FOURTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 49 



pickers in the orchard, and it is not infrecjuently the case 

 to find the fruit on the shipping- station platform at the depot 

 the same day it is picked. We do not think it ought to he 

 allowed to be piled up on the ground, or to be picked when 

 it is wet, even when the dew is on it. Some days it is picked 

 and put into the barrels, sorted and classified, and before 

 evening of that same day that it is picked is on its way to 

 New York or to some other market where it has been sold. 



Nearly all our fruit is sold in the orchard to buyers, who 

 come to our section from as far west as Chicago, and from 

 many of the intervening cties, and also from up here in 

 New England, from Boston, as well as from New York, Phil- 

 adelphia and other large centers. We have had several men 

 from New York who have established agencies with us, and 

 who visit us every year that we have a crop. The usual way 

 for selling our fruit is for the buyer to contract to take all 

 fruit which is free from defects, which will measure two 

 inches and a quarter. Alost of the men are furnished with 

 an iron ring, gauged for two inches and a quarter, and they 

 use that in packing. The same price is secured for all grades 

 of fruit. At first, when the buyers used to come to our sec- 

 tion, they used to pay so much for first grade, and so much 

 for seconds, but that did not prove to be satisfactory, because 

 the tendency was to make too large a number of seconds. So, 

 without exception now, we sell to the buyer at so much for all 

 apples that will measure two and a quarter inches, and we do 

 not care how many number twos he makes. The barrels will 

 cost somewhere about thirty-two or thirty-three cents, and in 

 our country they are frequently made in the orchard. We 

 have a local man who goes around and makes the barrels in 

 the orchard at a cost of about thirty-two to thirty-three cents 

 apiece. 



Of course, the method of packing is about the same in the 

 smaller orchards as it is in the larger. In the larger orchards 

 however, some growers have apple sheds, or what they call 

 packing houses, in which they store away the farming imple- 

 ments during the winter, and some of them have sleeping 

 places for their men. They hire a colored man for a cook, 

 who attends to all that sort of thing, and boards the men 



