He need not lose an hour from his regular business to supervise the gathering and marketing of his crop of pecans. While he makes money at his own business, his orchard unit also makes money for him without sacrificing his time.
Our Pecan Orchard Plantations Are Divided Into One-Acre Units
Each twenty-tree unit is platted off on the plan of our property and indicated with an Orchard Unit number.
In each of these units twenty pecan trees are planted.
The purchaser of an Orchard Unit secures absolute ownership of his land, but each entire plantation is operated as a whole. This plan has made it possible for us to clear the land, plant, cultivate and care for the young trees at a fraction of the cost which would be necessary if the units were operated separately.
Illustration at left: Upper picture shows James J. Best, Canton, Ohio, photographed June, 1918, at one of the newly planted trees on his 21 acre-units. Picture below shows same tree two years later. Great growth of head and thickening of trunk result from our intensive cultivation.
The cost of land, cost of clearing and cost of setting trees, etc., is of such magnitude as to be almost prohibitive to any person developing a small acreage. Under the Orchard Unit Plan this cost is reduced owing to the scope of the undertaking. It is generally conceded that when you develop orchards in large tracts of 1,000 acres each or more, the cost of machinery, equipment, live stock, management and other essentials—distributed over the whole area—is therefore far lower per acre than when you develop a limited area, such as five, ten or even fifty acres. A small orchard managed on a small scale cannot produce pecans nearly as economically as if that small orchard is a Unit under large plantation management.
The company gains also by the natural increase in value of the 2,000 acres of fertile pecan growing land which it is holding for itself under the same conditions which apply to any unit in the 5,400 being sold.