FIFTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 125 



barrel, and if a thousand barrels are picked, just think of the 

 number of special movements there are to g^et it into the 

 barrel. Then comes the question of sorting-; what will vve 

 do about the sorting, at that time of the year. We will sup- 

 pose we have a storehouse to put our apples in, and I will 

 suggest that we sort those apples at the apple picking time. 

 It is the nicest time in the world, just when the days are a 

 little longer than in the dead of winter, and it is the time 

 we like to work and we are accustomed to it. But if we wait 

 until the winter, the days are short, and we are spending our 

 New England evenings out late, and we dread to get up 

 early in the morning. So I say to you, sort your apples in 

 the fall when you are picking them, unless they are to be sold 

 immediately, and put them under cover just as quick as pos- 

 sible ; in fact, put them into the place where you are going to 

 keep them as quick as you can. There is a time in the his- 

 tory of the apple when it begins to rot, and while you may 

 hinder it you cannot stop it, for sometime that apple is going* 

 to be dead, and that is the time when you want to delay them ; 

 don't think you can stop it, because after it has commenced 

 to rot, you can never bring it back by putting it in cold 

 storage. Here is another point you ought to consider in the 

 apple picking season. If it is a hot, sultry^ time, I think you 

 should use a great deal of judgment in picking those apples, 

 and not put them in barrels when they are really warm. You 

 know an apple is the same temperature all through as it is 

 at the surface. Now if they are hot, and you put four hun- 

 dred of them into a barrel, and head it up (we may call it 

 the animal heat in those apples), it will never come out, and 

 you can put those apples into cold storage, but they won't 

 keep. We are not troubled very much in that hue ; this past 

 fall we didn't lose one single day for warm weather. It does 

 not matter if the apples are wet, if the pickers are willing to 

 pick them. You can put them in wet, and it doesn't hurt 

 them. Water doesn't hurt an apple ; it is the heat that 

 hurts it, combined with the water. At about the apple pick- 

 ing time it is very im])ortant that you get your utensils ready 

 for picking, your baskets and ladders. See that your baskets 

 all have hooks on them, and have everything all ready, so 



