100 GATHERING AND SHIPPING. 



red, good shipper, moderately productive; plant healthy and 

 vigorous; perfect. 



Additional Varieties.— Enormous, Rough Rider, Crescent, 

 Seaford, Ocean City, Jessie, McKinley, Clyde, Haverland. 



Gathering and Shipping. — In this latitude picking generally 

 begins from the tenth to the fifteenth of June. Sometimes it be- 

 gins a few days earlier and lasts from the first to the fifteenth of 

 July. The introduction of the Ci'esceut and Manchester has 

 lengthened the season for profitable market berries nearly one 

 week. 



In the field the berries are generally picked by women and 

 children, the average price paid for picking being about two cents 

 per box. When the crop is not large and an abundance of good 

 pickers can be obtained, it is often best to hire the pickers by the 

 day. The work will always be done better, and the care and 

 strain of looking after a lot of unruly boys is avoided. 



The basket generally used is the square chip basket. It should 

 be made of smooth material, with openings not over one-fourth 

 of an inch between the parts and less is better. If the openings 

 are large, the berries are pressed against the edges and injured. 

 A square box made of two pieces with a cover, callec' the " Sun- 

 nyside basket," is very useful for retailing the fruit in, but is not 

 as durable and not convenient to take to the field for picking. 

 The crates most commonly used for shipping hold thirty-two of 

 the quart boxes, fitting so closely as not to be moved about in 

 handling. The sixty-quart crate is fast going out of use. 



Several methods of recording the number of baskets of berries 

 picked by each picker are in vogue, but perhaps the best is to 

 give each one a tray holding six baskets, which when full he 

 carries to the packing shed and gets credit for his work. One 

 person is required in the field for every twenty pickers to see 

 that they pick clean and well, and another man at the packing 

 stand to keep the record and pack the fruit. It is well, in order 

 to know whether all the pickers are doing good work, to turn an 

 occasional box into an empty one. In this way, any attempt to 

 cheat, by putting poor berries into the bottom of the box, is soon 

 detected. 



The berries are picked every day and it is best to have pickers 

 enoiigh to have the day's picking gathered early in the morning 

 or late in the afternoon, according as it may accommodate the 

 trains or other means of transportation employed and the mar- 

 kets to which they are to be shipped. Picked in the cooler part 

 of the day, unless it is wet, the fruit reaches the market in a 

 much better condition than if picked in the hot sun. 



The best market is generally the local one unless over-stocked, 

 or some near market a little further north. The time is passed 

 for fancy prices for the first native fruit in northern markets, 

 owing to the introduction of southern fruit ; yet the first natives 

 always bring a much higher price than the imported southern 



