THE FARMS BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

By Matthew Henry Hoover, Lockport, N. Y. Formerly New York Conservation Commissioner President New York State Conservation Association

Horace Greeley is best known for his contribution to the abolition of human slavery in the United States. Yet his service to mankind is not fully appraised by the average American, because many of the younger generation are unaware of his aid to agriculture. His maxim about farmers' failing to till the most valuable part of their farms underneath, opening the eyes of agriculturists to the efficacy of sub-soil plowing, was the preamble to freeing American husbandry from the slavery of antiquated and unscientific methods.

Following the application of science to the cultivation of the soil, came the students of Conservation. They were teaching the farmer the relation of conservation of natural resources to agriculture, the effects of forests on rainfall, moisture, erosion of soil, minimization of floods that annually bury thousands of acres of arable lands in the valleys, under rocky debris and so on.

Greeley discovered the Farm Below. The Conservationists are saving the Farm Above.

Now, in these days of reclamation and reconstruction, it is high time to pay more attention to the Farm by the Side of the Road.

The Northern Nut Growers' Association is to be congratulated upon the fact that it is blazing the trail through the forest of popular ignorance on this vitally important conservation question; leading public thought in the right direction; and providing both the seed and the stock for practical efforts in behalf of the Farm by the Side of the Road. I am going to claim a bond of brotherhood with you in this great work, basing my claim not upon my small activities in nut cultivation, but rather upon the fact that I was one of the conservation pioneers in New York State in the advocacy of planting profitable trees—nut trees and fruit trees—along the public highways.

That eminent conservationist, Gifford Pinchot, addressing the National Council of Farmers' Co-operative Associations in 1915, defined "Conservation" as "the wise use of the earth for the benefit of the people who live on it." That would be a perfect definition, if it did not invite the query: Should it not be enjoined upon the people who live upon the earth today, while enjoying its benefits, to keep faithful stewardship of the interests of the inhabitants of tomorrow?

About the time Mr. Pinchot enunciated this famous definition, the New York State Conservation Department summed up the purposes of practical Conservation as: "The correction of past indiscretion, the perfection of present utilization, and the formation of future accumulation with respect to natural resources."

Conservation activities must repair errors of the past which have left denuded forest lands and empty game covers and waters; they must afford and direct the present use of the forests and the streams; they must safeguard the future supply, if they would meet the requirements of a conservation which shall raise the standards of life and lower the cost of living. That is a conservation embracing both the aesthetic and the economic, the only kind worth while. It is a conservation wherein the arable areas and the so-called waste lands and waters have a very intimate interrelation of interests. And, I submit, Gentlemen, that the American people too long have failed to recognize and to account as in the class of waste lands, "The Farms by the Side of the Road."

The reclamation of waste lands is a compromise between the activities of the Conservationists, who claim that in the more thickly inhabited portions of the United States the cultivated or semi-cultivated areas are out of sane and safe proportion to the wild forest sections, and the advocates of intensive and extensive agriculture. It is not the purpose of this article to take sides in that controversy, but rather to invite attention of both sides to a safe and practical field for their endeavors, namely, the reclamation of the "wasted lands" along the roadsides, the farms along the highways.

During the War Garden campaigns of the past two years, these heretofore largely unused strips of tillable land, forming in the aggregate thousands of along-the-road acres in every state, received considerable attention from the thrifty plow and hoe. But in the main, the results were not encouraging. The public will trespass, unintentionally or otherwise, upon the land cropped along the highway. Then, if the farms by the side of the road are to be conserved—used by present as well as future generations—there remains but one practical recourse: productive trees.

The American people love beautiful trees, possibly the expression of a reaction from the sentiment of the pioneers who regarded trees as their enemies, handicaps to agriculture to be removed as thoroughly and expeditiously as possible. But with virgin soil producing enormous crops, they naturally centered their interest on ornamental trees without reference to their fruits. Hence the horse-chestnut, buck-eye, maple, locust, oak, poplar, along the highways and byways of America, instead of the native nut trees and the Persian or English walnut.

And, speaking of highways, this is the age of concrete. Taking the hint, I am selecting one concrete example of which I have intimate and personal knowledge, well aware that there are numerous others that I might cite were my acquaintance with practical nut culture more extensive than it is. The one that I know about of my own personal knowledge is, a very good example of the plain common sense of productive trees which combine the useful with the ornamental.

It Reads Like a Fairy Tale

In 1876 two Niagara County farmers, Norman Pomeroy and Matthew O'Connor, neighbors, decided to go to the Centennial. They packed one carpet-bag in common for their baggage and boarded the train for Philadelphia. Although well to do farmers, their economic instincts warned them to beware the profiteering hotel keepers. So they sought a humble boarding house in the suburbs of the city. Returning one evening from sight-seeing at the exposition, the travelers were so weary that they retired immediately after supper. During the night Pomeroy was awakened by a tapping on the window. Assuring himself that the wallet under his pillow was still there, he investigated the cause of the disturbance of his slumbers. The noise had ceased and he decided that the overstrain of the day had worked an hallucination. Pomeroy dropped off to sleep, but presently was aroused by sounds which were unmistakably caused by a gentle tapping on the window pane. Exasperated, the man arose, picked up a boot, slipped to the window and raised it gently ready to give the joker or would-be burglar a rousing whack on the head if within reach. He stuck his head out of the window for a better view of the exterior world, and his curiosity was rewarded with a stinging blow on the cheek. The pain aroused all the Pomeroy French Huguenot fighting blood in his veins. Viciously he swung the boot at the unseen foe, only to hear it crash through tree branches. Laughing softly, in his enlightenment, he reached out into the night, grasped a branch, broke it off and turned on the gas and lit it. On the twig were two curious nuts.

Pomeroy was a lover of nature, as I learned by many an interesting talk with him. He found time in his regular farming pursuits to study native trees and shrubs, and had forbidden his hired men to cut down any of the native nut trees on his 500 acre farm. But the nuts on the branch retrieved from darkness were specimens new to him and he could hardly wait for daylight to come to enable him to get acquainted with the tree which had invited his attention so rudely. Next morning Pomeroy learned that his new found arboreal friend was a Persian walnut. It was loaded and the wind storm of the night had covered the ground with shucked and unshucked nuts. By permission of the landlord, he gathered a peck of the Persian walnuts, wrapped O'Connor's and his own belongings in a newspaper and filled the carpet-bag with the nut treasures. Arriving home, the tourists stopped first at O'Connor's house. There they had to relate the experience of their great trip to an assemblage of the two families. The recounting of the Centennial wonders took until midnight. When Pomeroy picked up his carpet-bag to go home, it was empty! The children had made a discrete retirement after having consumed the entire peck of English walnuts, as the shells in the kitchen disclosed. Luckily for the youngsters, they were safe in bed and asleep.

The next day, according to the elder Pomeroy, little Albert who had not been at the O'Connor home the night before, heard the dolorous tale of the wonderful tree in Philadelphia, the gift of nuts and their weird disappearance. To confirm the sad story he picked up the carpet-bag, turned it inside out. Within a torn lining, he triumphantly extracted ten nuts. Child-like, he proceeded to sample them and had eaten three when his father rescued the remainder. Seven Philadelphia walnuts were planted in the yard, and, in due time there were seven slender, silver-grayish seedling trees. These were carefully staked, guarded and cultivated by Norman Pomeroy. Despite the caviling of the neighbors, who declared that a Persian walnut tree would not thrive and bear so far north, twelve years after planting the "lucky seven" reproduced their kind—from a dozen to two dozen large, handsome Persian or English walnuts. Today the seven Centennial trees are about two feet in diameter and about 60 feet high. And as to the value of the crop, one tree alone produced nuts which sold four years ago for $142.50.

Now as to the application of this romance in real life. I must return to the more prosaic generalizations of conservation and its relation to the products of cultivation with which this article began.

In 1913 Governor Martin H. Glynn invited me to outline for him a program of "Practical and Progressive Conservation", applicable to the needs of New York State. In the effort to meet the request, I drew a little from my personal experience and observations as a sportsman, a farmer and a newspaper man, and a great deal from what I had learned from others among the organized sportsmen, agricultural societies, hydro-electric engineers, forest products men, foresters, and nature lovers in general. We then set forth the following as necessary to the realization of the purposes of a Conservation which should meet all conditions imposed by the past, the present and the future, as hereinbefore stated:

"Practical and Progressive Conservation"

1. Protect the birds and save the crops.

2. Develop the unutilized water powers, now going to waste with destructive effects in freshet periods to arable lands and thickly populated communities, through public ownership and distribution; thereby use "The People's White Coal," save coal and cussin' the ash-sifter, giving the public cheaper light and power for the homes, the farms, the factories, and public highways.

3. Amend the constitution to permit the use of dead and down timber in the state forest preserves, worth at least $10,000,000 annually.

4. Provide free forest trees furnished by the state for all who will plant them. (Note—The present N. Y. Conservation Commission in a special report to be made to the Legislature of 1920 has at last adopted that progressive policy).

5. Plant productive trees along the highways—nut and fruit trees.

6. Restock waters and covers more extensively and intelligently.

7. Stop pollution of private and public waters.

8. Harmonize the interrelated interests of farmers and sportsmen.

9. Establish game and bird refuges in every county in the state.

10. Sane and practical game laws, eliminating prosecutions on petty technicalities, educate the public to co-operate in fish and game protection, enact legislation to encourage rather than handicap the propagation of fish and game by private enterprise.

It will be noted that plank 5 in our progressive conservation platform is urging the planting of producing trees along the highways. By that we meant not only the native nut trees, all of which are beautiful and ornamental, but also fruit trees, according to the wishes of the abutting owners.

In the State of New York, taking into account only improved roads coming under the head of State or County Improved Highways, disregarding the mileage of the rural roads several times as large, there are about 8,000 miles of "Good Roads". There are many stretches of the highways which nature has generously adorned with trees. Some portions of the roads have witnessed the spoliation of the contractor's indiscriminating ax, but in the main the workmen were as careful as possible to retain natural shade trees along the routes. A few miles comparatively, were planted by state agencies. Farmers, especially in the Lake Ontario Fruit Belt of New York State, have worked wonders in ornamentation and economy by planting cherry, apple, plum and other beautiful and productive trees on the strip of land, "The Farms by the Side of the Road."

At a very small additional expense, the State could have planted every rod of improved highway with productive trees, putting that forethoughtful specification into the contracts.

Get out your pencil for a moment. Suppose the state had English walnuts on the 8,000 miles, placing the trees 40 feet apart. We should have growing then over one million productive trees and some of them would be old enough to be bearing today. Within ten years from now, their product would be worth at a conservative estimate $25 per tree, representing a sum sufficient to carry one-third of the State's entire cost of government.

The war just won for the cause of World Democracy has opened the eyes of the American people to many things they had not before apprehended or realized. One is the value of productive land space. Another is the importance of our forests, and especially the value of the native nut-bearing trees. It was discovered, when Uncle Sam scurried around to procure a supply of black walnut for gun stocks, that the German agents had been ahead of him. Although thickly settled, Germany finds it profitable to employ one-fourth of its entire area in growing forest trees. Yet it seems the Kaiser's forests were short on this valuable timber, so they picked up all the procurable black walnut in the United States.

This set the New York State Conservation Commissioner thinking and last year he advised farmers to propagate and cultivate the black walnut—a little late for the emergency; but better late than never, especially in this case.

On my little farm near Lockport, N. Y., there is a large black walnut tree, perhaps 90 to 100 years old. It bears a nut of unusual size, of excellent taste and good keeping qualities. This tree has produced as high as ten bushels of shucked nuts in a season. Twenty-two years ago, when the importance of growing native nut trees had impressed but few people, I did have the good sense to plant several dozen nuts from the "Niagara King Walnut." I must confess I gave the trees little attention, and a farm hand zealously cut down all but one of the black walnuts, mistaking them for sumac. The survivor last year bore about three bushels of nuts. Most interesting of all is the result of observations as to the product, and its bearing on the question of whether or not nut trees will reproduce "true to variety." The walnuts from the young tree differ in shape, being almost round, while the fruit of the parent tree is almost chestnut in form. But the flavor, thickness of shell and the keeping qualities seem identical.

Six years ago I started a small black walnut and butternut tree nursery for home use and from it have set out about four hundred trees along the ditches and fences on the farm. The early plantings have attained a height of from 12 to 15 feet. If every farmer would do likewise, he would make a considerable addition to the country's food supply, to say nothing of the value of the timber for coming generations when the frees approach maturity. It has afforded me pleasure to send nut trees to friends in various counties of the state and we shall watch with interest, the reports on their growth and development under the many variations of soil and climate. The butternut in many parts of the country is rapidly disappearing. To save this beautiful tree with its delicately flavored nuts, it will undoubtedly be necessary to take it into extensive cultivation.

Although apart from the subject perhaps, it may be interesting to refer to the application of forestry to a woodlot containing native nut trees. Like many farmers who regard every tree as just a tree, useful for timber or fire wood, I found several years ago that indiscriminate cutting on my woodlot was destroying walnuts, along with the commoner species of the stand. My first step was to halt the cutting of all black walnuts, hickories, butternuts, oaks and beeches on the seven-acre woodlot. I took an inventory of these trees and found there were 160 shagbark hickories from 10 to 25 years old, five butternuts about 20 years old, and four black walnuts about 25 years old. These, of course, were not "tolerant trees" like the evergreens, and most of them were rapidly deteriorating from being overcrowded by more rapidly growing and less desirable neighbors. All of them had been retarded in growth by the crowded condition of the stand. Inaugurating a process of judicious thinning with a view to giving the nut trees the advantage, the result in a single season was surprising. Under the beneficent influence of ample sun, air and root sustenance, the butternuts and black walnuts bore fine crops for the first time, in the season following the winter thinning process. The young hickories contented themselves with making their first annual growth in years. And, Oh joy of realized hopes, in this the third season since letting the sun into the native nut grove, nearly all of the older shagbark hickories bore their first crops! And now I have a nut plantation, that might have been ere this, burned up as fire-wood, at no expense whatever, since the thinning out process produced a very welcome supply of fire wood in these days of high-priced coal.

In a recent bulletin of the United States Department of Agriculture, "Value to Farm Families of Food, Fuel and use of House," there are some illuminating statistics on "The Farmer's Income" and "The Farmer's Living." It is stated that "the total average of the three items of food, fuel and use of the house for the 950 families (selected from all parts of the United States) is $642, and 66% of $424 of this is furnished by the farm." The Seven Pomeroy Centennial. Trees in one year produced a food product worth and actually sold for about $800 in one year! The average annual production of those seven trees has been over $600 for the last ten years. And what about the labor involved in raising and harvesting the English walnut crop in question? Picking the nuts from the ground, children gladly doing it and earning five cents per basket.

Horace Greeley's undiscovered farm under the first twelve inches was a gold mine when turned up finally; Mr. Pinchot's farm on top rescued from flood and other devastations is worth more money than before. But how about the strip of land along the roadside, an aggregate waste of at least one per cent of the acreages of eastern farms? Well worth reclaiming, and no expensive ditching, irrigation and lumbering involved in the process either. In addition, credit must be given also to this enterprise for the value of ornamentation of the highways and their protection from the elements all seasons of the year.

And strange to relate, in the long list of items under the head of "Classes of Food," given in the Federal Bulletin referred to, no mention is made of nut foods, either native or imported nut trees. Fruits, vegetables, meats, store groceries, everything is there but nuts.

"Nutty," do we hear someone suggest? Probably not in this audience of enlightened nut growers, but speaking to the general public we shall say, "Well, mebbe," like Uncle Lige of Niagara. Two bad years on the farm, four acres of tomatoes that didn't pay for the plants, nothing but soft corn and no potatoes compelled Uncle and Aunt Tompkins to open an account at the corner grocery. The first month the bill came in, Aunt Sally was all in a flutter when she audited the items: Sugar, 60; coffee, 40; oatmeal, 50; sugar, 75; ditto, 80. "Lige, you go right back to the store and tell that cunnin' clerk that he's charged us fer what we never got. We ain't had no 'ditto' in this house." Lige went to the store and returned, apparently a sadder but a wiser man. "Well, Lige," inquired the thrifty spouse, "Did you find out 'bout that 'ditto' we didn't get? What did you find?" Lige picked up his pipe, remarking, "Well Sally, I found I was a durned fool, and you ditto."

We are all waking up to the fact that we did not become "nutty" soon enough. We have found that our public agencies of conservation have been "durn fools" and farmers and other land owners "ditto", for not having inaugurated the systematic planting of productive trees along the highways and farm hedgerows and ditches, many years ago.

Norman Pomeroy used to say with becoming modesty that he took no credit for planting the trees that have made such a substantial income for his family, because "I had to be slapped in the face in the dark before I became wise, and then the natural improvidence of mankind came near spoiling Nature's tip when the children gratified their little stomachs in preference to planting for the future. Men are but children of an older growth, a wise man said. That is a true but sad doctrine. We all live too much in the present and for the present, forgetting that the future will soon be the present, if not for ourselves, for our children and our children's children. It takes time to realize on trees, for the stomach or the pocketbook. It requires sacrifice to get anything worth while and, waiting is the hardest kind of sacrifice, especially for people of small means. But it pays in the end."

The Northern Nut Growers' Association, is doing valuable work not only in the study and planting of nut trees, but in its propaganda. But I have discovered that the results of practical work and the worth of propaganda, are hard to bring home to public agencies, like Governors and Legislatures. The construction and maintenance of public highways are a state function. But that duty must be incomplete in our opinion until the state finishes its job by planting productive trees along the highways and public roads. How shall we bring this about? Adopt resolutions? Very good.

But did the Anti-Saloon League, for example, content itself with resolutions when it wanted real results in the halls of legislation? Not much. Our prohibition friends were very practical. They employed trained agents to present their cause everywhere and in every way calculated to do the most good.

Let me repeat to you tree planters the late Norman Pomeroy's favorite lines, as I recall them:

"The dead are eternized in stone, The living, by living shafts are known. Plant thou a tree and each recurring spring The stirring leaves thy lasting praise shall sing."

President Reed: Prof. Chittenden, of Michigan Agricultural College will address you on "Native Nut Tree Plantations for Michigan."