so valuable. On the other side of the world they have the mahogany tree for cabinet use, and here in America we have the black walnut, a cabinet wood that is not surpassed.

The present available publications on this subject are limited but we are referring people who inquire about it to Department of Agriculture Bulletin No. 933, "The Black Walnut, Its Growth and Management." That is midway between a technical and a popular bulletin, and it comprises about the only available publication that we have at the present time on the subject of growing the tree. Farmers' Bulletin No. 1123, "Growing and Planting Hardwood Seedlings on the Farm", deals with the black walnut along with other trees. Another publication is Department of Agriculture Bulletin No. 153, "Forest Planting in the Eastern United States," which considers the black walnut along with the other available trees for planting.

MR. OLCOTT: For a small orchard would it be proper to plant 160 to 180 feet apart?

MR. MATTOON: When planted in that way you would get nut production and at the same time, a timber growth. If pruned you get a good log at the base. The small, ten-foot logs from these trees pay as much as you would get for an 18 foot log of a taller tree. For forestry purposes, pruning is a desirable practice.

THE PRESIDENT: But for nut-bearing, what is your opinion?

MR. MATTOON: I should suppose that you would want your orchard trees to be as low-branched as possible, and with as full foliage as possible.

Mr. Bixby (acting as secretary) then read a paper by H. R. Mosnat of Morgan Park, Illinois in which he spoke of the number of doctors interested in nut growing and the need of all men of that character having a hobby of that kind. He thought that the taxes on many farms might be paid out of the profits of nut trees planted on the farms and along the highways. But these nut trees should not be seedling trees. The apple and the black walnut are said to be the only trees that grow in every state of the Union. Nuts were one of the staple foods of our ancestors. We should not be discouraged if we have not yet found the right nut for the East and the Middle West. We should seek them promptly because of the rate at which nut trees are being converted into logs. By next year, he said, he expected to have 25 varieties of black walnuts in his collection including some hybrids. Machines for cracking black walnuts by power are now practically perfect and one firm in that business has cracked about a million pounds in the last few years and expects to treble or quadruple its business this season if supplies can be secured. The trouble with most walnut cracking machines is that they crush instead of crack and small bits of shell are apt to stick to the meats. But there is machinery now to remove these bits of shell. There are wild black walnuts that run 16 to 18 per cent kernels, though the average is only 12-1/2%. It is not always the largest nuts that produce the greatest proportionate weight of kernels. The picking and cracking expense with black walnuts is very little greater than with pecans, but the final cleaning to render the meat absolutely free of shells has been very expensive. Cultivated black walnuts will of course give better results, because they have been selected for easy cracking, have kernels that separate readily from the shell, the product is uniform, and the nuts require much less grading before cracking than the wild black walnuts, where every tree bears nuts differing in size, as in almost every other quality. Figuring 50,000 pounds to the carload it will take about eight carloads of wild black walnuts to make one carload of kernels of the same weight. More and more English walnuts and pecans are being sold in the form of kernels, and black walnuts also will best be sold in kernels. These can be canned in vacuum glass or metal cans, and the housewife will use more nuts when she can get the shell-free meats with her favorite cooking utensil, the can-opener. Confectioners and bakers will take black walnut meats by the carload in preference to other nut meats because they have more flavor, and so "go further."

The growing of black walnuts in a commercial way will require education, but already there is a growing interest. Several of the large weekly publications have, within the last couple of months, carried full page, illustrated articles on black walnuts. One of these, in a magazine of general circulation which is over half a million, within a month resulted in almost one hundred letters asking for additional information, which shows that a great many people want to know more about the possibilities of black walnuts. This interest will certainly increase when profitable black walnut orchards are actually growing and paying good profits. Already men are putting in black walnut orchards or groves of several hundred acres, and one such planting of 1,600 acres is proposed, but it will be partly hardy pecans. This shows rapid development into a real industry of magnitude.

Report of the Secretary.

On March 1, 1923, the treasurer, Mr. W. G. Bixby, handed over to the secretary the funds and books of the association, saying that his time had become so much taken up that he was able to give too little of it to the duties of his office. Thus it became necessary for the secretary to assume the functions of the treasurer as well.

These functions were, in the first place, the payment of the obligations of the association from the funds available. The funds available for current expenses were not sufficient for the payment of these obligations. The secretary therefore took it upon himself to pay these obligations with funds of the association put aside for other purposes. These funds were money received from life membership payments that had been deposited in the Litchfield Savings Society, as a sort of contingent fund, and other funds from the same source held by the treasurer and handed over by him to the secretary. These two funds were completely used up in the payment of current expenses, as will appear in the detailed statement of the secretary.

These funds, however, were still insufficient to pay the current expenses, which were, chiefly, the expenses of the stenographer's report and transcripts of the thirteenth annual convention, at Rochester, and the cost of printing the annual report. The cost of printing the report was paid out of the available funds. The stenographer's bill, amounting to $169.00 originally, but reduced to $135.00 by the stenographer on representation by the officers of the association that the amount was excessive, was paid by Mr. Bixby personally, and the association is indebted to Mr. Bixby in that amount at this moment.

The second function that developed upon the secretary was the management of the membership lists and matters relating thereto, which, though perhaps essentially a duty of the secretary of an association such as this, had been managed by the treasurer since the time when he took over the duties of the secretary in 1918. This had involved quite an expenditure for clerical work. This clerical work would still be an expense to the association, had not one of our members, Mr. H. J. Hilliard, of Sound View, Connecticut, volunteered to do it. Mr. Hilliard was formerly connected with a bank, is entirely familiar with the keeping of accounts, is a man of means and leisure, and I shall take pleasure in offering his name to fill the vacant treasurership. Heretofore, this association has had to pay little or nothing for clerical work which has been done either by the secretary, or by the treasurer and his personal clerical force.

In accordance with the vote of the Rochester convention the secretary drafted two letters, one entitled, "To the State Vice-Presidents of the N. N. G. A. and All Members of the Association"; the other, "To All Women Members of the N. N. G. A. and to All Women Interested, or Interestable, in Nut Culture." Both of these letters were sent to all members of the association, and the letter to women was sent also to a considerable list of women not members. The results of these letters were, so far as the secretary has means of knowing, not over a half dozen letters of appreciation from members, one new woman member, and a letter of appreciation from another woman.

The secretary has reason to believe, however, that the letters were the means of stimulating several of the state vice-presidents to activity in the matter of getting new members, in writing articles for the press and in giving illustrated talks on nut growing. Among those who are known to have given such talks or articles, are Dr. Morris, Mr. Weber, Mr. Spencer, Mr. Smith, Mr. Turk, Mr. O'Connor, Mr. and Mrs. Corsan, Mr. Reed, Mr. Neilson, Wilkinson, Snyder, Matthews, Kains, MacDaniels, Fagan, Kaufman, Rick, Bixby, the secretary, and, doubtless, a number of others.

The secretary has a collection of slides on nut growing which he has lent two or three times to members for illustrating their lectures. It was necessary to provide a box for the safe transportation of these slides which the secretary purchased, at a cost to the association of $8.85. The secretary also furnished a typed, running commentary for these slides and, in one or two instances, has furnished negatives and photographs for making slides and illustrations. The secretary also offers to furnish outlines for lectures or articles, and has a small collection of nuts which is available for lectures.

If the funds were available, it would be possible to enlarge the collections of slides, illustrations and nuts for the use of members who wished to give talks or write articles.

Possibly the suggestion of the secretary was responsible for the formation of a subsidiary association in Rochester. On this a report is desirable from President McGlennon or Mr. Olcott. One or two other members have written of their intention to form subsidiary associations.

A leaflet was also issued by the secretary announcing Mr. Jones' offer to give seedling nut trees as a premium to new members. The demand for these trees not being up to expectation, Mr. Jones very generously sent out five such trees in place of the original offer of one or two. I hope that Mr. Jones will make a report of the number of trees thus distributed. Although the circular distinctly stated that these trees were premiums for new members, many members understood it as an offer for renewal of membership as well, and I think that in every such instance, Mr. Jones himself forgot and sent the trees. A few members, whose names came in too late, were disappointed in not getting trees. Mr. Jones has intimated that it may be possible to correct these omissions this fall. I hope that Mr. Jones will make a statement about this, and I hope also, that the association will not overlook Mr. Jones' liberality in distributing these trees entirely at his own expense.

There have been expressions of regret, and I am sure that many more have felt it, that it has not been possible to go on with the nut contests and the giving of prizes for new and valuable nuts. As there is not likely to be any one else willing to assume the really immense labor involved in the nut contests, conducted as Mr. Bixby has conducted them, I suppose that all we can do is to hope that circumstances will sometime again make it possible for Mr. Bixby to resume these very valuable services for the development of nut culture in the United States. I say intentionally "the United States," because I believe that these services have benefitted the whole country. This fact makes me the bolder in uttering the daring suggestion that perhaps, now that Mr. Bixby has shown the way, and developed exact methods that may be safely followed, which, if I do not misapprehend, is what it states that it desires before presuming to take up any new line of work, the Department of Agriculture itself might consider it a matter worthy of its attention. Professor J. A. Neilson, of the less cautious Canadian Department of Agriculture, is rendering very valuable services of this kind for the Dominion of Canada.

There is evidence that several more state agricultural institutions are giving attention to nut growing. (MacDaniels, at Ithaca; J. C. Christensen, University of Michigan).

There is no need of taking your time now to recapitulate the many things that ought to be done to promote the planting of nut trees and the scientific investigation of nut growing. Dean Watt's address, published in the 12th annual report, and the letter of the secretary to state vice-presidents, contain outlines for these things. The attention of the present convention is more particularly to be given to advocating nut tree planting on a production basis.

Regarding the campaign for new members, perhaps the chairman of the committee on membership will make some remarks. The present membership of the association is 337, if we drop no names this year for non-payment of dues. Of course, those who do not pay their dues should be dropped. But the association has never made any ruling as to how long names should be carried on the rolls. The secretary has been easy in sending copies of the annual reports to members in arrears, hoping that the conscience-stricken recipients would hasten to pay up. But there is no proof that such has been the case, and the secretary would recommend making a rule as to when a member is no longer in good standing, when he should be dropped from the rolls, and what members are entitled to copies of the annual report. The secretary would make the suggestion that there be an amendment to the by-laws to the effect that members who have not paid their dues within three months from the time of their first notification, be sent a second notification to the effect that they are not in good standing on account of non-payment of dues and are not entitled to receive a copy of the annual report; but that all privileges may be restored on payment of dues. At the end of three months from the sending of the second notice, the names of members not in good standing should be dropped. The annual report should be sent only to members in good standing.

Mr. Hilliard asked me what our fiscal year was. I answered that I did not think we had any. It would undoubtedly be a convenience if we are to have a bank man for a treasurer, and a ruling by the association would be in place.

Our accredited list of nut nurserymen is out of date and a new list should be issued. Recommendations as to changes in or additions to that list, should be considered by the members.

It is desirable that the annual reports of the association should be indexed and bound, but no hand has yet been found to do it.

Our ambitions have so far outstripped our sources of revenue that we have come to look on an annual deficit as a normal and defensible thing. I think it is indefensible. I think it is going to have a bad effect on our attendance and our morals if the members have to look forward to what amounts to a good big assessment at every convention. A deficit is not inevitable. The secretary-treasurer was able to report a surplus at the first, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh meetings. The income from membership dues should be enough to enable the printing of the annual report. But if not I should be in favor of not printing the report until funds were on hand to pay for it.

In rendering an account of the funds of the association I will first state that there is on hand, cash in bank, $84.89. This amount must be charged with the Bowditch hickory prize fund, $25, which leaves $59.89, cash on hand. We owe Mr. Bixby for paying the stenographer's bill, $135.00, and Mr. Olcott for printing, $24.58, a total of $159.58. This makes our deficit $99.69, practically just one hundred dollars.

It should be recalled that in arriving at this result it was necessary to use up our reserve fund from life memberships, amounting to $225.00. If we count that in with the deficit, it amounts to $325.00.

A detailed account of receipts and expenditures is herewith submitted. At the present moment, on account of a rush of other work, on account of difficulties of other kinds, and because of a division of the work between Mr. Hilliard and myself, I am unable to give the exact amount received from memberships and sale of reports and bulletins. This I hope to correct before the annual report goes to press.

RECEIPTS

Turned over by the Treasurer, Mar. 1, 1923:
Money for current expenses $ 89.66
From life memberships 95.00
Bowditch hickory prize 25.00
From Litchfield Savings Society 130.00
Membership dues
Sale of reports and bulletins

EXPENDITURES

Printing report $378.00
Misc. printing and postals 7.50
Clerical hire and postage 47.65
Postage, telegrams, carriage 38.09
Box for lantern slides 8.85
———-
$480.09

Due Mr. Bixby, stenographer's bill $135.00
Due Mr. Olcott, printing 24.00
———-
$159.58

The report of the secretary was adopted.

The following paper was read by the acting secretary as Mr. Neilson was unable to be present: