COST OF PRODUCING APPLES IN WESTERN COLORADO. 



17 



HAULING AND BURNING BRUSH. 



The cost of picking up, hauling, and burning or getting rid of the 

 brush from the orchard varies greatly, according to the facilities for 

 handling it. In the three counties the usual method is to pick, 

 haul, and burn at the same time. In Mesa County 22 growers use 

 a 1-man 2-horse crew, 22 use a 2-man 2-horse crew, and 5 use a 

 combination of crews and methods. It is found that here the 1-man 

 2-horse crew, with a total cost of $4.11 per acre, is slightly more 

 efficient than the 2-man 2-horse crew, which costs $4.82 per acre. 

 There were not enough records of other combinations to justify 

 conclusions. In Delta County 19 men used a 1-2 crew, 37 a 2-2 

 crew, and 5 other methods. Here the 2-2 crew was not nearly so 

 efficient as the 1-2 crew, the former costing $4.06 per acre, as against 

 $2.96 for the latter. In Montrose County, with four 1-2 crews and 

 ten 2-2 crews, there is a difference in cost of $0.30 per acre in favor 

 of the i-2 crew on the farms studied. 



The total costs for the three counties, regardless of the crews used 

 as well as the time and cost of the three counties combined, are 

 given in Table VIII. 



Table VIII. — Time and cost per acre for disposing of brush (125 ranches, western 



Colorado). 



Item. 



Mesa. 



Delta. 



Mon- 

 trose. 



All 



counties. 





49 



9.75 



12.84 



$4.36 



61 



8.46 



9.90 



$3.60 



15 

 6.43 



7.78 

 $2.77 



125 





8 72 





10.64 



Cost 



$3.78 







CULTIVATION. 



Under the general heading of cultivation are grouped all the 

 various tillage operations. These are plowing, disking, harrowing 

 with both spike and spring tooth, floating, cultivating, and marking 

 or creasing out the furrows for irrigation. The normal time has 

 been obtained for these different operations and the cost per acre 

 for each operation figured, but in the final charge the same system of 

 distributing the cost is used as previously explained. 



On account of the fact that clean cultivation is being abandoned 

 in this region and the use of a mulch crop is coming into a more general 

 practice, especially in Delta County, the final figures for cultivation 

 are too low for clean-cultivated orchards. At the time of this inves- 

 tigation an attempt was made to separate the cultivating costs on 

 the clean cultivation records from the costs on mulch crops or sod 



