FRUIT-GROWING ANOTHER FIELD OPEN TO WOMEN - Mrs. Vonnegut

Mrs. Clemens Vonnegut, Who Made Success of Apple Orchard Near Lake Maxinkuckee, Says It Takes Lots of Time and Work. and Patience, Too, but She Finds the Reward Is Worth the Effort. BY LAURA N ORCHARDIST. One who rant apple blossom time; through the long summer; green leaves and red and her harvest heaped in colorful piles whose October days are a fulfillment with its fragrast contents simmering where the October landscape blends with her thoughts.

A link between pioneer days and today is under October's blue skies.

For her grandmother and great granmother performed this same rite in her own generation.

Thoughts of apple-blossom time are linked with this verse, which appeared the Boston Transcript:

What May has done
For that has old dopple tree,
How I wish
It might do for me!
For who grown old
Would not look. now and then,
Young like that tree
That has blossomed again?

Mrs. Clemens Vonnegut is a successful orchardist and these early March days have seen her up at her orchard on Lake Maxinkuckee, getting ready for the season's work.

I was glad when Mrs. Vonnegut consented to give her experiences in this interesting business of making an apple orchard pay.

Evidently a love for outdoors and fruit-raising was born in her, for 88 a child she found apples fascinating.

FRUIT PESTS ONCE UNKNOWN.

"I remember many years ago," said Mrs. Vonnegut, my grandfather, Jacob Schramm, used to bring wagon loads of beautiful apples to town from his farm in Hancock county, near Greenfeld. There were Bellflowers, baldwins, pippins, russets and many others.

Every apple was perfect and he did not spray his trees because we had none of the pests that we have now. remember well that my father, the late Henry. Schnull, had shelves built in his cellar at our home where the city hall now stands, Alabama and Ohio streets. On these shelves the apples were stored, for we had no cold storage houses.

Now our baskets of apples are numbered in lots, sent to cold storage and We get them out as needed.

The apples on our old cellar shelves kept well until spring unless we children and our schoolmates went there too often to help ourselves.

I can feel the joy of eating those apples now.

Little did I think that in years to come I would be known as an orchardist.

A friend once told me that he had a recollection of his early childhood, of always having an apple to eat with a rotten spot. His father looked over the supply and took those with spots to be eaten first.

Every time I see an apple not perfect, I think of what my friend said.

Children of today would resent being given spotted apples as they are accustomed to picking out the perfect ones to eat.

If asked how I came to be an orchardist, I believe I must say it is a heritage from my grandfather, Jacob E chramm, who loved outdoors and farming.

His grandson, Prof. Jacob Schramm, is a prominent botanist, doing botanical research for the government and is assistant superintendent of the great Shaw gardens, St. Louis. Jacob Schramm settled near Cumberland, Hancock county, in 1835.

A merchant in his native country, Germany, he still longed for work in the open fields. Being a man of wealth, he could do so, in his desire to possess land and farm it, when he brought his family to Indiana.

I feel that I inherit this love of outdoor work from him, and my son, Walter Vonnegut, has the same love for it. He had started our apple orchard at Lake Maxinkuckee and was working it when the opportunity came for him, through his dramatic talent, to go with the Stuart Walker Players.

He had to decide between the stage and the orchard of which he waa so fond. So, I told him that he could have both, that as long as I lived I would mangage the apple orchard for him. I not only like the outdoor work but enjoy the business of apple raising and marketing the harvest.

PATIENCE A REQUISITE.

When my son spoke of planting an orchard, we all thought only of the pleasant things that are connected with this business.

I saw trees, in my mind, when they are in bloom; then, again, when laden with red and golden apples. I saw gathered in baskets and barrels, ready for shipment. The last few years I have enjoyed all these things, but to accomplish it means patience and work.

I often ask my friends the question, 'Do you know what work, time and money it takes to ra'se perfect apple? Lots of people who go into this business do not realize the time it takes for an orchard bear good fruit. It may take fifteen years.

Also, that one can not count on good seasons only. There will be good seasons and bad ones.

The orchardist must have patience, quanties of it.

Orchard land is not expensive, neither are the trees when they are small. So, an orchard lies within the means of most women if they have the love for outdoors, for working with the trees and the harvest and -- patience.

An orchard will keep its owner busy from March until harvest. The ground must be harrowed and worked over. The trees are generally sprayed four times a. year. If too thick, the trees must be thinned.

In planting an orchard the first thing to be done is to select the land and there are many things to consider. To be near a body of water is desirable because the water protects the fruit against freeze. I have found this to be true many time when vegetables in my garden near Lake Maxinkuckee were spared and others on farms a few miles away had their garden products ruined.

For an orchard the fields are plowed and prepared the fall before, planting the trees early the following spring. They have to be protected during the winter by wire netting around every tree, as the rabbits gnaw the bark.

The ground about the trees is cultivated and planted with cover crops--strawberries, corn, rye. The trees, as I have said, have to be sprayed from four to five times a year. After ten years or so the first apples, only a few at first, are harvested. Then from year to year one waits and hopes for bigger crops. Some apple trees do not bear fruit until they are fifteen years old, like the wonderful Northern Spy.

But when they do bear, what joy to harvest the beautiful fruit. We had one Northern Spy apple last year that weighed ne and one-half pounds.

STYLES IN APPLES, TOO.

The trees are pruned from the beginning so that they have the proper shape to get the sunshine to all the fruit. There are styles in apples as well as in other things.

The old kind of apple like the Vandever, the russet, the bellflower and others are not found in the younger orchards. Now the Grimes Golden, Jonathan, Stayman Winesap, and above all others, the beautiful Delicious, are the commercial apples of today. The Baldwin is an old and a new favorite with many people.

Until I became an orchardist I never felt disturbed by the weather, but now I watch the thermometer many times day and night for the fate of our orchard may be at stake.

Every one who has had boys in the family knows that they can scarcely resist the temptation to jump over the fence and pick an apple. It it were only that, it would not hurt anything, but the trees are often injured by people not knowing the right way to pick an apple. Near the stem of the ripe apple is the fruit spur of the next year. If it is broken there will be no apple there following year. One has to give the apple he is picking a little twist and break it without injuring the fruit bud. This is something every one who helps himself to an apple on a tree should know and observe.

We have no trouble in securing help to pick and pack the apples. The men and women of the vicinity look forward to October when we need them. Apple picking time is like a festival to them and I enjoy working with them. I always regret the time when we are through with the work. We generally sell the entire crop of first class apples to one firm.

Each fall we have sale day, to which the farmers and people from surrounding towns come with sacks and baskets and take away the seconds and small apples. The drops are bought by people who take them to the cider mill.

My interest in apples has given me another great pleasure -- to be a keeper of the bees. These wonderful little workers are an endless source of joy and very necessary in an orchard. When I decided to get some bee hives I went to my friend, Mrs. Louis Burckhardt, and she gave me all the information I needed and also a great deal of enthusiasm.

My wonder at what the bees can do and how they do it, 1s greater from year to year.

AND THEN APPLE BUTTER.

When all the apples are sold and the packing shed put in order. we make apple butter in the old-fashioned way our grandmothers made it, out in the farmyard in a large copper kettle over a wood fire.

I like to make the fragrant apple butter. It is generally about the last week in October. The weather is cold and the leaves begin to fall. It is pleasant to sit by the fire, the long stirring stick in hand, letting my eyes wander across the fields and orchards while memories of long ago come back to me. I think clear back to the time I spent on my grandmother's farm when she lived in a log cabin and told me of the days when she came here a pioneer, into the wilderness.

I never fail at this time, sitting by the outdoor fire watching the apple butter simmer over the fire, to think of the beautiful poem of James Whitcomb Riley's, so typical of Indiana. 'When the frost is on the punkin.'

Now I am a grandmother myself, and one of my greatest pleasures this summer in connection with my orchard is that I will have all my grandchildren with me, helping with the apples and enjoying the outdoor life.

Indianapolis Star Mar 14, 1926