I attribute the poor crop a year ago to such an excessive crop as we had the year before that.  Two years ago everything was loaded, breaking down, because we didn’t thin them as we ought to, and we could hardly expect very much the next year.  This last year, you know we had frosts quite frequent up to about the 10th of June, I think that was the reason we had such a failure this year.  Our own orchard is on ground that is about 225 feet above Faribault, so we have got air drainage, and we would expect to escape frosts on that account and have as good a crop as anybody else would in that neighborhood.  But that wasn’t the case.  We didn’t get any apples, and yet during county fair why there was quite a nice show of nice fruit that they had picked up a few here and a few there, where really their location seems to me could not have been any better than ours.  I don’t know what the reason was, but it was very patchy, and I didn’t dream we would have such a good show of fruit as we did, and I couldn’t tell where it came from.

Mr. Philips:  I think when the trees are loaded so heavily, if you would pick off a third of them you would get more out of the balance of the crop.

Mr. Andrews:  Yes, I think that.  The question is, if we pick off a third of a heavy crop, if we have a heavy crop, if that wouldn’t help the next crop.  It surely would.

Mr. Philips:  Help that crop, too, in the price.

Mr. Andrews:  Yes, sir, it will pay that year besides paying the next year, too; it will pay double.

Mr. Philips:  It is a good plan any year.

Mr. Andrews:  Yes, we ought to do that, we are lacking in that work of thinning the fruit.  We sometimes have a late frost that will take off part of them, thin them that way, or wind, or something of that kind, and we rather depend on that feature of it.  Then in that time of the year we are very busy and liable to have some things neglected, and that seems to be the one that is almost always neglected.

Mr. Brackett:  Would you advocate the extensive planting of apples in this climate?

Mr. Andrews:  I would not.  At the same time you take it in the southern part of the state I presume they can grow them there.  They can grow there many things we can’t think of growing in this part of the state unless it be along Lake Minnetonka.

Mr. Older:  Where you have an orchard ten years old, is it best to seed it down or still continue to cultivate it?  In the west they have to cultivate.  What is the best in this country?  I know one man says it is best to keep on cultivating while it is growing, and another man says that that will kill the trees.  I want to know which is the best.