96 FRUIT RANCHING. 



named. The Black Tartarian is superfluous when 

 you have Bingor Lambert, or both. 



Altliougli the cherry is a heavy and certain 

 bearer every year, and although the fruit commands 

 a ready market and a good price, there is a consider- 

 able amount of labour and expense connected with the 

 gathering and packing of the crop. 



The picking is necessarily slow work when the 

 individual fruits are so small, and hang on the trees 

 in such vast quantities as Kootenay cherries do. But 

 there is another circimistance which makes the gather- 

 ing of the cherry a still more onerous task. It is that 

 the individual cherries do not all ripen simul- 

 taneously. Of three cherries on a bunch, two w^ill be 

 ripe and well-coloured, the third still immature. A 

 careful fruit-grower has therefore no alternative but 

 to pick his cherry trees over two or three times. By 

 this means he preserves a good sample, and thus 

 secures a better price; but the labour, and conse- 

 quently the expense, of gathering are enhanced. Kven 

 then, when the pickers select only the fully mature 

 cherries to come off the trees, two men are able to 

 keep fairly well ahead of half a dozen packers. 



By this time our force of hands had been aug- 

 mented by half a dozen more. Early in April our 

 two elder girls, whom we had left behind in England 

 to fmish their schooling, came out to join us, accom- 

 panied by Mr. Braine, brother of some Finchley 

 friends. The cherries and the berries gave their 

 unemployed fingers something to do. 



Cherries are packed into little square card- 

 board boxes called cartons, which have a 

 narrow margin or. flange all round the top. 



