Summer Meeting. 37 



where of good quality, there is a great glut in the market at packing 

 time. With the facilities of the modern cold storage plant at hand, the 

 fruit can be safely held until the warm weather and other causes have 

 cleared the market of this excess. Even if the crop is sold to the com- 

 mission dealer at packing time, the dealer can put his apples into this 

 house cheaply and quickly, thus delaying the transportation until the 

 weather is cooler or until he has a market ready to receive them. 



The fact that the apples can be packed when the rush is over and 

 more efficient labor can be obtained, is no small item. Then it is of con- 

 siderable moment that every barrel of these apples can be packed out 

 under the personal supervision of the grower or an experienced and 

 conscientious man. 



There are many advantages that might be told, and while my ex- 

 perience is somewhat limited, all are according to a very conservative 

 line of reasoning and not altogether theoretical. 



In undertaking a thing of this kind the disadvantages should be 

 just as carefully, or perhaps more carefully, considered than the ad- 

 vantages. It is always the thing we are not looking for that trips us. 

 In the first place, the cost of the building varies under different circum- 

 stances. The first cost of a small plant is greater in proportion than it 

 is in a large plant where the same processes and materials are used. 

 This small plant is apt to be situated where it is not convenient to be 

 used for other purposes than that of storing apples, thus leaving your 

 building and machinery idle during the summer months. Then, again, 

 the cost of maintaining and running a plant of that kind on the farm 

 must be carefully considered, for there is where the profit or loss of the 

 venture is apt to appear. Expenses must be kept down to the minimum, 

 for the stock of apples in the farm storage, which is run onlv during the 

 apple season, cannot be handled profitably on as small a margin as can 

 the very large stock of the dealer who has stored in a house of immense 

 capacity, which is run all the year round, and which does not depend on 

 .storing apples alone. We handle our small storage plant with the same 

 force of men that we use on the farm, but among the number we have 

 some who are fairly expert in the packing and handling of apples. By 

 doing this we do not need the services of a special expert in the cold 

 storage business, but care must be taken that all apples are closed out 

 early in the spring, in order that the work of handling the old crop may 

 not interfere with the work needed in the production of the new crop 

 and with the general care of the orchards in the spring. 



Many fruit farms are situated where a large supply of good, cool 

 water cannot be obtained, and a scarcity of cool water is a decided dis- 



