APPLES. 291 



.and you can put it in the tree where you see fit. I then 

 use a basket for picking in, and I have a hook in it that I can 

 hook on the limb, where it is convenient. I pick the fruit care- 

 fully and, of course, sort it and put in nothing but 

 what is good. I pack them, as has been recommended here, 

 putting in the first two or three layers with the stems down. 

 Our home market was so flooded with the Duchess we had to 

 sell them at 50 cents a bushel. That was all I could get for my 

 own, even though they were hand-picked. I shipped mine to 

 Minneapolis and got 90 cents net, delivered on the cars at 

 Cresco, while others could get but 50 cents at home. I 

 think the 40 cents a bushel extra paid me well for the differ- 

 ence in the picking and packing. 



Mr. Allyn: I did not believe that we could raise fruit in 

 Minnesota at one time, but I am now pretty well converted. 

 The taking care of the fruit seems to be the thing necessary 

 now. The packing and marketing of it is the important ques- 

 tion. There is no question but what we can raise an abund- 

 ance of fruit, and we must exercise a good deal of judgment 

 in our caring for it. We lose a great deal of fruit every year 

 by careless packing and careless gathering and careless mar- 

 keting. It is not satisfactory to the consumer either, for he 

 would rather pay a little more and have something that is 

 nice. I hope this question will be taken home, and that our 

 fruit will be gathered and brought to market in good shape. 



Mr. Pearce: There is a good deal in packing the Wealthy 

 apple. There was an old man in Ohio, sixty-five or seventy 

 years old, who said to me, 'If I shake my apples off in the 

 old of the moon, they all dry up, and if I shake them off in 

 the new of the moon, they all rot." (Laughter.) My rule is 

 to pick my apples about two o'clock in the afternoon, when 

 everything is bright and dry as possible. I will guarantee 

 that I can take the Wealthy apple and put it up, and take it out 

 the following May as sound as it was in the fall. Those 

 apples bring me any price I ask in the spring. I go to a man 

 and ask him if he wants them, and he says, yes, and never 

 asks the price. The Wealthy apple is the best apple in the 

 Northwest. 



Mr. Keel: I handle about as many apples as any man in the 

 state, I believe. I believe it would be well enough to pack the 

 apples as some of the gentlemen have said, in oats or wheat 

 chaff, for one's individual use, but when you come to sell them 

 to the merchants they do not want to buy oats with the apples. 



