On my farm at Orange-Hill, only three miles from Baltimore, the last
year I was there, I sold all my peaches to two men at four pence per
peck, and let them have a cart and a horse to take them into the city
to sell, knowing I had only made four pence per peck on the average
the year before, and gathered them myself. These men agreed to pick
them, and feed the horse in town at their expence. It was the opinion
of every one that they had got a great bargain, and many others wished
they had had it. They picked about one-half of them, and carried
them to Baltimore: but, alas! they gave up the business, saying they
could not make wages, although they at first had said that they would
certainly take every peach, intending, if the market should not suit,
to carry them to the stills, &c. I was in hopes all this exertion would
make this bargain successful, as four pence per peck would pay much
better than to give them to hogs, as I have no knowledge of what number
a hog will eat. Seeing this scheme frustrated, and thinking it a sin
and a shame to see such a number of fine peaches rot on the ground, I
mounted my horse and rode to the stills, as there were many small ones
within three or four miles of me in the country. They have been erected
for this use; but many of them are never used after the first year;
and I am of the opinion that they will not pay expences. The men at
the stills were civil enough; they offered to lend me the still, and
let me find a man to work it, &c. or they would work it for me; but,
from every information I could obtain, I found that my peaches would
not more than pay the carriage to the stills and hardly that; and after
selling them to the owners of the stills, they would not give me so
much for my fruit, as would pay me for my trouble; nor will peaches pay
the farmer, to be given to the hogs, if they be not so situated that
the hogs can run where they are; and that happened not to be my case.
As a striking instance of the little profit of stills, Mr. O'Donnel,
at Canton, had planted an orchard, of great extent, of red peaches,
for the purpose of making peach-brandy. The red peach is reckoned much
superior to any other for brandy. Although Mr. O'Donnel's orchard had
grown to bear in great perfection and he had a still and the other
necessary apparatus, the profit proved so small, that he suffered
the whole to go waste, and his pigs consumed the produce; and, in
the winter, rooted up all those fine peach trees, and planted the
ground with Indian corn, having previously manured the land with dung
from Baltimore for the purpose of an orchard. Now this gentleman had
some hundreds of acres of woodlands unimproved in this plantation;
therefore, the cause could not be for want of land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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