APPLES. • 273 



Last season I sent hundreds of barrels of Duchess to this market, that 

 had been kept four or five weeks, and got a top market for all of them. 

 It Is not the over-production of apples that brings the market down every 

 year, it is the careless handling and the shipping in old, dirty, broken-up 

 barrels. I have often noticed farmers coming into town with a load of 

 apples, hand-picked, they would say. but they were poured from a basket 

 or a pail into sacks, boxes or barrels and then hauled in a lumber wagon 

 ten or twelve miles. When they got to market they were not in condi- 

 tion to ship, but had to be pushed for anything they would bring. Such 

 goods are a drug on the market, and it is about time for farmers and 

 other small growers to look into these things and learn to handle their 

 produce in a proper way. 



DISCUSSION. 



Mr. Wedge: I am greatly impressed with the value of this 

 paper and with the need of our discussing and looking into the 

 methods of handling our apples, now that we have learned we 

 can raise them. I was disgusted and almost disheartened when 

 I saw the careless handling that our wonderful crop. of apples 

 received this year in our own county. I know that the loss 

 consequent upon that slipshod way of handling the fruit was not 

 less than twenty-five per cent., and I think it may have been' 

 nearer to fifty per cent. We received on an average for our Duch- 

 ess apples there fifty cents a bushel, we might just as well have 

 received seventy-five cents, if they had been properly handled. 

 They were handled largely in common grain sacks, but if they 

 had taken the precaution to handle them in baskets or barrels 

 they would have been rewarded by the extra price paid for 

 them. They were also handled roughly in the picking. I 

 would like to ask Mr Keel his method of picking, and what 

 kind of a basket he uses, and also what method he has of pack- 

 ing them. 



Mr. Keel: We use a common market basket that will hold 

 about a half-bushel in picking them. It is held in the' hand 

 or hung on the top of the step ladder. I agree with Mr. Wedge 

 in what he says about careless picking and handling. My 

 Duchess apples averaged me about ninety cents a bushel last 

 year. I sold most of them at three dollars a barrel on the 

 track right in Rochester. 



Mr. Goodell: I live up in the northern part of the country 

 where we cannot grow many apples, but we used to try to grow 

 them and we had quite a successful method of shipping them. 

 We used a little lever that pressed the cover down upon the 

 barrels, setting the apples together firmly and preventing them 



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