200 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and fasten it securely with tacks or staples. 'Now you may roll tbe 

 canvass up on the ridge-pole and two men can carry it anywhere they 

 wish, 



Next to be considered is a wagon to transfer tbe packages of 

 peaches from the packing-table to ihe railway station. There are a 

 number of fruit-wagons manufactured for this purpose, all of which 

 have merit, but as good and as cheap one as I have ever used is to 

 make a body of 2x8 inch planks, Hi feet long, for bottom and 1x6 

 inches 16 feet long boards for sides, three boards for each side, mounted 

 on a set of twenty-hundred Studebaker springs, set on a common road 

 wagon. If the wagon is well coupled out it gives elasticity to the 

 load, both from the spring of the body and the springs under it. It is 

 of vital importance to get peaches to market without bruising them* 



Now we are ready to go to the orchard. If the size of the orchard 

 will warrant the outlay, I like to go with at least 15 pickers and 10 

 packers. Women make our best packers, as a rule. Set the packing- 

 table and stretch the shade either in the middle of the block to be 

 gathered, or if the block is too large to be gathered at one setting, 

 place them so that the fruit can be brought to the table from 20 rods 

 in every direction. While the table is being set and the shade stretched, 

 let the foreman start his men to gathering by first giving each man a 

 numbered basket and taking his name and number of his basket and 

 require him to use no other number. When the first round of baskets 

 are full, have each man to carry it to the packing table and take an 

 empty one, ihe number of which corresponds with the one just filled. 

 By the time he has gathered two or three baskets the first that he 

 picked will have been packed, so that he can always have his own 

 number. 



How to gather peaches from the tree is easily told. Simply take 

 every peach that is ready to ship carefully from the tree by hand and 

 place it in the basket. When the basket is -thus filled, carry it care- 

 fully to the packing-table and set it carefully down. But when to pick 

 them, under the varied conditions of weather, markets and distance to 

 ship, is a more difficult point to explain. Yes, I will say that it cannot 

 be explained, but must be demonstrated by object lessons. 



I will say farther that if I had as much as a car-load of peaches to 

 put on the market I would pay a good picker and a good packer lib- 

 eral wages rather than to get my information by experimenting or by 

 all that pickers and packers could tell me. 



Like all other avocations, people must be trained to handle fruit 

 correctly, or some one must suffer from lack of correct handling. 



The producer is usually the one who suffers. 



