To the person of limited means the idea of being able to produce a nut orchard at very little expense is very attractive, and my heart goes out to people in that condition because I have been in that condition myself and passed through it. Ten years ago I bought a piece of land for forty dollars an acre, and planted seventeen pecan trees on each acre. It cost me twenty-five dollars an acre to lay off the land, dig the holes, and plant the trees nicely, with about a half pound of bone meal mixed in the soil in each hole. I carried that nut orchard on, using some inter-crops, up to one year ago, when it finished its eighth year of growth, and, without burdening you with the minute figures, I am going to say we have sixty-five dollars charged up to it, and it will take $185 more. Now, there is $250, if I haven't made any mistake. I planted among those trees nursery stock, and I sold off, during the time that those trees were growing, nursery stock to the value of, we will say, $250, making my inter-crops pay the expense of cultivation and interest on the investment up to that time. So don't forget that. Now, this is a case where we are going to balance our books, as every business man does, and every farmer ought to. I have, up to the time those trees were eight years of age, invested approximately $250, and have received back not only that, but the interest on the investment. So, at eight years of age the orchard cost me nothing. Now, that would be the way a great many people would figure that proposition. I can't do it that way. I am going to charge that orchard with $250 an acre for supervision. Now, above that line (indicating on black-board) it looks as though that orchard had been built up for nothing, and below the line you see a debit of $250 charged against that orchard. There is not one man in a hundred that contemplates a proposition of this kind that is willing to charge his orchard up with the gray matter that he puts into it. But there was an inter-crop in that orchard, of health and satisfaction, which is worth more to me than my services, so I will put that in here as $250. (Laughter and applause.) Now, I walked across this morning—I like to walk, and I came across the park. I saw a monument right over here in a little iron circular enclosure, erected in honor of Andrew Jackson Donald, a man who died several years ago, the man who was partly responsible for the magnificent landscape gardening effect of which this building is a part. It said on the monument this: "His life was devoted to the improvement of the national taste in rural art." Down below it said: "His mind was singularly just, penetrating and original." Any man ought to be proud to have that sort of thing engraved upon his monument, and, gentlemen, any man who will go out and plant nut trees like those you saw this afternoon, ought to have a monument under those trees expressing sentiments similar to these, because he has done something which remains after him, and it is one of the most worth-while things that any human being can do. That is one of the other valuable things about a nut orchard.
Now, this nut orchard—this is no myth—this is a practical proposition. I was practically bankrupt when I went there. It is paying now in a small way, and will pay more later on, and I am going to leave it to my children as one of the safest and sanest investments that I could leave them, and I want to say, ladies and gentlemen, that the consciousness of possessing something of that sort, which can't be stolen, can't run away, is another inter-crop that is grown among those trees.
I sometimes tell a story of a little two-horse farm down in the South. I drove fourteen miles out into the wilderness to find some seed nuts to plant this nursery with years ago. I found there an old home which was the central home of a large plantation in days gone by, and there were half a dozen—perhaps seven or eight—magnificent, great pecan trees about the lot, and a vegetable garden at the back of the home. Those trees were loaded with nuts. There was a young man there—one of the most pitiful things that I ever saw in my life—a fine young man—magnificent character, and recently married, making his home in this old tumble-down house, making his start in the world there. He didn't own this land—rented this fifty or sixty acres of open land, and these trees went with the two-horse farm. I said, "My friend, you must receive quite a little income from those nuts." "Yes," he said, "I sell the nuts from those trees every year, for more money than I make from the two-horse farm."
I heard of another case down in north Florida where two girls were left absolutely dependent upon their own exertions, and they were girls who had been reared, as some of the Southern ladies have been reared, to be dependent on others. They didn't know how to go and fight the world for a place. They were a little too far along, perhaps, to take up that sort of battle. There were two pecan trees in front of that old homestead, and the old homestead was all that was left of the family fortune. It was furnished, had a cow in the back yard, and a garden, and a few Scuppernong grape vines. These two pecan trees in the front yard gave those two women approximately three hundred dollars worth of nuts per annum. They were magnificent, great, big pecan trees, and they lived from them the balance of their lives practically, with the help of the other things I have mentioned.
Inter-crops are nothing more nor less than the evidences of the master mind directing the problem of handling the soil in which the orchard is growing. Now, just simply go right down deep under everything, pay absolutely no attention to the wonderful stories that the promoters tell you (laughter), keep your money, save it, use it, and spend it—yes, but recognize this one thing, that the most important element in success in the small orchard, as part of the rural or suburban home, is a knowledge of agriculture and horticulture. It is one of the most fascinating studies in the world, and I have no doubt but what you will find that you can go right along inter-cropping with vegetables and other crops, bush fruits, strawberries, and all those things for the first few years after you plant your nut trees, and even if they all die you will have been able to break even on the commercial side of the proposition, and then you will have the additional years of experience, which no nut orchardist can dispense with. You can't buy it with money or get it out of books. You have got to dig it out of the ground yourself. (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: I am going to take the liberty of emphasizing one point the Colonel made. He told you about the great number of things they knew down South that were not so. I wish to give some geographical spread to his generalities. We are in the same condition in the North. If you will stop and look clear through an agricultural idea, you will be astonished, ladies and gentlemen, absolutely astonished, to see how, mostly, we don't know it. The other day I happened to be walking through an apple orchard with the official horticulturist, and in response to some remark he made I asked: "Do you know that, or do you think it?" "Has that been experimentally proven?" He answered: "No, it has not." Most of the things we read in the books and hear in this place and other places we don't know. We think we know, but when we come to a show-down we really haven't got experimental data. I know of no people to whom that thing needs to be emphasized more than to the Northern Nut Growers' Association.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9TH, AT 10.30 A. M.
Meeting called to order by the President.
THE PRESIDENT: The first order of business, I believe, will be the report of the Nominating Committee.
THE SECRETARY: The report of the Nominating Committee is the following:
For President, W. C. Reed, Vincennes, Indiana; Vice-President, W. N.
Hutt, Raleigh, North Carolina; Secretary-Treasurer, Dr. W. C. Deming,
Georgetown, Connecticut.