This estimate of cost of land is based on the price of the best lands in the San Gabriel valley. Fair lands can be bought in other sections at lower prices.
| Second year.—An annual ploughing in January | $25.00 |
| Four irrigations during year | 40.00 |
| Six cultivations during year | 27.00 |
| Third year | 125.00 |
| Fourth year | 150.00 |
| Fifth year | 200.00 |
| Interest on investment | 1,000.00 |
| Total | $3,250.00 |
If first-class, healthy, thrifty budded trees are planted, they will begin to fruit the second year. The third year, a few boxes may be marketed. The fourth year, there will be an average yield of at least 75 oranges to the tree, which will equal:
| 75,000, at $10 per thousand net | $750.00 |
| The fifth year, 250 per tree, 250,000, at $10 per thousand | 2,500.00 |
| Total | $3,250.00 |
The orchard is now clear gain, allowing $1,000 as interest on the investment. The increase in the volume of production will continue, until at the end of the tenth year an average of 1,000 oranges to a tree would not be an extraordinary yield.
To all these formulas of reckoning should be added one with the algebraic x representing the unknown quantity, and standing for insect enemies at large. Each kind of fruit has its own, which must be fought with eternal vigilance. No port, in any country, has more rigid laws of quarantine than are now enforced in California against these insect enemies. Grafts, cuttings, fruit, if even suspected, are seized and compelled to go through as severe disinfecting processes as if they were Cuban passengers fresh from a yellow fever epidemic.
The orange's worst enemy is a curious insect, the scale-bug. It looks more like a mildew than like anything alive; is usually black, sometimes red. Nothing but violent treatment with tobacco will eradicate it. Worse than the scale-bug, in that he works out of sight underground, is the gopher. He has gnawed every root of a tree bare before a tooth-mark on the trunk suggests his presence, and then it is too late to save the tree. The rabbit also is a pernicious ally in the barking business; he, however, being shy, soon disappears from settled localities; but the gopher stands not in fear of man or men. Only persistent strychnine, on his door-sills and thrust down his winding stairs, will save the orchard in which he has founded a community.
The almond and the walnut orchards are beautiful features in the landscape all the year round, no less in the winter, when their branches are naked, than in the season of their full leaf and bearing. In fact, the broad spaces of filmy gray made by their acres when leafless are delicious values in contrast with the solid green of the orange orchards. The exquisite revelation of tree systems which stripped boughs give is seen to more perfect advantage against a warm sky than a cold one, and is heightened in effect standing side by side with the flowing green pepper-trees and purple eucalyptus.
In the time of blossoms, an almond orchard, seen from a distance, is like nothing so much as a rosy-white cloud, floated off a sunset and spread on the earth. Seen nearer, it is a pink snow-storm, arrested and set on stalks, with an orchestra buzz of bees filling the air.
It is a pity that the almond-tree should not be more repaying; for it will be a sore loss to the beauty of the country when the orchards are gone, and this is only a question of time. They are being uprooted and cast out. The crop is a disappointing one, of uncertain yield, and troublesome to prepare. The nuts must be five times handled: first picked, then shucked, then dried, then bleached, and then again dried. After the first drying, they are dipped by basketfuls into hot water, then poured into the bleachers,—boxes with perforated bottoms. Underneath these is a sulphur fire to which the nuts must be exposed for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then they are again spread in a drying-house. The final gathering them up to send to market makes really a sixth handling; and after all is said and done, the nuts are not very good, being flavorless in comparison with those grown in Europe.
The walnut orchard is a better investment, and no less a delight to the eye. While young, the walnut-tree is graceful; when old, it is stately. It is a sturdy bearer, and if it did not bear at all, would be worth honorable place and room on large estates, simply for its avenues of generous shade. It is planted in the seed, and transplanted at two or three years old, with only twenty-seven trees to an acre. They begin to bear at ten years, reach full bearing at fifteen, and do not give sign of failing at fifty.
Most interesting of all South California's outdoor industries is the grape culture. To speak of grape culture is to enter upon a subject which needs a volume. Its history, its riches, past and prospective, its methods, its beautiful panorama of pictures, each by itself is worth study and exhaustive treatment. Since the days of Eschol, the vine and the vineyard have been honored in the thoughts and the imaginations of men; they furnished shapes and designs for the earliest sacred decorations in the old dispensation, and suggestions and symbols for divine parables in the new. No age has been without them, and no country whose sun was warm enough to make them thrive. It is safe to predict that so long as the visible frame of the earth endures, "wine to make glad the heart of man" will be made, loved, celebrated, and sung.
To form some idea of California's future wealth from the grape culture, it is only necessary to reflect on the extent of her grape-growing country as compared with that of France. In France, before the days of the phylloxera, 5,000,000 of people were supported entirely by the grape industry, and the annual average of the wine crop was 2,000,000,000 gallons, with a value of $400,000,000. The annual wine-yield of California is already estimated at about 10,000,000 gallons. Nearly one third of this is made in South California, chiefly in Los Angeles County, where the grape culture is steadily on the increase, five millions of new vines having been set out in the spring of 1882.
The vineyards offer more variety to the eye than the orange orchards. In winter, when leafless, they are grotesque; their stocky, twisted, hunchback stems looking like Hindoo idols or deformed imps, no two alike in a square mile, all weird, fantastic, uncanny. Their first leafing out does not do away with this; the imps seem simply to have put up green umbrellas; but presently the leaves widen and lap, hiding the uncouth trunks, and spreading over all the vineyard a beautiful, tender green, with lights and shades breaking exquisitely in the hollows and curves of the great leaves. From this on, through all the stages of blossoms and seed-setting, till the clusters are so big and purple that they gleam out everywhere between the leaves,—sometimes forty-five pounds on a single vine, if the vine is irrigated, twelve if it is left to itself. Eight tons of grapes off one acre have been taken in the Baldwin ranch. There were made there, in 1881, 100,000 gallons of wine and 50,000 of brandy. The vintage begins late in August, and lasts many weeks, some varieties of grapes ripening later than others. The vineyards are thronged with Mexican and Indian pickers. The Indians come in bands, and pitch their tents just outside the vineyard. They are good workers. The wine-cellars and the great crushing-vats tell the vineyards' story more emphatically even than the statistical figures. A vat that will hold 1,000 gallons piled full of grapes, huge