The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-08-16
FARMING AS A SCIENCE.
Major Berry of Visalia Answers
DR.. Simms' Criti-
CiSmS.
PEANUTS FED TO THE HOGS
Some Crops Are Certain in Tulare
County, While Others Are
Failures.

To the Editor O. the Cal1-SIR: The criticism
on my article upon diversified Farming
in theWEEKLY CALL, published in the DAILY
of July IL, over the signature of DR.. J. r.
Simms of Milton, deserves a reply, but as
the doctor has undertaken to show the
public through the columns of your widely
circulating journal wherein / err, permit
me to say to the doctor that his article
evidences very slight knowledge of the
conditions that prevail in this big San
Joaquin Valley. and particularly Tulare
County.
The doctor supposes "the twenty acre
farmer puts out two to four acres in
almonds" There are several orchards of
almond trees in this part of the big valley.
Some of them are ten years old, and there
has been but one crop ever gathered from
any of them, which was in 1893, and at
that time there was protective tariff enough
on this nut to justify further efforts in
almond culture. Since then the new tariff
has about killed this industry in our State,
even if the trees were a sure bearer and
there were no focks of migratory birds to
eat the buds during the winter.
zone to two acres to apricots." This is
another uncertain crop in this valley.
About every other year one gets crop of
cots" / have seen it occur when it was
three years apart between crops.
Zone acre to nectarines. Doctor
Simms is right about nectarines and would
have made 1t better to have said two or
three acres of peaches. Nowhere in this
big world do peaches and nectarines grow
any better or are surer crop than In the
southern part of the San Joaquin Valley,
and generally they yield the grower-if he
nd dc oh hmm
dred dollars per acre, but this is from land
suitable and adapted for this culture.
The doctor says to put i'll three or four
acres of alfalfa. If your twenty acres were
land that would grow peaches successfully
it woDld be bad idea to grow alfalfa or if
the land would grow prunes as they do on
our lands adapted to them in Tulare
County then indeed would twenty-acre
man be foolish to carry out the doctors
idea about alfalfa, "horses, cows and pigs"
He wants to let the other fellow keep such
domestic animals and plant the whole
twenty acres in prunes. The net yield on
one such place of bachelor friend of mine
was $4546 last year, produced from trees
five years old this last winter. The doctor
says to raise peanuts, beans, pomegranates,
ETC., between the trees for an income.
The writer raised HOO sacks of peanuts
just that way one year, and the Southern
Pacific Railroad made freight rates to San
Francisco so high that | fed them to hogs.
| raised 1900 sacks of beans between the
tree rows three years ago, and still have
beans on hand. / raised pomegranates
as big as cocoanuts, and / could only get
people to look at them. / raised water
melons. and my returns on eleven carloads
after paying freight and commissions in
San Francisco, l had just SO so left.
l raised potatoes on forty acres, between the
rows of trees, two years. ago-two crops
i'm one year; first crop l couldn't sell or
ship; offered them at two bits per sack,
and the second crop was peddled out by
good deal of labor, but they didn't pay.
Peaches, nectarines, prunes, oranges and
lemons do pay in this part of the big val
ley. They pay the grower big money pro-
viding he has the right kind of land and
knows how to grow fruit, but the little
twenty-acre farm, cut up into such things
as suggested by DR.. Simms, won't make
living for man and his family down here
in Tulare County; but twenty acres in solid
and that small farm will make him good
deal more than living. Our lands are
singularly productive. The tree growth is
wonderful. Tulare County captured the
first prize at the State Fair last year. The
lands about Tulare Lake can be had for S.
to $40 per acre, and alfalfa grows splen-
dldly there, but fruit won't. All these
food products that the doctor mentions,
and many more, will grow in our fruit
lands, but it pays better to grow fruit. The
colonies the doctor supposes to be in oper-
alton. We have had several of them
started down here, and now they do not
exist. MAJOR G. J. BERRY.
Visalia, Tulare County, August 7, 1885.