STATE POMOLOaiCAL SOCIETY. I9 



modern methods of orcharding be understood throughout the 

 State. 



The bulletins which are issued from our Experiment Station 

 as the result of work at Highmoor Farm, also those bulletins 

 which are to be had on application from the Agricultural De- 

 partment at Washington by any farmer in the State, showing 

 experiments made in orcharding in different states of the Union, 

 are a source of help to all our farmers who have these bulletins 

 and who read them. P^>ut comparatively few applications are 

 made and there are thousands of farmers within our borders 

 who have never seen or read them and whose orchards of apple 

 trees are but a by-product in the economy of the farm. If 

 a few apples are raised, they are so much ahead, without any 

 labor or trouble, except the picking of them, and what are not 

 suitable for the market are fed to the pigs or made into cider. 

 With many it would seem that the orchard is not looked to as 

 one of the substantial farm crops. Now, this is the condition 

 under which we are living in regard to the orchard. A few 

 are alive and awake to its value and importance in our State, 

 but the great mass are asleep to its possibilities. I have no 

 doubt that those who are awake will continue to awaken others, 

 and that the State in the near future is to largely increase its 

 orchard product. The 1,047,128 trees, which are young trees, 

 are soon to come into bearing, and the gain made in the last ten 

 years, as shown by the last census report, is small in compari- 

 son with what we may expect for a gain within the next ten 

 years. This means that Maine during the next ten years is 

 likely to become a great producer of apples, apples not only 

 for its own people, but apples which may be shipped into 

 every State in the Union, and into foreign countries. 



Now, the thing that I want to speak about, and the one point 

 that I want to make in this address — and all that I have said 

 has simply led up to it — is the question of marketing and 

 handling this crop after it is gathered. The question is, to 

 whom are we to sell it, and when are we to sell it and what are 

 we to get for it? Now, this depends upon several things: 

 First, the quality of the apple, but that is all settled in the 

 method of growing. The next is the manner of picking, and 

 that is being understood to-day. The next and most impor- 

 tant is the handling of the product at the time and soon after 



