Norwich bulletin., 1918-09-13
THE FARMERS TALK TO FARMERS
MORE OF. THIS SEASONS ODDITIES

Written Specially for The Bulletin.
 I didn't begin to complete the story of this season's crop puzzles, in our last talk.
 It's been without exception the most wrong side to, bottom -side-up, topsy- turvyly twisted season I've ever known on my ranch.
 There are Lima beans, for instance. In lots of places, farther south or nearer. the coast, where the early frosts are not quite so early as here, it is no trick at all to. raise Lima beans. Up here among the mountains where we're liable to killing frosts any time. up to June and any time after August they're a mighty chance-y | crop. It has always taken an extra | long and extra warm season for me | to. secure any sort of a pick. About ] three years out of five say, they have natured sufficiently to make succotash material. .a4s
 This year the season has been extra shorc and extra cold, with one boiling | weeks exception. Yet those pole l I-imas, planted as nearly as possible under usual conditions, have already, 1 this second week in September, ma tured their entire crop and sent it | to market. Usually am able to be- gin picking only about this time and am cut off by the first frost with half l the crop unified. Even in a warm, 1 forward season, I mean Yet this cold, wet backward 1918 has sent them along earlier, than ever before, and enabled them to mature their pods in q, way 1 have. never yet seen in this I latitude
 Then. there's egg plant. That is an other heat-loving plant which can 1 only raise by accident. I put out a few plants every year. because I have some customers who, are crazy for the 1 things. and I want to gratify them, if | possible. But I don't think I've aver aged a decent yield one year in three If the potato bugs didn't eat them all up in early summer the September frosts would catch them just in blos- som, ordinarily. Only when the springs
 have been early and the falls late and the summer tropically hot have I man
 aged to secure a crate or two.
 Again. however, with late sprin s
 and a cold wet summer and every
 thing weatherWise against them, my
 few plants have produced more fruit
 already, than I've had, any one Eason
 for the past ten years.
 Here are two tropical or semi trop
 ical crops, Lima beans and egs
 plants, which have simply. outdon,
 themselves for me during this semi Arctic season.
 I'm obliged to then-profoundl,
 obliged to them. I'm not kicking on,
 little bit. I'm mighty glad they did sc Iweil
 But
 While turnips which will grow il
 Alaska, and oats which do their bes
 in the cold highlands of Scotland have succumbed with me to the un
 usual cold and wet how in the nam ] of all that's reasonable did egg plant and Lima beans pan out so well? Wh. : should a season too backward fo semi Arctic crops have proved kind ly nurse to seni-tropical crops? That's what gets me. I can't SC
 through it. I feel as if the laws 0
 the Medes and Persians had beel
 changef-much as I would if I shoult ; chance on a stl cam of water runnin uphill. That last can't happen. you'l say, We'll last spring I should hay
 said; just as emphatically,. that sea } son which was too cold to grow tur
 nips couldn't possibly produce eg !, plants Yet that is just what the pres l entt season has done.
 Talk about water running uphill 5 or elephants balancing on their tails
 or the old COW jumping over the moo why, none of these things scene 5 any more improbable or i'm possibl . than what has happened back of m Z barn to the egg plants and Lima bean