238 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



PLANNING AND CARE OF THE ORCHARD. 



BY WILL RITTERSKAMP. 



No copy of this paper procured. 



CARE OF A BEARING ORCHARD. 



BY. W. C. REED. 



No copy of this paper obtained. 



PACKING AND MARKETING FRUIT. 



BY E. S. GOFF, WISCONSIN. 



[Abstract.] 



Fruit gi'owers, as a class, pay too little attention to the selling of their 

 fruit. They have not learned the fact that selling fruit is as much an 

 art as the raising of it, and that the profits of the fruit plantation may de- 

 pend as much upon the skill employed in selling the fruit as upon the pro- 

 duction of it. Professor Bailey has made the statement that there are ten 

 men Avho are able to raise choice fruit to one that is able to sell the fruit 

 to the best advantage. This may be too strong a statement, but there is 

 much ti'uth in it. 



Last season I knew of a fruit grower that sold his crop of apples before 

 the first of September at a price of 80 cents net per barrel. At this time 

 the gTOwer had a very crude idea of the amount of apples there were in 

 the country, or whether the price at which he contracted his apples was a 

 fair one or a ridiculously low one. He simply listened to the arguments 

 of the buyer, and, because his statements sounded plausible, he accepted 

 them. The buyer packed a considerable part of this crop in bushel boxes, 

 which he sold in Chicago at from $1.50 to $2.50 each. This was equivalent 

 to $4.50 to $7.50 per barrel. Of course, another part of the crop did not 

 yield so much, but the poorest marketable ones brought much more than 

 80 cents per barrel. This poor sale was made because the fruit grower 

 was not posted on either the apple crop or the markets. 



