20 



put oil the water and in a very short time the alfalfa would 

 spring up and come along just as evenly as though nothing 

 l;ad been done to it. They would allow that to grow until 

 the first crop was ready and that would be made into hay 

 and later whatever guew was disked into the soil. That 

 would be their ideal sod methed. 



Other growers took two and sometimes three crops of 

 hay out of the orchard. They admitted, all of them, that it 

 was not possible at all to handle the orchard in that way 

 ijuless you had irrigation water available. If you had to 

 depend on natural rainstorms it could not be done, but 

 Adhere irrigation was available it seemed to be worked out 

 satisfactorily, if they didn^t take too many crops of hay. 



Just a word or two on their method of handling the 

 fruit. When I was out there in 1910 practically everybody 

 vas using some type of pail to piclc into. Of course, the 

 j»icking season Avas over at that time and what I got was 

 from the growers and from looking about the packing 

 houses. On this trip T do not remember but two or three 

 instances where I found men using a pail, everyliody else 

 was using some type of bag. 



Now T hope you people will not go home and use a bag. 

 I think it is a barbarous thing to pick into when it can pos- 

 sibly be avoided. A man may pick nu)re boxes in a bag 

 than in any other way. Probably he can but they are bound 

 to he bruised more or less. Tt simply showed the ])ressure 

 of the labor question. 



Another thing which interested me in this matter of 

 handling fruit was the way they are using gravity carriers 

 for transporting apples to different parts of the packing 

 luVuses. The wagon would back up to the sidewalk and the 

 boxes would be carried by the gravity carrier clear to the 

 uther end of the building where they Were piled up on the 

 floor preparatory to loading into the cars. Or they might 

 be carried by this method from the packing room back into 

 the storage room. This method has certainly lightened the 

 labor situation decidedly. 



