300 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



It is quite an advantage to have a man help the girls move the lad- 

 ders. This method I have found to be the best in handling the 

 Duchess. In the season of the Duchess, it is right in harvest time, 

 when men are engaged in harvesting and threshing, and male help 

 is quite expensive, while girls you can get for about 75 cents per 

 day, and they generally do the work as well as men. This is the 

 best method from my standpoint. 



The President : In putting in the facing it is the custom in 

 Minnesota to put the smaller apples on top so that the customer 

 who buys will be agreeably disappointed to find that they get better 

 as they go down through the barrel. (Laughter.) 



Mr. Underwood : The last speaker uses the same method we 

 have adopted in picking and packing apples. I have only one sug- 

 gestion to offer in the matter of ladders that might be found to be 

 an improvement. You can have ladders fixed so they will have two 

 wheels under them in the form of a wheelbarrow, or in the form of a 

 little cart, and you will only have to pick up the handles and move it 

 around the tree. It is a ladder resembling the kind they use in Cali- 

 fornia to pick oranges. Last summer we had carts made of buggy 

 wheels, making a sort of push cart, and placed the ladder right on 

 it. It has handles just like a push cart and makes a very convenient 

 arrangement. 



Mr. Beckley : I can see how they pick the apples from the cen- 

 ter of the tree, but what do they do with the apples on the outside 

 limbs that they cannot reach with their hands? 



Mr. Underwood : You can run those ladders up to any tree 

 I have ever seen in Minnesota. 



Mr. J. S. Parks : I have made two or three ladders that are 

 very cheap and convenient. Friend Philips has made one by cutting 

 two small poles and bringing them together at the top. That makes 

 a convenient arrangement to run up between the branches and even 

 out on the branches. It can be handled very easily. 



Mr. A. J. Philips, (Wis.) : The end of the ladder will rest 

 against a branch in the top, and I put a cross piece in the top so 

 any one can stand on the top and reach all around. It is made of 

 2x4 stuff. It is the nicest arrangement I have ever tried. 



Mr. Lord : How long are the side pieces i 



Mr. Philips : They vary in length. I have one ladder on 

 which the side pieces measure twenty feet. 



Mr. Parks : I make mine of black ash poles I have growing 

 in the grove. They are a little narrower at the top, about an inch 

 and a quarter in diameter, but they are very strong. 



Mr. Philips: I make that piece at the top just wide enough 

 for a common shoe so I can step on either side of the ladder. 



Mr. C. E. Older : We use an extension ladder like a fireman's 

 ladder. 



Mr. A. D. Leach: We use a ladder that is easy to make. I 

 procure a straight tamarack pole about eighteen feet in length and 

 about four inches in diameter at the butt and two at the top. With 

 a rip saw I rip that pole to about nine feet from the top and put in a 

 bolt and washer to prevent it from splitting further. Then I lay it 



