Page 8 



BETTER FRUIT 



March 



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kel for small quantities of dried vege- 

 tables, as cabbage, turnips, onions, 

 celery, spinach, and tomatoes, this mar- 

 ket is becoming more contracted every 

 year, and dealers in such products 

 annually And greater difliculty in dis- 

 posing of the output. 



The evaporating plant must therefore 

 be regarded strictly as a means of 

 utilizing (1) unmarketable grades of 

 the better commercial varieties of 

 apples; (2) varieties of apples, regard- 

 less of grade, which cannot profitably 

 be marketed fresh or which it may be- 

 come necessary to withdraw from the 

 markets and from competition with 

 standard varieties; (3) prunes, cherries 

 and apricots; (4) berries of certain 

 varieties; (5) peaches of lower grades. 

 The evaporator cannot and must not 

 be regarded as a catch-all for any and 

 all varieties of any fruit. The cannery 

 can make use of a very much wider 

 variety of fruits than it is possible to 

 handle in the drying plant, which can- 

 not make any use of some of the varie- 

 ties which are most desirable for can- 

 ning, simply because no demand for 

 these fruits, as dried products, exists, 

 either in the domestic or the foreign 

 markets. 



APPLES 



It is nol i)rolitable to attempt to 

 make use of summer varieties of apples 

 in the evaporator, nor can windfalls 

 and immature fruit of autumn and win- 

 ter varieties be utilized except at very 

 low prices. The yield of dry product 

 from summer varieties and from im- 

 mature fruits is low, drying must be 

 considerably more complete than with 

 mature fruit, and the stock is inferior 

 in quality, readily susceptible to spoil- 

 ing outside cold storage, and bears 

 very low prices in the markets. All 

 varieties of late autunm and winter 

 apples, when mature, may be used, but 

 as the business is extended and sys- 

 tematized these varieties will undoubt- 

 edly be classified into three groups, in 

 the order of their desirability for dry- 

 ing purposes. These groups will be de- 

 termined primarily by the color of the 

 dry stock which can be made there- 

 from, and the principal varieties of 

 each group will be the following: 



White stock group: Esopus Spitzen- 

 berg, Ben Davis, Baldwin, Northern 

 Spy, Hubbardston Busset. 



Golden stock group: Winesap, .Jon- 

 athan, Borne Beauty, Bhode Island 



Greening, Mammoth Black Twig, Stay- 

 man Winesap. 



Dark stock group: Yellow Newtown, 

 Grimes Golden, Wagener, Roxbury 

 RusseL 



Of these three groups, the first makes 

 the very white dried stock which is 

 demanded by the market and which 

 bears a price somewhat in advance of 

 that realized from the darker product 

 made from the varieties mentioned in 

 the second and third groups. While 

 these last yield a slightly larger quan- 

 tity of dry product, the difference is 

 not suflicient to wholly offset the differ- 

 ence in price, and operators of drying 

 plants will undoubtedly offer slightly 

 lower prices for the dark stock groups 

 than for the varieties of the white stock 

 group. 



The prices which the operator of an 

 evaporator can pay for apples will 

 primarily depend, if we disregard such 

 details as size of plant and character of 

 its equipment, upon the variety of 

 fruits available for use. If the region 

 be one which produces apples only, the 

 working season in the plant cannot ex- 

 ceed eighty or ninety days at most each 

 year, and the overhead charges — inter- 

 est, depreciation and repairs, superin- 

 tendence, and insurance, — will make 

 up 20 to 22 per cent of the total cost of 

 operation. If the district be one which 

 supplies loganberries, raspberries.black- 

 berries, peaches and apples, in suflicient 

 (luantities to keep the plant in contin- 

 uous operation over a period of one 

 hundred and fifty to one hundred and 

 eighty days, the overhead charges may 

 be reduced to 12 or 14 per cent of the 

 cost of operation, and a corresponding 

 increase in the prices paid for raw 

 materials may be made. In operating 

 upon apples, prices paid for the fruit 

 will also depend upon whether the 

 plant makes use of peels and cores as 

 vinegar stock or discards them entirely. 

 In the latter case, prices must range 

 considerably lower than if the plant 

 has a press and generators for the 

 working up of vinegar stock. From 

 one ton of culls, free from decay and 

 of average orchard-run size, the dryer 

 will obtain 250 to 205 pounds of 

 dry stock, averaging "prime" quality. 

 I'rom the (iOO pounds of peels and cores 

 obtained from one ton of apples there 

 will be made 45 gallons of vinegar 

 slock, while the 200 to 250 pounds of 

 |)omace remaining will have a feeding 

 value very nearly eipial that of a good 

 quality of corn silage and will well 

 repay the labor required to place it in 

 the silo. At prevailing prices, the oper- 

 ator will have 250 pounds dry fruit, at 

 0V> cents, $16.25; 45 gallons vinegar 

 stock, at 5 cents, $2.2.5, a total of $18.50. 

 ,\gainst this amount there must be 

 charged the cost of manufacture, pack- 

 ing and marketing. If the district were 

 one engaged in general fruit growing 

 to such an extent that the plant could 

 be kept in operation from mid-.Iuly to 

 mid-December, the manufacturing and 

 marketing costs for apples might easily 

 he kept to 2.2 cents per dry pound, or 

 $5.50 per ton of fruit used. If the plant 

 ()I)erated only upon apples and conse- 

 (luently for a 00 or 90-day season, man- 



Conlimicd on page 31 



