Before this series of lectures I don’t believe any human being ever knew less about farming than I did. I hadn’t spent even my vacations on a farm. I couldn’t tell wheat in the field from oats. I couldn’t tell a squash from a pumpkin. I didn’t know anything about soils, about seeds, about fertilizers, about cultivation. My mind was a blank on the subject, which at least had the advantage of making me free of prejudices. I don’t mean to say that even after the superficial course of lectures to which I listened this winter that I felt myself an authority on the subject. I didn’t. But on the other hand everything that was said sounded so much like just plain common sense that I didn’t see why any fairly intelligent man couldn’t put the theories into practice, especially when he had the Agricultural School back of him, ready and eager to give further advice. Take for example the matter of orchards. I found on my place some seventy-five apple trees all cluttered up with dead limbs. It didn’t require a farmer to realize that any tree was handicapped by such a burden. I took a saw and cut out all this dead wood and a little later, when the shoots had started, trimmed off all those which obviously were useless. Then, still following out instructions, I scraped the bark on the trunks and whitewashed them. This was no more than common sense grooming, such as one would give live stock. Then, I girdled the trunks with burlap to prevent insects from crawling up to the young leaves. After this, I spaded up around the roots so that air and water and sunshine could get in. Until now the dead sod had matted down into a covering that was about as impervious to air and moisture as a rubber blanket. Hadley watched me with cynical indifference. To him it seemed as foolish to bestow all this care upon gnarled old apple trees as it would to give the same attention to a full grown man that a woman bestows upon an infant. He believed that a tree would grow anyway and was outside the province of farming. “Only wastin’ your time,” he said. “Them trees won’t never do nothin’.” Perhaps not, but I felt more than repaid in seeing the orchard look shipshape instead of like a neglected cemetery.