176 ANNUAL REPORT. 



larly here in Minnesota where we have to submit to the idiosyn- 

 crasies of our spirit thermometers, which will persist, in spite of 

 all protestations and ejaculations, in registering all the way from 

 fifty degrees above to forty and forty-five degrees below during 

 twenty-four or thirty-six hours, and not only once but two or 

 three times during a winter. These sudden changes are liable 

 to destroy the fruit buds, and when, after a fruitless season, the 

 trees are once more set full of fruit, it is a great temptation to 

 let every one grow. But the tree will winter better if it has 

 been kept in good growing condition and not stunted by bearing 

 too heavily. The trees have been pruned but little; when a 

 branch seemed to seriously interfere with another it was re- 

 moved, and this, with the cutting of cions for grafting, has been 

 all that was necessary to keep them in good shape. 



There were several weeks this summer of very dry weather, 

 that militated strongly against the size and quality of the fruit. 

 An occasional cloud would bring hopes of a thorough soaking, 

 but it would leave us with hardly enough moisture to lay the 

 dust. Quite often it would be accompanied by heavy winds that 

 would threaten to uj)root every tree. Sometimes the apples 

 would present a bruised appearance on the trees. As a conse- 

 quent result of this lack of moisture, high, drying winds, etc., 

 there were a great many undersized immature apples that were 

 useless for any purpose. 



In gathering the apples from the trees I used bushel and half- 

 bushel baskets to pick into; when full they were carried to the 

 ends of the rows, and from there were carried to the apple shed 

 on hand-carts. The utmost care and watchfulness had to be ex- 

 ercised over the pickers in order to have the apples laid in the 

 baskets and not thrown in. Even after explicit directions had 

 been given the picker relative to the proper handling of fruit, 

 the reasons therefor given, and in addition, the fact, demon- 

 strated by actual illustration before the eye, that an apple will 

 not stand without injury the same banging that a stone will, the 

 picker was occasionally unable to resist the temptation to save a 

 few steps by giving an apple a toss of a foot or two, although he 

 well knew that by so doing not only the apple thrown but the 

 two or three hit in its fall were more or less bruised. These 

 bruises would not show at the time, but eight or ten hours would 

 develop ugly black spots that would condemn them at once as 

 first-class apples in the eyes of purchasers. When wanted for 

 shipment, if to go by express, the apples were carefully sorted 



