The citizen. [volume] (Berea, Ky.) 1899-1958, 1905-07-27
The Farm
sILAs cHRRvER MASON, EDITOR
Protection for Fruit.

There is satisfaction in raising
nice fruit that can hardly be realized
in the production of any other crop.
Much OF that satisfaction is often
discounted by the fact that a man
may not gather what he raises with;
out a vigilance that often costs more
than the fruit is worth.
If a man must keep fence too
high and too strongly barbed to
climb, too heavy TO be cut with
pinchers, and too deep to be dug
under, around his orchard, vineyard,
or strawberry patch, or, in default of
that, must watch his property with
a vigilance only less than is required
of the death watch set over a
condemned criminal, he is apt to
feel that the Commonwealth is
hardly doing its duty in protecting
his property. Laws are severe
enough in most States, for this fruit
pilfering is not confined to Kentucky
by any means, but the enforcement
of any law depends upon public
opinion. Public opinion needs a
smart awakening in the south end of
Madison County just about the
present date, July, 1905. II has
needed it since May of this same
year Of grace. In fact as far back
as the summer Of 1904, a citizen of
Berea was compelled to gather
peaches about as large as base balls,
while they were yet about as hard,
because the boys on his street
would not let them ripen, and in the
same year, and in this same highly
moral village, a mans musk melons
were destroyed over night, what
could not be eaten or carried off
being cut up or trampled in the
ground.
People in the hills to the south of
us, who have fine fruit locations in
the rich coves and benches, suffer in
wholesale way.
We certainly need to wake up to
the nuisance and adopt severe
measures. 1t is well enough TO say
it is "only boys" but if that were
true it is a bad way to let boys
come up.
But it is more than boys. Fruit
goes out that is not carried in peck.
cts or eaten out of hand. Fruit is
cooked and eaten ON the table in
houses where the people neither
raised it nor paid for it nor received
il as a gift from some kindly neigh
Dor. Fruit is brought to town and
sold by people who neither have
trees of their own nor gather on
shares.
The boys" have a lot of help
directly or indirectly, and by the way
the boys must be a cute lot at
times, for the tracks under raided
trees and in depleted strawberry beds
often show marks of shoes with
smaller, deeper heels and narrower
soles than are usually sold to the boy
trade. Last fall there was a woman
pretty well known Tor the amount of
fruit as well as poultry and other
commodities she has to market,
who used to offer apples with the
remark that "they came of that old
tree back of the house," but such a
remarkable tree as that was! Ii GER
tainly must have been top grated
about twenty times, for red apples
and yellow apples, green, streaked
and splashed, sweet, sour, early, and
keepers were all ascribed to this
marvellous tree. Now the way to
stop this pilfering is to stop it. The
people Of our community are not all
thieves, nor any high per cent. of
them, but let it be plain talk that
person who gets fruit from trees or
vines not his own is thief, as truly
as if he got goods off the counter or
money out of the till.
Even the wild berries in these
times should be asked for.
Then when people are caught, let
prompt arrest and trial follow.
If parents will carefully instruct
their children as to the sacredness of
other peoples property, even their
plums and apples, and if respectable
people will stand together in their
determination to suppress the evil,
much can certainly be accomplished.
Hello, old man. Getting ready to
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