CHAPTER XXV. 



Gathering, [Marketing and Storing Fruit. 



I WILL now make a few suggestions to those who are with- 

 out experience as to marketing a sod peach crop, drawn 

 from the lessons learned last summer through my ship- 

 ping experiments, and also from my success twelve years ago 

 in shipping about nine thousand bushels of pears in a single 

 season to northern and western markets, all from a mowed 

 sod. I would build my packing-shed with water-proof roof 

 and sides, extending to within four or five feet of the ground, 

 closed at the ends, with wide door in each to admit wagons to 

 pass through. As my experiments showed that sod-fruit can 

 be picked while yet hard if well colored, and ripen up a good 

 eating peach, the pickers should be instructed to gather care- 

 fully all such fruit, as well as that full-ripe, which should be 

 emptied gently from the baskets on padded tables. The pack- 

 ers should each have two crates before them, and every peach 

 when picked up should be gently pressed with the thumb, a 

 direction never given to handlers of cultivated fruit, for it 

 would cause rot, but not on a sod peach. If it yields at all, 

 showing ripeness, pack it in one of the crates, while all the 

 firm ones should go into the other. Don't be afraid such small 

 dents will show or make a sod peach rot, for as a test I sent 

 some such fruit all the way to Rochester in good order. All 

 the ripe crates or baskets should go to state and local markets 

 or to the cannery and evaporators, while the firm ones are for 

 car-load shipments. Nail up all crates the same day the fruit 

 is picked, but allow them both, hard and soft, to stand over 

 night in the packing-shed to cool. The next morning, before 

 day, the sooner the better, load on spring-wagons, never 

 without springs, and off to the market or depot. With large 

 crops where wagons must run all day, cover the crates with 

 two widths of matting sewed together, and strong strings tied 



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