558 ANNUAL JtEPORT OP THE Off. Doc. 



have them if each member will make up his mind to bring all such in 

 his neighborhood with him to the next meeting. The question was 

 asked at one of our meetings by a member, "What shall I tell my 

 neighbors to induce them to come with me?" I should say, tell them it 

 -will pay them well to come and make the personal acquaintance of 

 the leading- fruit growers and nurserymen in the State; to make the 

 personal acquaintance of our Experiment Station workers, hear them 

 talk, ask them questions, join in the general discussion of all ques- 

 tions, and thus get in closer touch with all the men interested in 

 Horticulture in the State. 



Each year the demand seems to be growing for a standard fruit 

 package for the whole country. The State of Maine has sent out a 

 circular recommending a national convention for this purpose. It 

 seems to me, owing to the different conditions existing in the differ- 

 ent sections of this great country, a uniform package is impossible; 

 but it would be a great advantage to us all if we could adopt a stand- 

 ard barrel and a standard box for the whole country; that is, fix by 

 law the number of cubic inches a fruit barrel should contain, no 

 matter what its shape, and the number of cubic inches a box should 

 contain, no matter what its shape. Then we would have two stand- 

 ard measures, and would know exactly what was meant when we 

 saw them quoted in the market reports. 



While we are planting these large orchards for commercial pur 

 poses, let us not forget the all important matter of home adornment, 

 ornamental planting around our country homes, and the fruit gar- 

 den for home use; for what after all has a man in this world but his 

 home, and who can have so pleasant a home, or enjoy more luxuries, 

 than the fruit grower, if he lives up to his privileges? 



THE BUSINESS OF THE SMALL FRUIT GROWER. 



By H. W. COLLINGWOOD, Editor, Rural Nexu Yorker. 



My title means the small grower, not necessarily the grower of 

 small fruits. This is a day of big things, business has changed 

 greatly in the past 50 years and will change still more. The old New 

 England farmers used to wait for snow before making their annual 

 trip from Vermont to the Boston market. They went with oxen and 

 sleds, loading their wax, their wool, their maple sugar and whatever 

 they had on it. Just before they started the housewife would boil 

 a kettel full of thick bean soup. When boiled she stood the kettle 

 out by the door over night until it froze solid. Then they poured 

 water on the under side of the iron kettle and knocked out a cheese 

 of frozen bean soup. They bored an auger hole through this and 

 hung a chain through it and hung it behind the sled as they went 

 to market. When they stopped for dinner they took a hatchet, 

 chopped off a few slivers of the bean soup, melted it in a tin kettle 

 over the fire and had their dinner, thus having bean porridge hot 

 and bean porridge cold and in some cases three weeks old. It is a 

 long jump from this to our present system of distribution and sale. 



