84 



The wagon is again loaded and another team goes with it, returning 

 in the evening or night, according to the traveling. This time the 

 wagon is loaded by lantern light, ready to start in the morning. 



Now we have gotten the peaches to the wholesale houses, where 

 they are sold on commission. Right here I want to say a word 

 about the wholesale men. We read so much in the farm papers 

 about the wholesale men, as if they were our enemies, trying to rob 

 us, and so little about the help they are to us. How could we 

 handle our crops without them? I consider the wholesale men my 

 friends and helpers. If I did not have confidence in them I should 

 want to go out of the fruit business to-day. I believe that there are 

 just as upright, honest men in the wholesale business as there are 

 in any other, raising peaches not excepted. Furnish them with the 

 "best of produce and they will be anxious for your patronage, and 

 get the best prices that they can for you. Let us hope that occa- 

 sionally, at least, the farm papers may have a word of praise for 

 the wholesale men. 



At harvesting time a man has a great deal to look after, and is 

 very busy. The better his system the easier and better he can take 

 care of his business. Having put a woman in charge of the sorters 

 lae can go into the sorting shed and look around. If he sees that 

 the baskets are not full enough, or are too full, or that the sorting- 

 is not done right, he does not have to hunt up the one that made the 

 mistake, but simply call the attention of the woman in charge to 

 the error. She looks after it. If a customer comes and wishes to 

 "buy a few baskets of peaches he can just say, " The lady will wait 

 on you." He can then go into the orchard and look around. If 

 he finds that a tree has been skipped, that the peaches are being 

 picked too green, or not close enough, or are being too roughly 

 liandled, or, again, if he wants a gang of men to go somewhere else 

 to work, he simply has to tell the foi-eman, who looks out for the 

 rest. In this way a man can handle an enormous amount of work. 

 While men who have large gangs of men working all the year round 

 have a system, we who have a large gang of men for only a few 

 weeks are apt to handle them in a slipshod way. 



Baskets. — Buy your baskets early, that is, just as soon as the 

 winter is far enough advanced so that you are reasonably sure of a 

 crop, so as to get the hauling out of the way and have the baskets 

 on hand. Then, too, they are generally a little cheaper at this time 

 than at harvest time. While harvesting keep close watch of your 

 stock of baskets and the amount of peaches to be picked. If you 

 see that you are going to run short order more just as soon as pos- 

 sible, for sometimes it is difficult to get baskets at this season. If 

 you have not baskets enough to hold the crop, and cannot get them, 

 then you must let the peaches rot on ihe ground, and you have had 



