122 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Fourth, it requires a lot of men to handle a crop of apples in the 

 allotted time. They cannot be found where they can live at home and 

 work in orchards so scattered as desirable orchards are likely to be. 

 To board and provide sleeping quarters, easily moved, is no small 

 task. 



Fifth, it requires about as many hands to properly pack as it does 

 to pick a crop. Boarding and providing sleeping quarters for this part 

 of the help can be avoided only by packing the fruit at a central point, 

 preferably the shipping station. So we have arranged a packing house. 

 All the fruit is put in barrels or crates, lightly headed and repacked 

 uniformly at this one place. 



Sixth, apples from different orchards, even with identically the same 

 treatment, will vary greatly and a uniform pack is almost impossible, 

 except in this way; for instance, spies from an old orchard that has 

 been dehorned, has a tendency to be light-colored, over-grown and poor 

 keeping qualities even where all other conditions seem favorable. From 

 a younger orchard and some times from an old orchard that has not 

 been trimmed, medium size, high colored and good keeping fruit is often 

 obtained. The cultivation or use of fertilizer may have a light effect. 



Seventh, the owner of the farm could give the orchard the same care, 

 get the same results and gather the fruit for much less than is 

 possible for the renter to do. Especially after getting a good crop, we 

 are made to feel that we have no right outside of those we have in 

 writing, except in the orchard, and if we secure feed for a team or 

 meals for a man and pay the full value for the same, we are still made 

 to feel under deep obligations. 



Eighth, storms, winter freezing or conditions over which the renter 

 has no control, will occasionally ruin a crop. In this case the renter, 

 having sprayed and cared for the orchard, should not also lose the 

 rental money, but if he is willing to let the owner have what fruit 

 there is, this should pay the rent for the year. 



Ninth, better a good bunch of eight or ten hundred trees of one 

 or two varieties rightly located, than to have more trees, badly scatter 

 ed, with a worry and sleepless nights, especially when the wind blows 

 or the mercury goes to settling down. 



Tenth, I have stated that the owner can raise the fruit cheaper than 

 the renter. The renter can only hope to offset the difference in cost 

 by making better sales. Can he do so? The price in our section this 

 season has been one dollar and seventy-five to two dollars on board 

 cars, the buyer overseeing the packing. One renter of orchards has 

 about 1,000 trees, made an exceptional sale, getting $2.50 per barrel 

 and 27V2 cents per hundred for cider apples. The purchaser did not 

 pack this fruit close and still this man was pleased to have cleared up 

 $50 per month for his year's work. With the wages commanded by a 

 good laboring man in almost any line, this will hardly appeal to most 

 of us as being an exceptionally desirable proposition. 



Yes, we have learned something about the various diseases, scale, 

 fungus, spraying material, pumps and gas engines, thinning, trimming, 

 cultivating, cold storage, re-packing, borrowing money and just a little 

 about marketing, but what we want to know is how to get 60 cents 

 per peck for common stock, as they are now doing with the cheaper 



