6.1C, 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



ings in an orchard thirteen years ago. He was not a 

 trained horticulturist, but during his spare time he super- 

 vised the work on his orchard. .Today this 100-acre 

 orchard is netting nearly $50,000 a year. An implement 

 dealer in the Rogue River Valley bought a cheap tract of 

 bottom land six years ago. He planted twenty-seven 

 acres of apples. Over a year ago he had an offer of 

 $14,000 for the orchard. A Portland letter carrier bought 

 a tract of land at Hood River in 1897. The trees were 

 planted the following year. In 1907 the net returns from 

 his orchard were slightly under $18,000. 



The methods applied in an Oregon apple orchard may 

 not be picturesque, but they are scientific. Trees are not 

 rambling, nor does each have an individuality of its own. 

 They are stripped of character till all are of one monoto- 

 nous size and shape. The crowns start in a few feet 

 from the ground, bush-like, so every portion can be con- 

 veniently reached. Instead of a pleasant carpet of green 

 grass, one cannot even find a weed. The floor of the or- 

 chard is a layer of fine dust which prevents the surface 

 from baking and makes the soil retain its moisture. Trees 

 are carefully sprayed during the year. As an illustration of 

 the care our apple growers take of their orchards, one 

 orchard turned off 200 boxes of strictly first-class fruit, 

 and but sixty wormy apples were found in the entire sea- 

 son. 



Picking time is a busy season. Ladders are not placed 

 in the trees, but alongside of them. The fruit is taken 

 with the full hand in order to distribute the pressure evenly 

 over the whole surface. It is turned gently with a -rapid 

 twist to one side in order to detach the stem from the 

 twig, the stem must go with the apple. Each apple is laid 

 carefully in a bucket or basket, not dropped in. The 

 apples are not dumped in bins or shipped in barrels. They 

 are sorted carefully and wrapped in tissue paper with the 

 ends twisted tightly about the stem so there will be no 

 injury to other apples. Then they are placed in rows 

 and tiers. The grade must be uniform, the same number 

 of a certain size going into each box. The largest grade 

 of apples runs fifty-four to a bushel box, while the smallest 

 runs one hundred and twenty-eight to a box. It is all, of 

 course, painstaking work. But in the end, each box with 

 its lace paper trimming looks as fine as a box of French 

 candy. 



By standardizing their apple or pear crops, our Ore- 

 gon growers have built up the reputation and price. At 

 Hood River, for instance, the entire output of the valley 

 is handled by professional packers. Not a grower packs 

 his own fruit. A merchant who receives Hood River fruit, 

 never has to look at the bottom layer. He glances at the 

 stamp on the outside of the box. Everything is exact, 

 without a single guess. You could bite into ten thousand 

 apples and not find a single old-fashioned one, red out- 

 side and rotten at the core. "You can have the whole 

 carload if you find a bad apple," says the packer. It is all 

 according to good system, and a new grower with one box 

 of apples to sell gets the same price and works on even 

 terms with a man who has 30,000 boxes and has been per- 

 fecting his methods for years. 



With a great number of new orchards set out during 

 the last few years, the question of over-production has 

 often been raised. Shall we produce too many apples in 

 a few years and glut the market, causing a fall in prices? 

 Figures show that it will be many years before a possi- 

 bility of such a thing could exist. The apple crop in the 

 United States in 1896 was 69,070,000 barrels, while in 1908 

 it was 23,000,000 barrels. This is a marked decrease in 

 production. Oregon is at present furnishing a little over 

 one per cent of the country's apple supply hardly a drop 

 in the bucket. Our growers are content to supply the 

 fancy trade, letting other states furnish the bulk. In an 

 overloaded market, fruit of poor quality suffers. There 

 can never be an over-production of A-No. 1 doctors and 

 lawyers, so of apples. 



The whole state of Oregon is divided into a number 

 of different valleys that are well adapted for the intensi- 

 fied culture of fruit. The Rogue River, one of our large 

 fruit growing sections, is at the southern end of the state 

 and has an area about half as large as the state of Massa- 

 chusetts. It is a big dip at the southern extremity of the 

 Cascades where they join the Siskiyous. The whole valley 

 with its surrounding slopes is unusually adapted for <ruit 

 culture. Hood River, our smallest apple valley, is about 



sixty-live miles east of Portland. It stretches bac-k from 

 the Columbia river toward Mt. Hood for a distance of 

 twenty miles. It has an area of about 50,000 acres that 

 will eventually be a continuous orchard. There are now 

 about 10,000 acres of orchard in Hood River, but only 

 1,000 acres are in bearing. 



Many people of limited means have bought orchard 

 land in these valleys and have paid for trie development 

 of the orchard by raising berries. The advantage, for in- 

 stance, of strawberry raising lies in the fact that these 

 can be raised between the rows of trees and they come 

 into bearing a year after being planted. While the apple 

 grower is waiting five years to get returns from his trees 

 in this way he gets an immediate income of $150 to $250 

 per acre. 



The expense of producing strawberries is small, as 

 the cultivation and other expense costs less than $20 an 

 acre. The cost of picking and crating is about sixty cents 

 per crate. The demand for Hood River berries has always 

 been good and the price has never fallen below $1.75 per 

 crate. For the greater part of the season it is from $2.50 

 to $4.00 a crate. The Clark's Seedling is the best in 

 flavor and keeping qualities, and is practically the only 

 variety raised. During the World's Fair at Chicago, a 

 shipment of these berries after four days on the road was 

 entered in competition with other berries picked within a 

 few hours' run of Chicago. The Oregon berries carried off 

 first prize. 



The supply of berries remains about the same at Hood 

 River: 60,000 crates were shipped last season. As orchards 

 grow in size, berries are crowded out, but new patches are 

 being planted where new orchards are being started. One 

 may find plenty of berry growers who are satisfied with 

 the returns they get and are not drawn into apple raising; 

 for berry culture, although not so profitable in the end, is 

 less exacting in its demands on the land owner, and this 

 is a recognized advantage to many people. 



The picking and packing of fruit give many home 

 builders employment for themselves and families for sev- 

 eral months of the year. Many families who are just 

 starting orchards on limited capital, depend on working in 

 the fruit harvest to pay expenses during the winter. Girls 

 and women are good at packing fruit and easily earn from 

 $1.50 to $3.00 a day. In exceptional cases, a woman 

 packer makes as high as $5.00 packing apples or pears at 

 five cents a box. 



As to the price of apple land, property that is cleared 

 and ready for trees within a few miles of town, can be 

 bought from $150 to $300 per acre. Unimproved property 

 can be bought from $50 to $150 per acre. Such land can 

 be cleared at from $50 to $75 per acre. Suppose one pays 

 $200 an acre. The cost of apple trees, sixty-five to the acre 

 at twenty-five cents each, would mean $16.25. The cost of 

 planting, plowing, cultivating, spraying and pruning for 

 the proper care of an orchard from the time of planting 

 up to the fifth year, would approximate $10 per acre. For 

 a ten-acre orchard, therefore, the total expense during the 

 first year would be $2,262.50. Each year after that, the 

 expense would be $100, making the total expense for the 

 first four years amount to a little over $2,500. By the fifth 

 yjear, the trees should pay expenses and a small return on 

 the investment. From that time on, the income should in- 

 crease rapidly. 



A COLLEGE AND ACADEMY FOR YOUNG WOMEN 

 AND GIRLS. 



The attention of our readers is respectfully called to 

 the advertisement which appears in this issue, of St. Mary- 

 of-the- Woods College and Academy for young women and 

 girls. This institution, which was founded over seventy 

 years ago by the Sisters of Providence, among the hills 

 and woods of southern Indiana, has been developed into 

 one of the most beautiful places of its kind in the country. 



Its reputation as an educational institution for young 

 women and girls i.= world wide, and numbers among its 

 graduates some of the brightest women of this country. 



To those of our readers desiring- a school to educate 

 their daughters in a way that tends to the development 

 of noble womanhood, we most earnestly recommend this 

 school as the one that would meet their fondest hopes. 

 Representatives of the same families for three genera- 

 tions past are in attendance at this school, which is suf- 

 ficient evidence to convince the most exacting pnrent of 

 the excellency of this institution. 



