'54 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



markets and watches the shipments and this year he has been 

 successful in ])lacing a large majority of the apples of the 

 cooperative company on steamers that arrived in London and 

 Liverpool when the market was high. He holds the lines, as it 

 were, and when Glasgow is bare of apples he makes a shipment. 

 He watches all the shipments from New York and Boston ; and 

 in that way we have got a great deal better price for our apples. 

 The steamers are chartered and the cars placed by the central 

 association, and it costs 3 cents a barrel. $12,000 pays all the 

 expenses of all the work of that association. 



I could go on showing you that the old system of selling to 

 speculators or shipping apples on consignment does not compare 

 favorably at all with shipping under the cooperative companies, 

 but Mr. Vroom is here to talk upon cooperation. The coopera- 

 tive system is working finely. Before you, in this state, get 

 that cooperative system worked out, you will find it a very nice 

 way to handle apples by having warehouses at the railroad sta- 

 tions in the district, where you can take your fruit in the autumn 

 and have it stored, and pack it in the winter. We haven't any 

 cold storage plants in our section. Of course our Gravensteins 

 are practically out of the country by the loth of October, and 

 our Kings and some other varieties go out, and it is the winter 

 fruit we hold in the warehouses. I was at Round Hill, a station 

 40 miles below Berwick, and the manager of that warehouse 

 told me he had 4,000 barrels of Nonpareil, and they were 

 offered $4.00 per barrel for the whole outfit. $16,000 was quite 

 a little money to distribute around in that section of the country. 



There are a good many factors that go to make up good 

 orcharding. Among the most important is cultivation and fer- 

 tilization of the orchard. In taking up the subject of cultivation 

 this afternoon, I would say that we cultivate our orchards — and 

 a good deal of this applies to the general farmer — having four 

 distinct notions. The first is to break up the dormant plant 

 food in the soil; the second, to improve the physical condition 

 of the soil ; the third, to conserve the moisture ; and the fourth, 

 which is not of very much importance, to kill the weeds. The 

 reason that it is not of much importance is because while we 

 have been cultivating the soil for these other purposes the weeds 

 have been destroyed. 



