Norwich bulletin., 1919-09-12

l Did ye ever know sech a summer ?' | That's the almost invariable greeting between farmers in my part of tho | country. My usual answer. when th< 1 query is somewhat exp1osively aimed
 at me. is: NO. never did. and If I should live three times as long | as Methusaleh I should expect to sec l different ones each year,
 1 l don't believe there have ever beer l two just alike since Eve and the snake l had their famous irritation in the Gar 1 den of Eden. That historic adventure l seems to have had a serious effect or l gardens, especially. Things, garden l and farm wise, have been more or less i mixed up ever since.
 Years ago. when I was trying out I vegetable growing as a possible in dustry in an experimental way, I dis i covered that each summer differed from it's predecessors in it's gifts. As my sales are wholly from house to house and direct to consumers. I ] have to raise a rather bewildering va riety and number of vegetab bles. Mrs. A is fond of summer squash but can't bear cabbage: Mrs B is eager for cucUmbers but doesn't like beets. Mrs. 1 c can't get enough onions but just 'hates' asparagus; Mrs. D wants ban tam corn and no other. while Mrs. k. turns up her nose at it and declares she'll wait for the Evergreen. And so 1 on and 50 on. At one house green peas are rejected with a snort. while at the
 very next door they begin asking
 when I'll have them about the first of
 May.
 l have to try for about q hundred
 varieties, every season, to meet the
 contradictory tastes of perhaps two
 hundred customers. You who have
 tried to keep that number of irons in
 the fire may imagine the complications
 which sometimes enSue.
 b> xbipo k%a
 is the difference in results secured year after year. As I have said, it was quite early in the game that l discov- cred the uniikeness of the seasons in their gifts. Widening experience has confirmed the existence of the puzzle. but given me no pra actical clue for it's solution. All I know is that the very crop which one summer does finely likely the next summer turn out 8 wretched and money losing failure. Or it may do well for three or four or a, dozen years and then suddenly fzZle.
 The following year after such a fai1- ure the same crop may again do just q s well as ever. This. under as nearly identical conditions of soil and .ferf tilization and seeding and cultivation as it is humanly possible to obtain
 Tn twenty five years I've had but one failure of the onion crop. But that was practically complete. Twenty four of the twenty five years onions. sovn on the same bed and treated af ways s nearly alike IS possible. have done finely. Similarly for twenty four years out of twenty five I've raised good peas. productive, early and sweet This year the early crop was failure a failure for which l have thus far been able to discover no possible local cause, and which I must therefore, ascrioe to ''the season..
 Per contra. in all those twenty-five years I've never had but one good crop of watermelons. I rlant some every year in hones. That one year twenty or thirty hills turned out sev- araI hundred huge. sv-ect. melting tri- '1n1phs Ordinarily. the crop consists punpl1in-y things at which even the pig turns up his nose.
 Between these two extremes come the larger number of crops One year twenty or thirty will be bowling sue cesses and twenty thirty others will be more or less complete fizzles. The next year with everything l can gov ern as nearly the same as possible. m ost of that first lot may fail and most Of that last lot may succeed Indeed state of mind that invariably plant in the spring with the expectation that 9 third, to half of my paintings will prove disappointments. If I only knew, oeforeaarld which half it was going to he. I wouldn't plant that moiety. But that saving knowledge is not vouch safed me. I3nut in everything that has ever shown promise, and then take the results as philosophically as possible What else can one do?
 For it isn't my work or my wisdom or my foresight which controls results. but an outside something which. for lack Of clearer language. we call "the season.
 We mean thereby the meteorological and atmospheric and various other phases of summer Some of them. like the rainfalI. we can. measure and IIn- derstard. There are others about which I. at7least. am as much in the dark as I am about farm conditions on the Pole star. The only crop which have raised for more than 2 quarter of g. century with unvarying success IS sweet corn. And 1920 may. not un- likely. send that to the scrap -heapi I don't know, you don't know. he doesn't know; we don't any of us know.
 This particular season, now fast passing, has been unlike any one of the twenty five on which I have kept