GRADING AND PACKING FIIUIT. 245 



GRADING AND PACKING FRUIT. 

 By L. V. Dix, Jefferson City, Missouri, in Fruit Belt. 



The grading and packing of fruit is the most important part of the 

 work in the fruit industry and covers more ground than just preparing 

 it ready for market, when it is in the proper condition to do so. 



If our fruit trees have been given the right attention before and 

 during the growing season, we will have eliminated, to a great extent, 

 the work of grading the fruit at the time of packing. With the apple, 

 if we have neglected to cultivate, prune, thin or spray, more especially 

 the latter, we can safely count on a large per cent of culls and No. 2 

 and a very small per cent of No. 1 fruit. I have seen an orchard that 

 has a good crop of fruit as to quantity but it had not been sprayed and 

 did not have a No. 1 apple in it, so in this case there was no grading 

 nor packing to be done. This lot of fruit went on the market in bulk 

 and brought a low price, probably all that it was worth. 



My first experience in packing apples was more than fifty years 

 ago; since that time I have had more or less of it to do down to the 

 present season. In some respects there has been quite an improve- 

 ment in the manner of packing and grading fruit. The first apples I 

 remember of helping to pack, the buyer furnished second hand flour 

 barrels, also salt barrels, or any old one that would hold three bushels 

 or more. We packed them as is done at the present time, putting in 

 all sound, picked fruit. There were but a few wormy apples and no 

 scab. For a press we used a lever, as there was not any screw 

 press on the market then. At the present time our manner of grading 

 and packing apples is, when the season for that work arrives, first to 

 have our supply of barrels on hand with hoops nailed and face end of 

 barrels lined. We usually commence picking one day in advance of 

 packing, beginning with those trees where the fruit is thin and scat- 

 tering, and haul to a central or convenient place in the orchard, where 

 it is to be graded and packed. The next day we commence to grade 

 and pack. For a sorting table we use one made of canvas about eight 

 or ten feet long. Ihe fruit is poured onto this table, and the sorters 

 on each side of it sort and move the fruit along to the man who places 

 it in the barrel. This man should be the best and quickest on the 

 job, for he must see that the barrel is properly faced, shaken, and that 

 no faulty fruit goes into it that may have passed by the sorters. After 

 it is filled and well shaken, it is then moved out to the header, who 

 must use his judgment as to just how full it should be, as .some 

 varieties will stand and require more pressure than others. After the 

 work of the header is done, the barrel is rolled out of the way an4 

 sometime during the day all filled barrels are hauled to a car or placed 

 under shelter. We do not allow our barrels to lie out to the weather either 

 before or after packing. We stamp on the face end of each barrel 

 our name and address, also the variety of apple it contains. 



