THE ANNUAL MEETING. 167 



door above and below. A thermometer is quite essential. I find no difficulty 

 in keeping the temperature so as not to vary more than three or four degrees 

 during the whole winter season, whatever the condition of the weather even in 

 such a winter as '79-'80. I keep the room at 2° above freezing, as I believe 

 this to be best for keeping the fruit, although two or three degrees colder will 

 not injure apples. I have kept apples in this cellar one year from the time of 

 picking, in apparently perfect state of preservation, some of which were 

 exhibited at the first fair of the Western Michigan Agricultural and Industrial 

 Society, held at Grand Kapids in 1879. The expense of the cellar, as I have 

 it built, is only a trifling addition to what an ordinary carriage house would 

 cost, and will pay the whole cost almost every year in the advance price 

 received by keeping the fruit. The cellar will store between five and six hun- 

 dred barrels. 



J. N. Stearns. — This year was a godsend to the fruit-grower, for if he man- 

 aged rightly he made a fair-living, and there was so much fruit of all kinds 

 that everybody could have an abundance. The people have got into the habit 

 of using fruit more, and thus the market is widened for other years that are 

 to come. 



Mr. E. Buell. — There is not half enough apples stored for home consumption 

 to-day. The trouble is not that there are too many; there is not enough, and 

 you will all see this before the spring of 1881. There is an opening for our 

 fruit abroad, if we will only put in practice the best knowledge we have in 

 packing and shipping. Apples can be put down in Liverpool from Michigan 

 for $2 per barrel, and yield a handsome profit above that. I feel that there 

 is an opening for our more perishable fruit in the home evaporation. I have 

 some fruit here, the product of Mr. E. M. Potter's dryer, of Kalamazoo. It 

 is as fine as you ever saw. 



Mr. Potter not being present, Mr. H. Dale Adams read the following notes 

 which had been forwarded by him: 



For two or three years I have been looking up the subject of fruit evapora- 

 tors or driers, not too expensive for general use. I have examined several port- 

 able driers and read all that I could gee hold of on the subject, and find that 

 in nearly all of them, the stove is so small as to admit only fine wood, which 

 makes a brisk and short-lived fire, and either scorches the fruit or soon goes 

 out; thus requiring constant attention. About the middle of last July, while 

 consulting with my wife as to what we had better do about a drier, she said to 

 me one day: "If I could use tools as well as you can I could soon make a 

 drier, and not have it cost much either." 



Of course such an appreciation of my skill had a tendency to inspire my 

 inventive genius and could not go long unrewarded. After some head-work 

 and a little labor, I made a drier which has done good work, as the samples of 

 evaporated fruit which I have here on exhibition will testify. I laid up a brick- 

 work of three sides, about thirty inches square and three feet high, 

 inside of which I placed an old box stove, of large size, and on top of the 

 brick-work I set a box 27x28 inches inside, and about 5 feet high above the 

 brick-work, with a door in front, which, when open, would admit ten sliding 

 trays 27 inches square. These trays were made of light basswood frames and 

 mosquito netting tacked on the under side of the frames, — although they could 

 be used either side up. The netting required replacing once during the season, 

 and is now about used up. 



In the evening my son or hired man would pare about a barrel of apples in 

 an hour ; one other person and myself would trim the ends, cut the apples half 



