628 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE OfiE. Doc. 



perature outside of the orchard was 25 degreas and inside 

 it was oil dogreos. Outside the orchard everything was 

 covered with thick, white frost, while inside the trees were 

 dripping wet with moisture. 



"In all we burned the oil pots nine nights, and the time 

 ranged from five hours to twenty hours in each twenty- 

 four. At the last the temperature would drop about four 

 o'clock in the morning to freezing point and frost a little. 

 We would light about one-third of the heaters and let them 

 burn until past the danger time. 



"The expense of heating the orchard this past spring 

 was approximately 7 cents a bushel for the apples harvest- 

 ed. This includes the expense of e(]uipment for the work 

 building, the oil, storage tank, the tank wagons, lighters, 

 pots, buckets and enough ready oil on hand to fight another 

 season of frost equally as bad. So that the actual cost the 

 past season was far below the 7 cents mentioned. 



"The cost of this protection is so cheap compared with 

 the returns that it is absolutely folly for the fruit grower 

 not to be prepared. The type of pot used was the Trout- 

 man, which was selected after much investigation from a 

 number of sources, and we doubt if we could have made the 

 successful fight with any other kind of oil burning pot." 



There are thousands of acres of good orchard lands in your State 

 and the awakened interest in fruit growing among your people will 

 result in that successful orcharding that tends to make happy homes 

 and increased revenue. 



It is a great pleasure to me to meet with you and see what you 

 have been doing along this line. I like to keep in touch with the 

 fruit growers all over the country. Last week I was judging at 

 the Ohio apple show, which, by the way, was a wonderful show. 

 Last fall I was at Denver. As you know, that is one of the finest 

 fruit-growing countries in the world, and fruit growing has become 

 one of their most important interests. Some of the fruit I had to 

 judge out there was what they call "jumble-packed." They put in 

 a layer at the bottom, then put in the apples, with another layer 

 on top. Every section has its own methods, but eventually they 

 will all have to adopt the methods of the Northwest. The buyers de- 

 mand it. I will give you an instance of this. A grower of Vir- 

 ginia who grows some very tine Winesaps, shipped some of them 

 to New York, packed in boxes the same as they do in the North- 

 west and the dealer wrote him that if he had left his name off 

 the box, he would have sold them for Northwestern fruit. 



Now, I have said enough on this subject. I know the next time 

 I Qome here I will find still further improvement in the growing 

 of your fruit — in the spraying, in the pruning, but especially in the 

 matter of grading and packing, which is one of the most impor- 

 tant things. It is better to keep at home all your imperfect fruit. 

 It detracts from the value of your fruit if sent to market. You, 

 perhaps, think all the Western fruit is like that you see here. It 

 is not so. What we see here in the East is perhaps not one-half 

 of their fruit, but they can not afford to pay freight on their im- 



