Read Ebook: Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting Washington D.C. September 26 27 and 28 1923 by Northern Nut Growers Association Editor

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NORTH CAROLINA Hutchings, Miss L. G., Pine Bluff Matthews, C. D., North Carolina Dept. of Agriculture, Raleigh Van Lindley, J., , Pomona

OREGON Frost, Earl C., Route 1, Box 515, Gates Rd., Portland

RHODE ISLAND Allen, Philip, Providence

SOUTH CAROLINA Taylor, Thos., 1112 Bull St., Columbia

TENNESSEE Waite, J. W., Normandy

UTAH Smith, Joseph A., Edgewood Hall, Providence

VERMONT Aldrich, A. W., Springfield, R. F. D. No. 3 Ellis, Zenas H., Fair Haven Holbrook, F. C., Battleboro

VIRGINIA +Dodge, Harrison H., Mount Vernon Gould, Katherine Clemons, Boonsboro, Care of C. M. Daniels, via Lynchburg, R. F. D. 4 Harris, D. S., Roselawn, Capital Landing Road, Williamsburg, R. 3 Hopkins, N. S., Dixondale Jordan, J. H., Bohannon Moock, Harry C, Roanoke, Route 5

WASHINGTON Berg, D. H., Nooksack Turk, Richard H., Washougal

WEST VIRGINIA Brooks, Fred E., French Creek Cannaday, Dr. J. E., Charleston, Box 693 Hartzel, B. F., Shepherdstown Mish, A. F., Inwood

CONSTITUTION

ARTICLE I

ARTICLE II

ARTICLE IV

ARTICLE V

ARTICLE VI

BY-LAWS

ARTICLE I

ARTICLE II

ARTICLE IV

PROCEEDINGS

AT THE

FOURTEENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE NORTHERN NUT GROWERS ASSOCIATION

New National Museum, Washington, D. C.

September 26-27-28, 1923.

The Convention was called to order at 2 p. m., Sept. 26, 1923, in the New National Museum.

In his opening address the president spoke of the need for increased membership and improved financial condition. He also recommended a return to the old method of combining the secretary and treasurer in one office and that the secretary-treasurer should have a fair salary, suitable quarters, and adequate help. He spoke of his own efforts to increase the usefulness of the association and expressed his fears that they had amounted to very little. He quoted the statement of the editor of the American Nut Journal that what people want to know is whether they can make any money by the cultivation of nut trees. That statement led to a campaign to try to locate in the territory of the association groups of nut trees in profitable bearing. He felt satisfied that there are numerous paying nut orchards, and he recommended a continuance of the campaign for locating such orchards.

The president then went on to instance the experience of Mr. Frederick G. Brown of Salisbury, Mass., at whose place, about two miles from the ocean, there are two Persian walnut trees, 12 to 15 years old, one of them about a foot in diameter and twenty feet high, that have borne for two years. Peach trees will not live at this place. Two miles away at Newburyport is a tree a year or two younger that bore a half peck of nuts last year, and another tree 35 years old in bearing for 15 or 20 years. The nuts were spoken of as of high quality.

He referred to Edward Selkirk of North East, Pa., who has a grove of 250 trees about 22 years old of the Pomeroy variety. Last year the crop was one ton and brought in a little over 0.00. This year the crop is much larger. For best development of the trees the land should be given over entirely to their culture.

The president quoted a letter from E. A. Riehl of Godfrey, Illinois as follows:

My nut plantings are mostly young, many just coming into bearing, while many others have been top-worked to better varieties, so that money returns are not what they would be had I started out planting improved varieties. Part of my aim was to originate better varieties than we had when I began. In this, I think, I have been fairly successful.

My plantings consist mostly of chestnuts. These have sold readily at 35 to 40 cents per pound wholesale. It is rather a hard matter to give any idea as to profit, except that we gathered 23 pounds from one tree five years after topworking on a tree then about three inches in diameter. In 1920, the net return was ,172.54, in 1921, ,019.44, in 1922, which was about a half crop, ,196.81. All this on land so rough no crop could be grown on it but pasture. This year's crop promises to be a full one.

As to walnuts, we have made no record of single trees. The Thomas, by actual test, gives ten pounds of meat to the bushel, which we sold to dealers last season at .00 per pound, and could not nearly supply the demand.

Walnut crop here a failure this season. Only a few Thomas trees have a crop.

If the meeting was after nut harvest, I would send the best chestnut exhibit that has ever been shown at any meeting.

H. C. Fletcher of Clarkson, N. Y., was quoted as estimating the nuts produced from two trees each year from 1911 to 1915 as worth. In 1916 and 1917 there were about six bushels of nuts, probably worth. In 1918 a market basket full. In 1919 and 1920 about worth, including some trees sold. In 1921 about worth were produced and in 1922 worth of nuts and worth of trees.

In the president's own filbert nursery at Rochester over 300 pounds of fine nuts were produced for which 30 cents a pound were offered by grocerymen.

Mr. W. R. Mattoon of the Forest Service of the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture spoke as follows:

Two years ago, when the Forest Service was planning to get up a bulletin on growing walnut trees for timber, we found the need to include information on the nuts also. Mr. C. A. Reed and I together prepared a manuscript on growing the walnut tree both for timber and for nuts.

It pays to grow walnuts in small groups and singly, rather than in large blocks, for while they have not proven altogether failures when planted in large quantities they have been disappointing. Many of the trees which we planted as close as 6 x 8 feet several years ago, have not given very satisfactory results because they have not had enough light and air. The black walnut grows singly in the forest, although there may be full stands of other trees around it. Our idea is to recommend planting the black walnut in spots around on the farm, in little inaccessible places and on the hillsides, where the soil is good; for the black walnut requires good soil, and we cannot find that quality in large patches, nor is it usual on slopes of ground. So we must put it here and there on the farm, along the fence rows and in various places, but not in groups. The farmer planting in this way becomes its wood which is used in the most expensive furniture. I believe that mahogany is the only other wood so valuable. On the other side of the world they have the mahogany tree for cabinet use, and here in America we have the black walnut, a cabinet wood that is not surpassed.

The present available publications on this subject are limited but we are referring people who inquire about it to Department of Agriculture Bulletin No. 933, "The Black Walnut, Its Growth and Management." That is midway between a technical and a popular bulletin, and it comprises about the only available publication that we have at the present time on the subject of growing the tree. Farmers' Bulletin No. 1123, "Growing and Planting Hardwood Seedlings on the Farm", deals with the black walnut along with other trees. Another publication is Department of Agriculture Bulletin No. 153, "Forest Planting in the Eastern United States," which considers the black walnut along with the other available trees for planting.

MR. OLCOTT: For a small orchard would it be proper to plant 160 to 180 feet apart?

MR. MATTOON: When planted in that way you would get nut production and at the same time, a timber growth. If pruned you get a good log at the base. The small, ten-foot logs from these trees pay as much as you would get for an 18 foot log of a taller tree. For forestry purposes, pruning is a desirable practice.

THE PRESIDENT: But for nut-bearing, what is your opinion?

MR. MATTOON: I should suppose that you would want your orchard trees to be as low-branched as possible, and with as full foliage as possible.

The growing of black walnuts in a commercial way will require education, but already there is a growing interest. Several of the large weekly publications have, within the last couple of months, carried full page, illustrated articles on black walnuts. One of these, in a magazine of general circulation which is over half a million, within a month resulted in almost one hundred letters asking for additional information, which shows that a great many people want to know more about the possibilities of black walnuts. This interest will certainly increase when profitable black walnut orchards are actually growing and paying good profits. Already men are putting in black walnut orchards or groves of several hundred acres, and one such planting of 1,600 acres is proposed, but it will be partly hardy pecans. This shows rapid development into a real industry of magnitude.

Report of the Secretary.

On March 1, 1923, the treasurer, Mr. W. G. Bixby, handed over to the secretary the funds and books of the association, saying that his time had become so much taken up that he was able to give too little of it to the duties of his office. Thus it became necessary for the secretary to assume the functions of the treasurer as well.

These functions were, in the first place, the payment of the obligations of the association from the funds available. The funds available for current expenses were not sufficient for the payment of these obligations. The secretary therefore took it upon himself to pay these obligations with funds of the association put aside for other purposes. These funds were money received from life membership payments that had been deposited in the Litchfield Savings Society, as a sort of contingent fund, and other funds from the same source held by the treasurer and handed over by him to the secretary. These two funds were completely used up in the payment of current expenses, as will appear in the detailed statement of the secretary.

These funds, however, were still insufficient to pay the current expenses, which were, chiefly, the expenses of the stenographer's report and transcripts of the thirteenth annual convention, at Rochester, and the cost of printing the annual report. The cost of printing the report was paid out of the available funds. The stenographer's bill, amounting to 9.00 originally, but reduced to 5.00 by the stenographer on representation by the officers of the association that the amount was excessive, was paid by Mr. Bixby personally, and the association is indebted to Mr. Bixby in that amount at this moment.

The second function that developed upon the secretary was the management of the membership lists and matters relating thereto, which, though perhaps essentially a duty of the secretary of an association such as this, had been managed by the treasurer since the time when he took over the duties of the secretary in 1918. This had involved quite an expenditure for clerical work. This clerical work would still be an expense to the association, had not one of our members, Mr. H. J. Hilliard, of Sound View, Connecticut, volunteered to do it. Mr. Hilliard was formerly connected with a bank, is entirely familiar with the keeping of accounts, is a man of means and leisure, and I shall take pleasure in offering his name to fill the vacant treasurership. Heretofore, this association has had to pay little or nothing for clerical work which has been done either by the secretary, or by the treasurer and his personal clerical force.

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