98 FRUIT RANCHING. 



In our case the cherries gathered every day were 

 all packed up and boxed by ten o'clock, or, at the 

 latest, by eleven o'clock, at night. The boxes were 

 placed outside the house, under cover, but in the open 

 air, on a side where the rays of the rising sun were 

 unable to reach them, so that by the morning they 

 were always cool and ready to travel to any distance. 

 Very many Kootenay cherries go as far as Winnipeg, 

 1,100 miles by rail from Nelson; consignments have 

 travelled from Nelson to Montreal, a distance of over 

 2,500 miles, and arrived in perfect condition. We 

 put our boxes on board the outgoing boat at four 

 o'clock in the morning, the boat coming inshore 

 immediately opposite to the house and picking up the 

 fruit from a floating raft moored to a tree stump. 



In the same way we shipped out our strawberries 

 and small fruits, such as raspberries, black and red 

 currants, gooseberries, and blackberries. All these 

 fruits are packed, not in cartons, but in small square 

 chip boxes, without lids, each holding one pound of 

 fruit, and four-and-twenty of them going into a 

 wooden box divided vertically across the middle, so 

 that there are on each side of the partition one dozen 

 chip boxes, known variously as punnets, fillers, cups, 

 and ballets. These also are arranged in two tiers, 

 six above six, thin spars of light wood being used to 

 keep the upper punnets from squeezing or pressing 

 upon the fruit contained in the lower punnets. vSour 

 or preserving cherries go to market in the same way. 



The spirit of malicious sportiveness which has 

 dogged so many of our proceedings in the country 

 of our adoption lay in wait for us again in this new 

 work. The first morning that we had fruit to ship 



