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Show $ Pierre M Profit $ from Trees From Farmers' Review: Arbor Day is near and its importance is such that I wish to say a word in regard to tree planting. In the last fifty years I have planted a great many thousand trees of many different varieties. If my experience is of value I will be glad to give it. My first view of our Iowa prairies was sixty-one years ago in spring time,, before the days of statehood. It was then one beautiful field of flowers and grass for a few months, then it changed to more sombre colors in summer and fall, to be followed by the fires which left it a dismal blank until the snows came and the fierce winds swept over the great level waste, driving the snow into the cabins and filling the stock sheds and yards. I then began to long for the evergreens of my boyhood home, something, anything to make a barrier against wind and snow banks. I helped my father plant maples, Cottonwood, Cot-tonwood, willows, anything to tangle the wind; and it partly filled the purpose. pur-pose. At twentyone I secured 160 acres and began to improve. I had read books of good authors on tree planting and landscape gardening, and determined that my home, the home in which I was sure some lovely woman would preside, should be the most lovely and an object lesson . to others. About that time, 1858, I visited vis-ited the lumber country of Wisconsin. The beauty of the pines and the spruces inspired me at once to bring many home. I gathered them by the thousand and planted many on a large lawn and for windbreaks and gave away hundreds to my friends near by. The queen of the home came. We lived there happily a few years. The place became very beautiful. One old farmer said he would like to have it for a "bosom pin." The fatal day came, when a prize so great was offered of-fered that we could not resist and it went into strangers' hands. My nursery nur-sery of evergreens was reserved and we began again in an adjoining county on a much larger scale. Some twenty thousand trees were planted including includ-ing my nursery grown evergreens and many other varieties procured from other nurseries. The large lawn had the choicest trees. Long rows of white pine were planted for windbreaks. wind-breaks. I kept up the evergreen nursery nur-sery until I had sent out over the state and states around over five million white pines. I supplied many school houses and churches free with only the promise of proper care. Years have passed since this last beginning; our hair is well silvered; the children are through college and are home again. But what about the trees? Well, the old home is so nicely sheltered shel-tered that in climate it has been moved two hundred miles south. I find my windbreaks of white and Scotch and Austrian pines are best where planted in single rows 10 feet apart. Don't plant more than one row, and never trim. Give plenty of room each side. For quick growth for fuel plant white maple; for shade and ornament white elm, and sugar maple for roadside trees. For profit plant black walnut and white ash and white pine. Last year out of this grove planted in 1866-7, I thinned out and sawed 1,600 feet of white pine lumber and 16,000 feet of lumber from soft maple, Cottonwood, black walnut, ash, elm, birch, half enough lumber for a barn 64 by 80, and the trees can scarcely scarce-ly be missed. For the lawn the finest trees are Silver Spruce, Douglass Spruce, Silver Cedar and White Pine, but also plant a few cut-leaved Birch, Sugar Maple, Redbud, and, if grounds are large, White Elm. Norway Spruce is short lived; Scotch Pine becomes ugly with age; the Austrian Pine grows slowly, but is a grand tree. E. F. Brockway, Louise County, Iowa. |