Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting: Rochester, N.Y. August 31 and September 1, 1953
Science
Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting: Rochester, N.Y. August 31 and September 1, 1953
Northern Nut Growers Association -- Periodicals; Nut trees -- Periodicals; Nuts -- Periodicals
DR. MCKAY: In these panel discussions the moderator usually lays a
little background as an introduction to the subject of the evening. This
title came from a conversation with Dr. Crane. We were talking about
people asking questions about their problems, and decided to have a
panel discussion. Right there we chose the title, "What's your problem?"
All of us have problems to deal with in every walk of life. We run up
against difficulties, and usually much of our time is taken up in
solving or coping with them. At Beltsville we answer a great many
letters, and a great many people ask us about their problems. In
answering problems, we push the industry forward, because we remove
something that is holding it back.
Sometimes the answer to a problem is found by trying to analyze our
successes. In growing nut trees we may have an unusually good crop on a
particular variety or tree. The question is, why does that tree bear
well that particular year, and very frequently it is difficult to
understand why. It is very difficult, for example, in the case of one
success, to repeat that success, because the second time you try to do
it, something else comes in, and you probably have a failure and, well,
you don't know why. It is frequently very difficult to analyze our
successes. Another way of stating it is, of course, that our successes
are often Nature's gift, and we do not know the factors and the forces
that go into that gift.
I want to digress here just a little bit by quoting one thing that Mr.
Best said. I wish, by the way, that we could incorporate some of his
homey philosophy into some of our minutes so as to really benefit by
some of his remarks. I was impressed this morning by his statement in
dealing with a "fairyland of nuts," you remember that language he used,
"no diseases, no insects, no failures."
DR. MACDANIEL: No squirrels.
DR. MCKAY: Wouldn't that be wonderful? I was impressed with another
thing he said; I wrote it down here: "People are not going to break down
with emotion when we talk about the old hollow tree down in the corner
of the pasture where the 'possums were hatched." Language like that, to
me, strikes a very harmonious note. I want to continue this digression a
little to consider the fact that all of us, in a sense, are hobbyists in
nut growing.
Hobbies in this day and age are coming to be more important all the
time, because of the fast pace at which we live. We need to leave our
regular duties once in a while and get out in the garden or the forest
where we can observe nature and get away from some of the stresses and
strains that modern living places upon us.
On this trip we were taking a hike along the north rim of Grand Canyon
in an organized nature walk. The trees, bushes and flowers were all
labelled right down the walk, and we came to this little poem on a
regulation label. It goes like this:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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