No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 409 



week, and these must be kept the year round for the}' cannot be 

 picked up when wanted. They also employ two firemen. This makes 

 the operating of storage plants very expensive where machinery 

 is used. The cost, at the present time, of an up-to-date storage 

 house is about |2.00 per barrel for the plants requiring duplicate 

 machinery and about $1.50 per bairel for the "Gravity Brine'' houses, 

 thus giving the brine operated houses the advantage in building 

 as well as in operating. Electric power, where a cheap rate can 

 be secured, is the cheapest power, but the new internal combus- 

 tion engine like the Deisel & Busch using crude petroleum is worth 

 investigating as petroleum is a very cheap material to produce power. 

 The ice and brine jjlant requires no high priced or expensive ma- 

 chinery in duplicate, but with its systems of fan circulation the 

 outside cold air can be utilized, thus insuring good air and saving 

 ice. The size of the plant does not enter into the problem as with 

 the two tirst propositions, but natural ice at a low cost seems to the 

 *oxie ineces^aiy item. With the brine system, if one owns it him- 

 self, he can sell his fruit at any time and stop storage and insur- 

 ance charges. If your apples were in some commercial storage, the 

 fixed charges for the season must be paid, no matter when the fruit 

 is disposed of. 



I have been working on the storage deal this fall and have de- 

 cided on a 10,000 ban el gravitv brine plant for our own use. Will put 

 the apples in barrels, heading them without pressing, putting them 

 into storage as soon as picked without sorting. If help is scarce, 

 sorting the fruit on rainy days or between kinds, or after the crop 

 is entirely picked. If help is plenty will keep a sorting gang at the 

 storage drawing all the apples there to sort. Should we leave our 

 apjjles to sort until picking is done, it would benefit the evaporator 

 man by allowing him to evaporate the drops before they decayed and 

 holding the picked culls to the last. 



We will have our storage house on our farm between the steam anc* 

 trolley tracks, with siding from both. Will also have a large evap- 

 orator on same siding, thus insuring short hauls for picked and 

 dropped apples. 



Storage is absolutely necessary and notwithstanding so much rot 

 published for the last few years in city papers about storages mak- 

 ing living more expensive, it tends to equalize the cost of living. 

 Without storage it would either be a feast or a famine, a glut in 

 the maiket and produce of all kinds selling below cost of produc- 

 tion and then a market bare of the same things that had been wasted 

 for- the lack of storage facilities. Cold storage is an infant, but 

 a few years old, but he is growing. Mr. Case, of Sodus, one of the 

 best growers in the state said that he lost a lot of apples this year 

 at the last end, the apples just got ripe and dropped off. If he 

 had had a storage to have drawn his unsorted apples, he could 

 have saved his entire ciop, sorting them after the apples were all 

 picked. 



