\ \ y> ^ THI * RAISIN INDUSTRY. 137 



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A picker should average not less than fifty trays a day of cleaned 

 and assorted grapes. At this rate the picking of twenty pounds of u 

 grapes costsTaBouT two and a half cents. Some persons employing 

 white labor claimed to have lowered the cost of picking to one and 

 three-quarter cents per tray of twenty pounds, but I failed to learn how 

 these grapes had been handled, cleaned and assorted. The picking 

 of the grapes is facilitated by previous care given the vines. Neglected ' 

 and entangled vines are much more difficult and expensive to pick 

 than those which have been properly cared for and correctly pruned 

 the season before. The same may be said as regards vines between 

 the branches of which weeds have been allowed to grow. In picking 

 from such vines, the grapes are always torn, the best bunches destroyed 

 and many grapes wasted on the ground. 



Raisin Vineyard Truck. 



Cleaning. When the bunch is picked or cut from the stem, it should \* 

 be cleaned. If it is a first-class or even an ordinary layer bunch, every X) 

 sunburnt berry, every leaf, twig or other conspicuous foreign substance, 

 must be carefully removed with the picker's right hand, while the left 

 hand holds the bunch by the stem. This cleaning must some time be ! , 

 done, and at no time can it be performed with better results than when 

 the grapes are green. The stems are then soft and flexible, while later on 

 they are brittle, and in endeavoring to remove foreign substances many 

 berries will be detached, or sometimes even the whole bunch broken. 

 This cleaning of the bunch does not need to extend to third-rate or 

 small bunches, which are to be used for loose raisins. The latter 

 can be cleaned very rapidly with machinery, and it would only be a 

 waste of time to clean them by hand-picking. The use of a pair of 

 bellows is also very practical. With them much of the spider webs 

 and smaller refuse can be removed, which could not be gotten rid of 

 in any other way. A few hands should therefore go over all finer 

 bunches and blow them clean, especially if sand or dust have accumu- 

 lated on the trays or bunches. If the grapes are carefully assorted 

 when picked, and the different grades placed on separate trays as they 

 should be, this cleaning is done rapidly, as the largest part of the 

 crop, which only will make loose raisins, need not be cleaned. 



Drying on Trays. As soon as the grapes begin to ripen, the trays 

 should be distributed along the rows in the vineyard. They may 

 either first be placed in piles at every row where the roads cross the 

 vineyard, or at once distributed along the vines. The former method 



