The Canadian Horticulturist. 267 



EVAPORATING APPLES FOR PROFIT. 



L L fruit growers, and more especially of the apple, know that much 

 of their fruit is unfit for market, either being wormy, specked, scabby, 

 knotty or small. Now, all this fruit can be utilized by the evapor- 

 ator, and placed upon the market at remunerative prices. It is not 

 necessary to have a large establishment to accomplish this result. 

 There are driers with their capacities ranging from one to two bushels 

 of green apples per day, up to thousands. 

 The work can be done just as well and as cheaply on a ten-bushel machine 

 as in any of the large factories, and my experience has been that they are the 

 least expensive. Often it will pay to evaporate the whole crop. I have often 

 realized more for culls than for the shipping fruit. 



One hand can run a ten-bushel drier, with twenty-five cents worth of fuel, 

 and make fifty pounds of white fruit per day, which, at ten cents per pound, 

 about the average price, would net four dollars and seventy-five cents, making nearly 

 fifty cents a bushel, including the day's work, and, at this year's prices, would be 

 over seventy cents, and if the waste is dried, almost a dollar. 



Again, one important point thus gained is culling out your shipping fruit, 

 makirtg it grade fancy, and thereby obtain the highest market price for it. 



Market only the best, evaporate the rest. Thus you would avoid the break- 

 ing down the markets for the green fruit. This is always done by inferior stock 

 being run on the market, and never by good choice fruit. We can, at nearly all 

 ■ times, see apples quoted on the market at 75 cents to $1.25 per barrel. These 

 represent loss to the grower. All of this kind should never go on the market, 

 but in the evaporator. The world is your market for evaporated fruit ; you have 

 nearly four barrels of apples in a fifty-pound box that can be shipped just as 

 safely to Alaska, China or India, as to St. Louis, and you need be in no hurry 

 to market it. Next spring is as good as this fall, and often better prices are 

 obtained. 



When properly packed, and with proper storage, it can be kept for years as 

 fresh and sweet as when first prepared, except a little loss in color, but even this 

 may be overcome by cold storage. 



If prices are as low as they were two years ago, when it was worth only from 

 four to six cents a pound, and the waste and chop less than one cent, it can 

 safely be kept over until there is a shortage like the present, when fifteen cents 

 can be obtained for the white fruit, and four to five cents for chop and waste. 

 The chop is apples sliced just as they are without any paring or coring, and 

 dried ; in this the small and knotty apples that cannot be pared are used. The 

 work is done quite rapidly with a machine made for the purpose ; forty or fifty 

 bushels can be sliced in an hour by two hands. 



