19 



tioii there. 



If the apples were turned over to the packer and packed 

 orchard run (if nothing had been done to them), they paid 

 about 7 cents a box, 6% to 7 cents a box. In that case a 

 iiian had to size them, grade them and pack them. In 

 another case they would run the apples through the sizer 

 and they would then come to a man all one size, but he had 

 to pick his three grades out of that. In that case they paid. 

 about 5 to 6 cents on the average. Then in a third case 

 they had been run through a sizer and also graded and in 

 that case they paid 3V' to 4 cents. In one house they were 

 paying 3I/2 with a bonus of half a cent if the packer stayed 

 throughout the season. 



Just a word on soil management. Not that l am going 

 into details at all, but just one thing in particular struck 

 me as interesting showing a tremendous change since I was 

 there in 1910. I was there late in the season then. I think 

 it was the first week in November, and I do not recall that 

 Ave saw a single orchard even as late as that that had any 

 real cover crop on the land. I do not believe there was one 

 per cent of the orchards where we saw anything grown on 

 the land, just perfectly bare, thoroughly cultivated. 



This year, I have no accurate ngures of course, but T 

 believe that 75 per cent of the orchards were in sod, and I 

 shouldn't be surprised if you would find that it was 90 per 

 cent. That shows a tremendous change in those six years. 

 These sod conditions A^aried almost as much as they do in 

 our Massachusetts sod orchards. I found a great many 

 orchards in ordinary, plain hay sod, but all through the 

 Northwest even up into British Columbia they had orchards 

 1 Wanted with alfalfa. That seemed to be the popular thing 

 to do, and then the growers branched off in A^arious direc- 

 tions, that is, their practice varied a lot. 



The ideal practice and the practice the authorities were 

 recommending w[as to start either in the spring or fall and 

 use a disk harroAV and chop up the soil until you wouldn't 

 imagine there could be any alfalfa there. Then they would 



