Harvesting the Crop 



37 



San Dimas, California 



The Atmosphere of the Market Place. 



FOR the sake of an argument we will now assume that 

 you have been eminently successful in establishing 

 an ideal orange or lemon orchard; that your trees 

 meet your anticipations as to beauty of form and bearing qual- 

 ities and prove to be true-to name; that your soil has demon- 

 strated its adaptability to the growing of citrus fruits; that 



CALIFORNIA PICKING SACK. 



your methods of cultivation and irrigating have "made good" 

 and that the luxuriant green of the foliage coupled with the fine 

 quality of your fruit has verified the intelligence you have exer- 

 cised in supplying the proper elements of plant food. What 

 next? Only this: you have still to prove the quality of your 

 citrus fruit pudding by its eating. In other words you have to 

 prove that you can properly harvest and market the fruit in order 

 to realize that "There is money in growing oranges and lemons." 

 These premises being conceded, let us picture to ourselves a 

 splendid grove of something like forty acres in full bearing. The 

 fruit is superb in quality and gratifying to our sense of fullness 



and quality. It is in just the right condition for marketing 

 and shipping, and hence it is of importance that we so handle 

 it that it shall reach the consumer with all its natural beauty 

 of form and flavor unimpaired. To accomplish this, certain 

 operations are essential, which may be described and should 

 in the main be carefully observed. 



THE EVER BEAUTIFUL KUMQUAT. 



The necessary number of hands to accomplish the task are on 

 the ground; the matter of conveyances to the packing houses 

 provided, and the paraphernalia for expediting the work supplied. 

 Each one of the pickers is supplied with a modern picking sack 

 with a false bottom capable of holding something like fifty oranges 

 and one hundred lemons everything depending on the size of 

 the individual fruits a pair of orange clippers, and a ladder, the 

 latter depending for its size upon the spread and heighth of the 

 tree from which the fruit is to be gathered. In harvesting a crop 

 care must be taken to cut the stem with the clipper close to the 

 fruit, taking each fruit in one hand while performing the act of 



