APPLE LAND.

Hokitika Guardian, 19 September 1922, Page 1

APPLE LAND.

TREES THAT GAN SCARCELY CARRY THEIR FRUIT. (By Sir William Beach Thomas).

KELOWNA. Summcrland and Peachland arc the names of two little and altogether lovely townships in the heart of Apple Land in British Columbia; and the whole glorious region is humming with scenes of land settlement for liritish immigrants. Special Canadian emissaries have gone forth to persuade retiring Indian officers to take up land near by, south of Okanagan Lake, and an Englishman has lately bought for ex-soldier settlement a very large district north of Okanagan. Probably more English money has been spent along or near the shores of the lake than anywhere in Canada.

f have been through the better part of this orchard land—there are 20,000 acres—and talked at illy leisure with all sorts and eamlitions of men in the area ; Government scientists, owners of orchards, including several British officers, labourers, real (-state men. hauliers, young emigrants, and the rest, and have arrived at very definite opinions. A lovelier place could not. he pictured. You hurst quite suddenly through rough forests into undulating valleys more gay with fruit blossom than Evesham itself, lying below parklike slopes dotted sparsely with yellow pines.

When you reach the blue lake you can detect by the strata of tie cliffs that the silt on which the apples and peaches and cherries grow is as much ns 190 feet deep in places, all of the same consistency. It -is a soil asking for intensive cultivation ; nnd it call only he made to pay by intensive work. Most orchard owners were busy in

what open spaces remained in planting out tomatoes, which ripen very quickly in this sunny land. The older orchards arc now almost

all planted with alfalfa (lucerne) or vetches, which, it is found, preserve the precious moisture better than any other plant.

nOVKHXM KXT WATKH. Every orchard that flourishes is inigated. as a rule, by a Government or municipal system. Wooden channels, or flumes, with tiny metal holes at the side, deposit the water into earth tunnels, often made by a very humble instrument—a railway sleeper with three metal spikes. The one deficiency of this paradise—-

as these devices indicate—-is rain. Twelve inches a year, rain and snow together, is a heavy fall. Orchard owners are paving sometimes more, than £2 ail acre for the water supply. The land • tself mav cost £250 an

acre. The prices arc nothing less than colossal when compared, for example, with excellent farming land on the prairies for, say, l'(i an acre, ov even the fruitlands of Nova Scotia, or the peach and vinclamls in Southern Ontario. Why is this? It seems to me that land in Canada gets its value from its beauty—the lovelier the dearer. This is due in no small measure to 11io British. The rush to the Okanagan Valley, which as an orchard land is scarcely a generation old, was like the rush for gold in the Yukon, and people—British people—pe’rsiijidoil themselves that it was gold they were pursuing.

IRRESISTIBLE BEAUTY. 1 suspect the real chase was after beauty. A blue lake, a fertile soil, a sunny climate, a mild winter, rolling valleys and blue hills—all these were irresistible. Surely they must mint into gold coins!

You would say so to-day in face of a landscape of blossom and green acres of fruit, this year set so thickly that the trees scarcely hear the weight. Probably no such orchard glory is to he seen the world over. Hut gold? The fruit can he made to pay, to pay well, by a skilful worker of energy. Hut skill, energy, and capital —quite a large amount of capital—are necessarv.

A scientific worker, who took me through much of the best country, had iust been touring through farmlands several hundred miles to the north along the Grand Trunk Railway', where good cleared land was purchasable at £5 ail acre and less, not far from flic land of the latest gold “boom.”

That is the district in Hritish Col umbin—so he held—for the immigran who is content to labour for a year o two as a “hired man,” while h gathers the necessary knowledge foi a venture on his own.

THE CAPITAL REQUIRED, r write this after a long day spent in the fairest country it has ever been lay fortune to feast my eves on. It is now at the apex of its splendour The orchards will increase. One thousand new acres will he planted this vear, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of similar acres remain. Prosperity will follow the water channels and' the new knowledge. The value of alfalfa in the orchard is in itself a discovery expressible in terms of money. Hut harm will he done if immi-

grants are too easily lasciuated by the incorrigible charm oi this (lowering land and look upon a fruit farm as a source of livelihood, rich and easy and pleasant. Fruit-growing in Hritish Columbia is not an old man’s game or a lazy man’s panacea. Too many English people have thought they would find here the sort of garden of which the poet Marvell wrote: The nectarine and curious peach Tnto my hand themselves do reach. They grow profusely, as do apricots and vines and cherries and. above all, apples, and can he marketed cooperatively at good prices. Hut they have to he watered and sprayed and picked, and the cost must he reckoned by all who seek a livelihood as well as a pleasant land of retirement. The most success!ul man I met, whose orchard is a Mecca, estimated that to take up fruit-farming here a man should have a minimum capital of £2,000 and an income of £l5O a vear.