THE STRAWBERRY 



A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS 

 OF STRAWBERRY PRODUCTION IN ALL ITS BRANCHES 



Volume I No. 2 



Three Rivers, Mich., February, 1906 



$1.00 a Year 



T 



HERE is lying at tlie hand of the commercial straw- When we consider the magnitude of the business in the South 

 berry grower of the Northern states today a fallow we may catch some glimpse of the future in this direction await- 

 field of enterprise whose magnitude and importance ing Northern enterprise. No actual statistics are available con- 

 may not be overestimated. It is unusual, to say the cerning the strawberry business done by Southern growers in 



least, to attribute to our friends in the South superior initiative 

 and executive force, but in the manner in which they have 

 developed the business of strawberry growing, transportation 

 and marketing they have shown high business qualities which 

 many of us well may study and imitate. 



Making due allowance for the fact that the North doubt- 

 less is a larger mar- 

 ket for Southern 

 strawberries than 

 the South would be 

 for Noithern-grown 

 berries, there yet re- 

 mains a margin of 

 opportunity so wide 

 that it appears 

 strange to the ob- 

 server that it has 

 remained so long 

 unnoticed. It must 

 be borne in mind 

 that the South has 

 developed man y 

 large and thrifty 

 cities during the last 

 score of years; that 

 money is spent quite 

 as freely for the 

 good things of earth 

 there as in the North; that the strawberry appetite is as vigor- 



STRAWBERRIES IN A YOUNG PEACH ORCHARD -J. D. ULRICH'S FARM, THREE RIVERS, MICH 



Northern markets, but fugitive facts and stray figures are to 

 be had which are in the nature of an index to this great enterprise. 

 For instance, only a few weeks ago the Armour Company en- 

 tered into an agreement with the growers along the Atlantic 

 Coast Line system to furnish 2,000 refrigerator cars as needed 

 to handle without delay the crop of berries grown in that one 



district. Add to that 

 the business done in 

 the central-South- 

 ern state s — Ala- 

 bama, Mississippi, 

 Tennessee, Ken- 

 tucky — and in the 

 states farther west 

 — Louisiana, Texas, 

 Arkansas, Missouri 

 — and we may 

 gather some idea of 

 the enormous size 

 of the traffic. 



It is no farther 

 from Minneapolis 

 to Memphis than 

 It is from Memphis 

 to Minneapolis. It 

 is not to be doubted 

 that the people of 

 Tennessee would 

 enjoy the plump and hardy Minnesota berry quite as thoroughly 



ous there as here. Therefore, it appears clear, that if we sent as the Minneapolis folk now enjoy the product of the lower 



to the South our late-grown berries we should find a market Mississippi regions. There is no doubt that berries may be 



there, if not so vast as our own, still very large and ready to shipped as well to and command as high a price in the Southern 



absorb a tremendous number of strawberries of the splendid markets as is true in the case of Southern berries brought to the 



quality we grow. North. Here, then, we repeat, is a field awaiting only intelli- 



Consider how naturally this reciprocity in business should gent initiative and executive atiility to be developed into one of 



operate. From the time the first berries ripen on the shores of large importance and value to tlie commercial strawberry growers 



the Gulf of Mexico to the opening days of June, a constant of the North, 



stream of strawberries are poured out upon the North from the And while we are on this subject, let us refer to an oppor- 



bountiful fields of the South. It may truly be said that this 

 immense quantity received here only whets the Northern appe- 

 tite for its own crops that follow through June and up into the 

 early days of August. And we have been so hungry and so 

 bent upon getting all we want for ourselves that we have neg- 

 lected the field offered us by the South — a field, which, properly 

 cultivated, ought to become little less in importance than the one 

 We have so widely opened up to the strawberry folk of the South. 



tunity that lies ready for man's enterprise in the states, say of M ich- 

 igan, Wisconsin and Minnesota — to a market lying right at hand. 

 We refer to the demand for late berries that exists in all the 

 larger Northern cities, and which might easily be supplied if the 

 growers in the states named seriously were to set about it to 

 develop this market. One earnest friend of The Strawberry, a 

 retired lumberman, with many acres of cut-over timber lands, 

 has been experimenting along these lines, and last summer he 



K ELLOQQ PUOLtBM 



