STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 33 



COLD STORAGE. 



The orchards in our State have already outgrown the i^rovi- 

 sions for caring for and handhng the fruit after grown. The 

 crop of marketable apples just harvested in our State is esti- 

 mated to exceed two million barrels. In a single town it exceeds 

 fifty thousand barrels, a single county approximates a half 

 million barrels, and individual orchards have reached the plural 

 thousand. These quantities call for room after taken from the 

 trees. Yet there is not a rental storage house in the State, and 

 the private store-rooms constructed for this purpose can be 

 numbered by the digits on one hand with the fingers uncounted. 

 Thousands of barrels of this choice fruit was of necessity tem- 

 porarily stored in barns, sheds and other outbuildings, and thou- 

 sands hastened to market on reduced values, and still others 

 frozen on the trees and lost, all for the want of provisions for 

 quick and safe storage facilities. This must not continue if we 

 would encourage the further planting of trees. What the busi- 

 ness now first of all calls for is a cold storage warehouse at 

 Portland to which fruit can be forwarded direct from the 

 ■orchard, and held till called for by market demand. Possibly 

 cold storage and shipping centers on the line of the railroads 

 may meet the demand of the business, and it needs no argument 

 to show that private facilities for temporary storage are a neces- 

 sity on every fruit farm. 



This is a matter calling for action rather than recommendation. 

 This society can at this stage of conditions surrounding our fruit 

 interest do no better service than to aid in establishing storage 

 facilities adequate to the needs of the fruit crop. Fruit inter- 

 ests have reached a stage where something difl^erent is called for 

 other than planting more trees. 



CULTURE. 



For several years this society has been doing valiant service 

 to the fruit interests of the State through its urgent appeals for 

 better care and culture of the trees. One has only to go through 

 any fruit growing section of the State to find the evidence that 

 this teaching has been heeded in goodly measure. Indeed no 

 small measure of the bounty of the crop just harvested was due 

 to the influence sent abroad through the agency of this society. 



