60 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



Sacks emptying at the bottom were used to pick in, and though 

 there are objections to them, we believe they are more satisfactory in 

 the long run. Boxes to transport the apples to the grader and then to 

 the cars were used and the low truck solid bottom racks would hold 

 69 boxes, without piling up. Ladders running to a point at the top and 

 18 to 20 feet high, seemed to be the popmar thing, and though they 

 must be light, with reasonable care they seemed to answer every pur- 

 pose. 



Our summer apples, as well as the Jonathan and Grimes Golden, 

 wei'e sorted by hand to remove those imder iwo inches, for as I men- 

 tioned before, we had pi-actically no worms to look afier, and very little 

 or no blight of any kind. 



The winter varieties, after being loaded in the orchard, were hauled 

 to our home-made non-patented grading machine, for which we at least 

 claim originality, as we never saw or heard of one like iv.. To construct 

 it, we merely took nine iron ro<ls one^half inch in diameter and six feet 

 long, and slipped over each one a piece of half-inch rubber water hose. 

 This was to lessen the danger of bruising. These were set in an in- 

 clined frame the proper angle of which was discovered by experiment, 

 and at a distance of two inches apart, with the idea of letting ihe ap- 

 ples under two inches fall through, while tiie larger ones rolled on and 

 into a canvass shoot leading to the boxes again. We found, however, 

 that as most all apples are larger one \\ay than the other, Ihey all seem 

 to roll the narrow side down, it was necessary to reduce the distance be^ 

 tween the rods to about one and three-quarter inches, this contingency 

 having been provided tor by making the space quite easily adjustable. 

 The upper end of the rods being about five feet from the ground, the 

 ma.n on the load could easily empty the boxes one by one, and as the 

 pile of small ones which dropped through became too large the machine 

 was moved or the apples shoveled away. It was found necessary to have 

 one man staad at the side of the machme to keep the apples down as 

 some would stick, one man to tend the canvas shoot or dump, and one 

 to carry away the full boxes and place them on another wagon. These, 

 with one man to empty the boxes, made four men necessary to keep the 

 machine going, but a load of 69 bushels could be run over in about 

 twenty minutes, so it was quite a saving over hand work and did not 

 seem to bruise the fruit much. Indeed, we hardly see how we could have 

 managed without something of the kind as, owing to an unusually dry 

 season and heavy load on the trees, there was quite a percentage of 

 small apples in our crop. 



From the machine the applet were hauled directly to the cars and 

 loaded in loose at so much per hundred weight, which was the method 

 used in disposing of the bulk of our crop. The summer apples, and of 

 course a few of the Jonathan, Grimes Golden, and winter varieties were 

 sold in boxes to fruit dealers and grocerymeu over the state, shipments 

 of from five to ten bushels being about the usual order. 



