264 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



GATHERING, GRADING AND PACKING APPLES. 



BY FRANK SIMPSON, VINCENNES. 



In gathering and handling apples it is very important to the cold stor- 

 age man or packer to liave tliem pi('l^;ed, graded and packed with great 

 care, or he is bound to lose money on every barrel he handles, unless he 

 has bought them very cheap and the market and other circumstances 

 work in his favor. 



There should be no chances taken on anything but a hand-picked 

 apple, and each individual apple should be handled with the same care, 

 from the time it comes off the tree until it is in the barrel. Do not use 

 sacks to pick in if it can be avoided, as the apples ai'e bound to be more 

 or less bruised by constant rubbing, and the bloom is also rubbed off. 

 thus deti'acting from the keeping qiialities of the fruit. To the careless 

 fruit grower, who has a crop when every one else does, the idea is to 

 work off as much of his poor fruit as he can get past the sorters, and 

 as a rule, this kind of a man is not averse to picking up most of the 

 windfalls and trying to put them in storage also, but at some other per- 

 son'fc expense. In buying from wagons I have iiad to reject the vei-y 

 same apple three tinies, the grower hauling his culls lioine and mixing 

 them in his next load, thinking to get at Jeast a few of them tlirough, 

 and no doubt he did. Now, this kind of a man will never have a crop 

 of npples tiiat will cause much competition on the pnrt of the ')uy(^rs; 

 on the other hand, the careful grower takes a pride in his orchard, .studies 

 the best way to tight the different pests, keeps his fence corners cleaned 

 out— trims, spraj'S, cultivates, with the result that his fruit is good, the 

 buyers want it, and otTer him the top price in order to get it; when the 

 packing time is over the dealings have been pleasant on both sides and 

 the grower has very few cider apples on hand as the result of the cull. 

 A grower undertaking to pack his own fruit for storage must remember 

 that the apple coming out of storage will not be a liit better color, have 

 fewer worm holes, will not be any larger, bruises Avill not disappear, but 

 show up much plainer than when they were put in, and that the size of 

 the apples must conform to the standard rules for packing in order to 

 get the market price, and last, but not least, cut your estimate of the 

 profits in half. If I had contracted for the crop on an orchard to pick, 

 pack and put it in cold storage, I Avould get me a supply of ladders, 

 hooks, one-half bushel drop bale oak baskets, contract for the necessary 

 amount of good, standard size, three-bushel barrels, with soft wood heads, 

 regular barrel nails, and fix up a couple good sorting ta1)les that could 

 be moved from place to place. All this should be done before picking 

 time, as the picking and packing when the apples are ready should be 

 rushed to the finish. 



