Mr. Dunlap:  The speaker brought out one point that we tested out a great many years ago in Illinois, and I suppose it is really an important one here, and that is the protection against the winds with shelter-belts.  Now, at the University of Illinois they planted out some forty acres to test that with all the varieties they could get together, and they planted spruce trees not only on the outside of the orchard but they planted them in through the orchard, dividing the orchards up into ten acre plots.  Quite a number of the early planters of apples in Illinois also put windbreaks around their orchards with considerable detriment to their orchards.

We find that we need air drainage there just as much as we need protection against the wind.  If I were in Minnesota I might change my mind after studying the conditions, but if I was going to plant in Minnesota and I should plant evergreens I certainly would trim them up from the bottom so as to get air drainage.  I have known of instances where orchards were protected and where there was air drainage they were all right, but where they were closely protected by the trees they were injured by the frosts by their starting too early in the spring.  If you get a warm atmosphere around the trees you start your buds pretty early, several days earlier than they would if they had the right kind of air drainage, and it does seem to me that the experience we have had would be against close planting around an orchard for protection from frost, though you do want to protect them against winds, but air drainage, it seems, is not a detriment to orchards. (Applause.)

Mr. Richardson:  I wish to say that in my observation and my experience if I was putting in a windbreak I would put it on the south and west sides; I wouldn’t have any on the north and east.

Mr. Brackett:  Our prevailing winds are from the south and west during the summer, and the Wealthy is an apple that is bad for falling off when it gets to a certain stage, and I think it is very necessary for us to have a windbreak on the south and west if we are going to protect our orchards here.

Mr. Ludlow:  The wind comes from the northwest generally in the winter, when we have storms, and if snow falls and it comes from the northwest, and the orchard is protected on that side by a windbreak, the windbreak will catch the snow and it will pile on top of the orchard, and I have known at least a dozen trees to be broken down by the storms of winter getting in that way.

A Member:  I think crab apple trees make a good windbreak, if they are set twice as close together as trees in the orchard.

A Member:  I think location has more to do with it than anything else.  I have two or three orchards in mind where five years ago, when we had that hard frost, they had an abundance of apples, and it was protected from the northwest.  I have another orchard in mind that was protected from the north and northwest, and this year they had over 1,400 bushels of Wealthy apples.  Mine wasn’t protected particularly from the north, and I had no apples, but back of the buildings, there is where I had my apples.  I tell you location has more to do with it than a windbreak in such a case.