560 Report of the Department of Horticulture of the 



dition and can only assume that the amount invested is approximately 

 what the present valuation is. What is a Baldwin orchard, in full 

 bearing in the prime of life, worth? Sales are too few and most 

 of those that take place are made under conditions too abnormal 

 to make selling price a safe gauge of value. We will suppose the value 

 to be $500.00 per acre and the interest five per ct. This valuation 

 is not high, for it includes not only cost of land, trees and labor, 

 but the deferred dividends of the first twelve or fifteen years. It 

 is sufficient, too, to cover the overhead expense of houses and barns — 

 or at least the share of these changes that would fall to a ten-acre 

 orchard in New York. The first expense item, then, is $25.00 per 

 acre on investment, a sum which, divided by 116.8, the number of 

 barrels per acre, gives a charge per barrel of 21 cents as interest 

 on investment. 



taxes. 



Taxes vary greatly in different counties as they do somewhat 

 in different years in the same county. Since this orchard is but a 

 part of a general farm, only an estimate can be made of the cost 

 of taxes. There are few regions or years in New York in which 

 taxes for such an orchard would be over $1.50 an acre, making the 

 tax on each barrel of apples 1.2 cents. 



DEPRECIATION OF OUTFIT. 



The next account to be charged to cost of production is depre- 

 ciation in teams and tools and interest on the money invested in 

 them. First-class machinery for running the average orchard will 

 cost in the neighborhood of $1,000, the items being as follows: 

 team $400, spraying outfit $250, harness $50, wagon $75, plow, 

 harrows, ladders, crates, pruning tools, etc., $115. The figures named 

 are below rather than above average prices but there are few instances, 

 indeed, in which the tools and teams named would be used exclu- 

 sively for a ten-acre orchard. If we set the depreciation and interest on 

 money at 20 per ct. for the above equipment, we must add 17 cents, 

 per barrel of apples to the depreciation account. Take notice that 

 in obtaining the cost of production in the Auchter orchard the depre- 

 ciation account must be thrown out, for the Station hired all work 

 done and the workmen furnished their own teams and tools. This 

 item is put in, then, only as an approximation of what men who are 

 doing their own work must charge for depreciation. 



