60 NUT CULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES. 



HARVESTING. 



When the orchards that are now growing come into profitable bearing, some 

 cheaper and quicker method will need to be devised for gathering the crops. F. 

 A. Swinden, of Brownwood, Tex., as noted on page 19, thinks he will be able to 

 successfully operate a street sweeper in his large orchard, and, running to the 

 straight lines of the trees, brush the nuts into rows. If the ground is rolled hard 

 and smooth before harvest this may work satisfactorily, but there is yet room for 

 inventive skill. Heretofore, methods of gathering have been quite primitive even 

 to the cutting down of trees in the forests to secure their crops. The story of 

 killing the goose that laid the golden egg may have seemed like the fancy of an 

 author's brain, but here is a condition of things that has long existed wherein 

 the facts discount the fable. 



Theorists insist that the best crops of nuts, especially for seed, are obtained 

 with all nuts by letting the fruit remain until the natural conditions have fully 

 ripened the crop and the fruit falls of its own accord. To pursue this practice 

 makes harvesting tedious and marketing tardy. By this method the nuts are 

 picked up from the ground every morning after they begin to fall. They are 

 spread in lofts or other dry places to cure, and are then packed in sacks, barrels, 

 or boxes for market. The only curing that many crops of pecans get is in sacks 

 or barrels while awaiting marketing. The usual method of harvesting is to watch 

 the trees in the fall, and as the hulls begin to open, shake the trees or thresh 

 them with long, light poles like fishing rods. The nuts rattle down upon the 

 ground and are picked up into baskets. Nuts that fail to leave the hull on 

 striking the ground are cleaned by hand or tossed into a heap on some grassy 

 mound and threshed from the hull with rods. The thinner-shelled pecans are 

 often broken by such beating. The dealers in pecan districts buy, either by the 

 bushel or the pound, such nuts as gatherers take to the town, at from $1 to $4.50 

 per bushel, according to the size and quality. About half the reports indicate 

 the pound as the unit of measure, and place the price per pound at from 8 to 10 

 cents. A bushel of pecans is rated in some reports at 44 pounds and in others at 

 50 pounds. A barrel of pecans varies in different reports from 100 to 120 pounds. 



In Texas the legal weight of a bushel of these auts is 44 pounds, which some 

 correspondents think is too heavy by at least 2 pounds for perfectly dried nuts. 



CLEANSING AND POLISHING. 



After the nuts are hulled or "shucked," they are placed by some harvesters 

 in revolving churns where, by turning, they are cleaned and brightened. Others 

 bleach the nuts with sulphur fumes, but this practice is objectionable and should 

 be discouraged. An industry was established a few years since at Austin, Tex., 

 by R. C. Koerber, for cleansing and polishing or "burnishing" pecans, a business 

 which he has since transferred to New York City. Convenient establishments for 

 cleansing the nuts in the neighborhood of the orchards will be the demand of the 

 near future. A good assorting screen and dirt separator at every important center 

 of gathering is a desirable adjunct to this business. Mr. Koerber's enterprise has 

 added materially to the popularity of the pecan as a dessert nut, and indicates 

 one direction for effort in broadening the market. 



MARKETING. 



Between the grower and the consumer of pecans there are several handlings 

 of the nut, and not a few intermediate dealers and merchants. The gathered nuts 

 are of three classes, namely, those grown from selected stocks for planting, those for 

 confectionery and dessert uses, and those suitable only for making oil. Pecans 



