Fruits and Culture. 385 



berries only new baskets (standard size quarts) and Kevitts patent dis- 

 play crate. All my strawberries are assorted after they come from the 

 field, the baskets are filled ''heaping full'' and the top layer is faced up 

 with hulls down, being very careful that the top berries are no larger or 

 better than those in the rest of the basket. 



I have pickers enough, so they get through by twelve or one o'clock- 

 each day. Thus every basket reaches the consumer the same day it is 

 picked, and it is always understood with my marketman that should any 

 customer complain of any basket of my berries being other than as repre- 

 sented, he is to give him another box and charge the same to me. (I 

 have never had a box charged back yet.) 



The first season I paid my marketman 3c per box for selling, and 

 since then I have made a contract w:ith him each season to take all my 

 berries (strawberries and raspberries) at 15c per basket. They are de- 

 livered to him twice a day — at 1 1 a. m. and at 4 to 5 p. m. ; thus, he has 

 fresh berries to deliver to his customers for dinner and tea. (I live but 

 one mile from the market.) 



The season of 1898 was without doubt the greatest strawberry sea- 

 son ever known. Good berries from local growers were brought to this 

 market and sold six boxes for 25c and loc per basket was considered a 

 good price. The first few hundred baskets of my berries brought 25c 

 per basket, then dropped to 20c, then to i8c, and at last a few sold at 15c, 

 the heft of the crop bringing i8c to 20c — and all the raspberries brought 

 20c. And still you must understand the market was flooded with good 

 berries. Occasionally a customer would try a cheap lot, but invariably 

 came back to my berries, claiming they were cheapest in the end. Even 

 the few seconds I had brought as much as other berries were selling for. 

 People knew that my berries were fresh and clean, and they had learned 

 that they could depend on getting the same grade of fruit every time, and 

 it v.-as no uncommon thing when our noon load was delivered at the mar- 

 ket to find a dozen or more people, and many times teams from neighbor- 

 ing towns, vvaiting to secure a supply of my berries. And these teams 

 had driven past other fruit farms and come five or six miles to get these 

 berries, which were really no better than mine while they were on the 

 vines, but were fresh picked, clean, honestly assorted and the baskets 

 were full — and the people had learned these facts. Now, I have no pat- 

 ent on these methods or no monopoly of a "home market." If you grow 

 fruit and have no home market for it, make one; I had to make mine. Of 

 course, people who grow five to ten acres of strawberries cannot always 

 dispose of them in their home markets, but there is more money in 

 "smaller fields and better fruit." 



H-25 



