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W eM  M IG.22
rail and by water with each of these centers are so common
and so numerous that they no longer create comment nor sur-
prise. "Where is this state?" did I hear you say? Just take
a map and find the state whose contour resembles an old right-
hand buck-skin mitten and you have it; a state in every way
worthy of the most enthusiastic commendation.
Regarding the rank Wisconsin holds in the gross production
of fruits an honest estimate will place her below Michigan and
New York. However the possibilities of making Wisconsin a
fruit state of first rank is not only predicted by many of our
formost fruit men; Thit is actually believed by many long-headed
business men who today are investing in land they consider to
be suitable for orcharding.
The influences, not insurmountable by any means, which to
the writer seem most antagonistic to apple raising in particular
are: First, the length of the time required to establish an or-
chard before returns may be expected, Second, the technical skill
and experience necessary to control successfully the injurious
insects and fungi, and Third, the difficulty of receiving renumer-
a1ive prices during periods of extraordinary production.
Notwithstanding all these handicaps and the over shadowing
dairy industry there are several counties where the success of
commercial orcharding has been demonstrated as satisfactorily
as a proposition in geometry. These counties embrace Kewaunee
and Door with Sturgeon Bay as a center, Marathon in which at
Wausau is located our best trial orchard. Other counties es-
pecially noted for excellent crops of apples are Winnebago, Mani-
towoc, Sauk, Richland, Crawford, Monroe, Eau Claire and Chip-
pewa. These sections have orchards of bearing trees from seven
years old to seventy, the acreage in one instance reaching as high
as sixty acres. In proof of what has been said above Secretary
F. Cranefield of the Wisconsin State Horticultural Society has
kindly furnished me with the following data: There are eight
acres of apple trees in the Wausau trial orchard established in
1897 by the Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. When the
Wausau orchard was 10 years old, sixteen hundred bushels of
salable apples were harvested and this year (1909) twenty-two
hundred bushels of apples by measure have been reported.
Near Chippewa Falls, this year, Mr. James Melville harvested
over sixteen hundred bushels of Wealthys, about five hundred
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