THE MONTHLY BULLETIN. 177 



a manner that the tray boys never have to carry an empty tray more 

 than the width of the shed. A crew of two more constitutes the ' ' scrap- 

 ing crew," whose job it is to scrape the apricots, when dried enough, 

 off the trays, with hoes which have had the handles straightened and 

 shortened. About ten trays are scraped into one deeper tray, which 

 is larger, so that the apricots will not spill on the ground at the ends. 

 While the apricots are still quite pliable, and yet not soft or sticky, 

 these deeper trays are placed on a car and run down to the end of the 

 drying ground opposite the pitting shed into the fruit house where the 

 fruit is stored in bins until shipped. While in these bins the fruit goes 

 through a sweating process, which evens up the moisture content, the 

 smaller, dryer apricots taking moisture from the larger, moister ones. 

 The grading and packing is all done by the cured fruit association at 

 its central packing house. 



SULPHUR HOUSES. 



The sulphur houses which the fruit goes into immediately after 

 leaving the shed are made of flooring, the joints of which are made 

 tight with wiiite lead. The roof of a sulphur house is covered with 

 heavy roofing paper. The doors are hinged at the top and have a 

 long heavy beam bolted to them perpendicularly and extending ten 

 feet or more into the air above the door. As the door is raised this 

 beam goes back into a horizontal position above the roof of the sulphur 

 house and balances the weight of the door so that it will stay up 

 without hooking to anything and this also makes the doors easy to lift. 

 Each house is made of separate compartments, each of which is just 

 large enough for a car loaded with twenty-four trays. These houses 

 are made very tight but a slight air vent of some sort should be pro- 

 vided at the bottom to give the sulphur sutScient oxygen so that it can 

 burn up clear. Only the best grade of flowers of sulphur should be 

 used. It is placed in the pans in holes in the ground under each car. 

 Enough should be used to make the juice in the fruit come out and 

 fill each cup where the pit has been removed. For this reason it is 

 very necessary that the fruit should be placed flat and not crowded 

 on edge on the trays so that this juice will not spill out. 



SULPHURING THE FRUIT. 



Fruit is sulphured three hours or more, to prevent its turning black 

 and moldy w^hen drying, and to keep w^orms out of it. The hour 

 each load is put into a sulphur house is marked with a pencil on the 

 door. This is a convenient and sure way of keeping track of the 

 time each load remains in. The amount of sulphur used by the 

 grower is never greater than is necessary. When dried fruit is found 

 to contain an injurious amount of sulphur dioxide it comes from the 

 second sulphuring given the fruit in the packing houses, which is very 

 heavy. After this sulphuring the fruit is boxed up without any 

 chance for the sulphur to escape, as is the case in the drying ground. 

 This is an important point and people objecting to sulphured fruits 

 should understand this. 



